Overview
CUT TO HOLOGRAPHIC NEWSPAPER ARTICLE
“Hey, Kool-Aid!”
THE NEW YORK TIMES GLOBE and MAIL April 16th, 2045 — Are we only now choosing between soul crushing dystopias and impractical utopian visions? Fifty-five years ago, our greatest challenge was that we lacked critical, informed, imagination. “The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed,” said William Gibson in the documentary Cyberpunk in 1990. Where was the Kool-Aid Kid and his masked sidekick The Brilliant Foresight?
FADE IN
INT. B-SIDE – DAY
APRIL 20, 2020
ROWDY FITC ATTENDEES rockin’ to the beat on bean bag chairs, standing on conference chairs, and flying paper airplanes.
YOU enter into the B-side. “The PRACTOPIA PROJECT has found YOU.” is projected on the wall.
YOU have been selected to help create an extra damn fine third option between crushing and impractical futures. Someone hands you the rules for tomorrow and you push up your sleeves like you mean it. YOU rip them up with a satisfying SHRED.
YOU
I’m here to create the future out of a down-ward spiral.
EVERYONE here is also into long-term thinking. They can’t wait to create the Kool-Aid Kid of immersive experiences.
MAGGIE or JOE
Welcome to the PRACTOPIA PROJECT. This is the immersive experience of the future you have been waiting for. In 30 seconds from now you are going to pick up your favourite creative chops and cook up practical positive futures stories of the future.
There are bits, bobs, bytes, and blue things, and a rubber chicken in piles on the floor. A disappointing absence of sparkles.
YOU to your NEIGHBOUR in an upbeat tone.
One day, I’ll feel nostalgic for The Dollar Store, just not today. Let the, design fiction workshop begin.
Objective
Introduce the Practopia Project and show participants how to use create speculative fiction for practical positive futures. Using the techniques of foresight, we answer for you the hanging question “What will you find in your future?”
Target Audiences
Designers looking to add foresight rigour to their work, changemakers needing new ways to overcome status quo inertia, innovators hoping to expand their creative capacities
Five Things Audience Members Will Learn
- How the future has lead us astray.
- How to look beyond today to create practical positive futures.
- The role of critical imagination in foresight thinking
- How to facilitate collaborative futures building
- How to create design fiction experiences using artifacts, narrative and activities
