CoFutures Literacy

Project Information

COFUTURESLITERACY

Grant agreement ID: 101113215

DOI

10.3030/101113215

Project closed

EC signature date 12 July 2023

Start date 1 August 2023

End date 31 January 2025

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 150 000,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - COFUTURESLITERACY (CoFutures Literacy)

Reporting period: 2023-08-01 to 2025-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

People around the world imagine futures differently. These imaginations of the future are most clearly found in the fictions they produce (Futurisms, Future Fictions, and Speculative Fiction; hereafter SF). SF acts as a repository of ideas related to societal change, technological change, climate
change, and other kinds of change. How do we take these different imaginations, and use them to drive societal innovations? How do we work with the complexity of visions around the world, not merely in its richer parts but in its poorer, or developing parts, to think new kinds of futures: economic, cultural, political? And how do we scale and translate these visions for use in policy and policy-adjacent contexts, how can they inspire new social and technological developments? While the need for SF as a means to drive innovation is by now well-known at research and policy level. In CoFutures Literacy, we take speculative imaginations of the future, especially as found in SF, and systematize the methods used by creative professionals around the world to imagine futures. These creative methods are combined with methods used in innovations, scenario and policy work to understand, anticipate and generate futures. Together, this forms the framework we term CoFutures Literacy. The PoC communicates and teaches this framework via a knowledge solution comprising three modules: a) a comparative methodological toolkit (CoFutures Poker), b) a speculative storytelling handbook and facilitation guide, and, c) related media.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The main tasks of the Proof of Concept included development workshops with the ERC team and with external stakeholders. We were able to test it with several stakeholder groups, including partner organizations from Austria (FutureSpace), China (Sceince and the Human Imagination Research Center, Southern University of Science and Technology), and UN Global Pulse (Finland).

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The main achievements include developing a proof of concept methodological toolkit (CoFutures Poker) for rapid futures development in scenario and policy contexts, and a faciliation handbook with summary statement for the CoFutures literacy technique. We also conducted interviews and demos of methods which show the tools in action.

The next stage for the PoC output (TRL3 / proof of concept) is generation of a marketable prototype (TRL7 level). We are exploring further options in scaling up the PoC outputs. We are looking at active partnerships with technology organizations (SINTEF) to explore potential EU funding under Cluster 4: Digital, Industry and Space, as well as national level funding from the Norwegian Research Council.