Event

Designing Narratives & Evoking Change

6 - 11 October 2023

Date	October 6 — 11, 2023
Time	All four days
Event type	Course
Price	€2000 – €3000 (excl. VAT)
Location	DDC – Danish Design Center

How to explore alternative futures, engage the collective imagination, and find new paths forward

6 — 11 October 2023

Join us for our four-day, intensive flagship futures, systems, and design course as we explore the ideas, methods, and relationships that can help us imagine and bring to life a joyous and sustainable future.

We can’t predict the future, but with the use of design, storytelling, and scenarios, we can explore multiple alternative futures, giving us new perspectives on the issues and opportunities we face or might face in years to come. We can open up the opportunity space, we can define the future we want, and we can identify the actions we can take to bring us on the path of getting there. These approaches let you explore who you strive to be, they help you identify and deliver on the need for change within and around you, and they can support you in shaping the impact you want to have on the future.

It is clear: We need to imagine radically different alternatives to avoid extinction and societal collapse. We desperately need new narratives to guide us on our path forward: As individuals, as organizations, as communities, and as societies. To tackle the systemic issues we’re facing, we need to train ourselves to think beyond short-term problem-solving and consider long-term perspectives. We need images of the future, and cold facts and projections simply won’t cut it alone. If we’re to make it — we need to fuel the engine of human emotion, creativity, and storytelling.

"What an incredible experience. There was clearly so much thought that went into designing the whole program, process, and learning experience. Oskar and Sara were brilliant hosts and held space for really supportive, curious, and enriching group discussions. I feel like I've learned so much both in terms of practical tools and approaches and a deeper understanding through practice"

Milly Shotter

Bethnal Green Ventures

About the course

During the course, you’ll learn design- and scenario-based approaches to navigating uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity and inspire systems change. You will train your ability to move back and forth between the present to the far future — and between concrete situations and abstract systems. Throughout the course, we’ll give you the tools to deploy these approaches in your own practice — be it as a designer, innovator, facilitator, or decision-maker. You will learn how future scenarios are created and how you can take them from abstract ideas to living worlds that inspire specific and tangible actions across networks of stakeholders. We’ll provide concrete tools and examples as well as inspiration from the fields of transition design and speculative design.

Speculative- and futures-based design is a way to work with some of the bigger societal challenges we are facing — often in the form of scenarios. By the use of scenarios and the process connected to scenario planning, we can explore different futures and backtrace to get some more tangible steps we can take toward bigger changes in our society. In scenarios, we don’t need to be restricted by what is possible now but can experiment with ideas where the products and services are yet to be invented. This gives a more creative space to innovate in. This can be a great method to use when you want to work with creating systemic change and diverse groups of stakeholders.

During the hands-on course, you’ll familiarize yourself with tools and ideas that you can use in your own innovation practice:

How to harness the power of social dreaming
How to build alternative futures together and use them strategically
How to identify risks and opportunities across future scenarios
How to build a practice of continually scanning the horizon for change
How to use imaginary futures in launching design-driven missions for system-level change
How to utilize design as a way to speculate and ask critical questions

We hope you want to join us in exploring some of the concepts we see shaping a new paradigm of futures-oriented design aimed toward system-level change. All while getting a chance to meet and connect with interesting people from all around.

"This course was transformational. It has opened my mind and imagination to think about possible futures and provided me with a varied toolbox of practical methods to bring others on that journey. Oskar and Sara curated the course excellently and generously. Thank you"

Alex Flemming

UK Policy Lab

Program and speakers

A detailed program and guest speaker line-up will be announced once we get closer to the course.

In the past, we’ve been joined by:

Jennie Winhall, Founder, ALT/Now & Director, systeminnovation.org
Tobias Revell, Designer, Artist, and Design Futures Lead, Arup
Ida Engholm, Professor, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts – Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation
Ditte Graae & Andreas Mortensen, Bespoke Manyone
Neza Landeker, Sensible Futures
Jocelyn Ibarra, Time Travel Agency
Gry Worre Hallberg, Sisters Hope
Christian Bason, CEO, Danish Design Center
Julie Hjort, Program Director, Green Transition, Danish Design Center

Practical information

The course is intensive, besides plenary sessions it also includes both individual and group work as well as 1:1 sparring sessions with members of the faculty. The course runs over 4 days with a weekend in-between to allow for light homework. Beyond the training sessions, the course will also include several optional social networking opportunities with course mates incl. a dinner.

Danish Design Center will happily provide tips and recommendations in relation to finding accommodation.

Sign up

Please use this form to register for the course.

"The course was thought-provoking, rigorously planned, and inspired thoughtful discussions around shared futures and change-making strategies. there was a diverse set of speakers and great facilitation. the program also gave us useful tools to build that we could bring into our own practice"

Amanda Bao

JAM3

Pricing

Regular: €3000

Regular, early bird: €2500*

Nonprofit/public/edu: €2500

Nonprofit/public/edu, early bird: €2000*

*Early bird requires registration at least 50 days in advance

Payment & cancellation
You will receive an invoice around the time of the course. If you cancel via email more than 14 days in advance you will only be billed 50% of the amount. If cancel more than 30 days in advance you will not be billed at all.