Context and Objectives
Les Petits Débrouillards is a popular education NGO in France, who focus on developing critical thinking and scientific awareness for children using alternative educational methods.
After going through different crises, the NGO was looking to rewrite their mission statement and strategy with their stakeholders: employees, volunteers, directors, partners, from everywhere in France. As a first step towards this goal, they wanted to experiment with creative foresight in order to:
bring together the regional branches of the association with the same exercise and strengthen their connection;
raise the concerns and desires of all the stakeholders for the future of the organisation, as well as for the future of popular education;
encourage a sense of agency in a context of instability and general worry towards the future;
develop different narratives to open up possibilities and imagine ways of adapting to change;
value the knowledge and vision of every member of the association;
find common ground, while embracing the plurality of existing visions.
Tool: Training exercise
Duration: ~1 day
Contributors: This tool was developed by Juliette Grossmann (conception) and Juliette Lépineau (design) from the The Plurality University (U+) Network, with the close collaboration of the U+ team: Chloé Luchs, Daniel Kaplan, Ketty Steward. In partnership with Mustapha Wafra from the non-profit organization Les Petits Débrouillards. U+’s mission is to explore and open possibilities for the emergence of empowering, just and sustainable futures, by mobilising resources of the imagination (art, fiction, speculation…).
On This Page
Context and Objectives
Project Process
Process of the One Day Method
Main Learnings
Project Process
We created a specific tool, a one day exercise called Aux Futurs Citoyen·nes (To The Future Citizens), and organised a two-day training in Paris with 20 employees of Les Petits Débrouillards who volunteered as Regional Representatives.
The goal was to introduce them to collective creative foresight, teach them to facilitate this kind of exercise in each of their regional offices, and have their feedback on the method (as beta-testers and as education experts).
After having made some appropriate adjustments, we sent the Representatives all the resources necessary for them to run the workshop autonomously: a “Booklet of animation” and designed workshop supports. This exercise took place 15 times everywhere in France, from December 2022 to April 2023. The Representatives documented each workshop and produced a report after each session. From these materials, U+ produced a “General report” to draw out the main learnings and outcomes.
Process of the one-day method
The day begins with a friendly welcome for participants, to give them time to meet and settle in. A short introduction then explains the foresight methodology and the general objectives of the workshop.
This is also an opportunity to remind participants of the Rules of Collective Intelligence! Then it's time to divide the participants into small groups (4 to 8 people).
Before getting to the heart of the matter, phase 1 “Future Fragments” enables each participant to share with their group a fictional object (in the broadest meaning of the term) that evokes the future of education for them. It can be a novel, a movie, an art piece, or even a commercial or an object, as long as it tells a story. Ideally, participants have been asked beforehand to come with their artefact.
This is an opportunity for them to get to know each other, to activate the ability to project into the future, and to remove preexisting hierarchies and power imbalances (in the field of fiction and imagination, there is no right answer or expertise to show).
Phase 2 “Imagine 2040” can start. First, they must project themselves into a future that is radically different from the present, shifting the picture to imagine what our common future might be. A World Scenario card and an Education Scenario card (A5 size), drawn at random by each group, are used to create an initial 2040 context into which the group can project itself. The combination of both cards is important to generate an incompatibility, a sense of randomness, that requires people to interpret and try to make sense of it by filling the gaps. Participants in each group share their interpretation of the cards, their questions and uncertainties, and start to frame together a narrative of this 2040 world. This context is what may happen in the future- over which we have no control. How to act on it will come later.
The large scale scenarios are written to be simultaneously open and imprecise, and radical, in their content. Each Education Scenario card (inspired by OECD's foresight work on education) describes in a few sentences how education has changed and possible consequences of this change on other aspects of society:
'1. Schools are at the heart of the community',
'2. Schools are learning organisations',
'3. Education is made through learning networks',
'4. Education is a private good'.
The World Scenario cards each describe a global rupture that shapes the future radically differently from our present.
