Decolonizing the Imagination: Designing a Futures Literacy Workshop

This article explores the potential of narratives and creative writing as tools for imagining possible futures within the pedagogical framework of futures literacy. We share our experiences of a transdisciplinary pre-study on future mobility situated at the intersection of business model innovation, narrative theory and pedagogy. The pre-study results show that it is difficult not to repeat present and past patterns when anticipating the future. A great challenge is therefore to decolonize the imagination when imagining possible futures scenarios. Based on the insights from the pre-study, we propose a futures literacy (FL) workshop as a structured learning process that combines an open-minded imagining of possible futures with the creation of strategic scenarios. Designed for students and practitioners within a transformative learning environment, the proposed FL workshop is process-oriented and has a focus on anticipation and exploration of limitless futures. Furthermore, it is argued that the workshop has the potential for facilitating agency in the process of business model innovation towards innovative organizational value logics. This paper provides hands-on details for a particular way of improving the capacity of students and practitioners for imagining the future differently and pluralistically. A key argument in the paper is that competence in narrative technique is required in designing, performing and analyzing the workshop activities.