They were inspired by international association Futurible's foresight work on “Possible trend breaks by 2040/50”. While some scenarios are more desirable than others, they are all written in a way that participants can always see potential good and bad consequences and have a glimpse of the complexity of the situation (neither utopian nor dystopian). The fact that these starting points are drawn from serious foresight studies gives them legitimacy and relevance to our current frame of reference: they remain within the realm of the possible.
To truly embody the experience, participants create a persona from 2040, which they will then be invited to act out in fictional situations.
The more diverse and different the characters, the richer and more interesting the world will be!
Now it's time to actually create the world of 2040 from the point of view of the people who inhabit it. Participants take on the role of their persona, and together they build different aspects of the 2040 world in which they live: what they eat, what they see, how they get around…
The more precise, sensitive and personal the information, the better. Contradictions are okay in this shared 2040 world: in a common world, we don’t all live in the same reality or have the same perspective. This tool is inspired by writer Ketty Steward’s practice.
Inhabiting 2040
Instructions
What does the world of 2040 look like through the eyes of your characters? Here is a list of questions that you will answer together. To create a shared world, everyone must answer a question from their character’s point of view. As you write your answers on this chart, together you will create an image of the world in 2040. Don’t hesitate to ask each other for clarification, to add details, to draw illustrations, etc.
Listen carefully: what are the sounds you hear in this world of 2040, where are they coming from?
What do you see through the window that gives you a sense of the time you live in?
Take a deep breath: what smells do you notice in this world of 2040, and what do they evoke in you?
What does your home look like?
Who, or what, do you live with?
If you have somewhere to go, how do you get around?
Tell us about one of your typical meals in 2040
What are the news today?
Inhabiting 2040
Following a well-deserved lunch, which provided an opportunity to share the highlights and curiosities of the morning, the participants dive back into their world of 2040.
Having contextualised it, then inhabited it, they now have to explore the aspect of this world they care most about: learning. Each participant writes and shares a fictional story about a learning situation experienced by their character.
Thanks to all this work of projecting and telling the story of how we learn in 2040, the participants can move on to phase 3, "What can we do?” Starting with a report on their astonishment as members of Petits Débrouillards in 2040, to draw out the lessons learned from the stories told in their group.
Participants can start by each sharing one striking aspect of learning and education in 2040, and one lesson to learn as an educator in 2040. Comments on the world and the stories are of course welcome.
Based on these lessons, the next step is to imagine an action taken by the Petits Débrouillards in 2040 to meet the challenges of their future. The participants can remain in the skin of their persona to describe something that the association has invented, implemented or transformed in 2040.
The action must be described in detail: who is managing it, how, for who is it for, for what purpose, etc.
To round off the journey, the Petits Débrouillards of 2040 address messages to the Petits Débrouillards of 2023 (to put in a mailbox for the future), inviting them to take on a new role, to seize an exciting idea, or to overcome an upcoming challenge.
Main Learnings
Thanks to the well-designed materials, group participants can work independently to complete the exercise without a dedicated facilitator. Nevertheless, it is necessary to have organisers responsible for the safe and efficient running of the workshop. You can use principles of collective intelligence as a support for establishing a fruitful collective environment, and ensure that all participants can express themselves properly.
Tensions and conflicts can appear, even in the fictional world! In this exercise, that is not something to avoid at all cost but to embrace as far as possible. Here are some insights on the issue: make sure to create groups with great diversity of people; avoid putting in the same group some people with known tensions; make sure the discussions always happen in the fiction (i.e. speak from the point of view of their character in the future); make sure to have at least one person responsible for the day if mediation is required.
There are numerous ways to define the value and outcomes of such an experience – the experience itself often being the most precious. Evaluation must be considered beforehand, and discussed with the partners involved: what do you consider valuable? What is success, today and tomorrow, and for who? How can you find evidence that doesn’t reduce the qualitative outcomes? But also: how to create space for unexpected outcomes? Also, make sure means and objectives are correctly set out at the start.
The more you work in close collaboration with stakeholders (partners, participants, artists…) through all the steps of a collective creative practice, the more it will be truly transformative for everybody. Engagement is key: people need to be able to make the experience their own, to make sense of it. This will make the creations all the richer and more meaningful, even in the weird and the paradoxical.
