Stories shape futures

The ability to tell stories is a uniquely human achievement. Stories give humans a powerful evolutionary advantage that allows us to collaborate at scale by learning from the experiences or ideas of others. The stories we tell about the future influence and are influenced by others people’s views of the future. What is more, they can steer our own and our collective futures.

In this 90 minute workshop you will learn some of the basics of how we come to develop stories about the future in our own minds. You will understand better how these stories can have a big impact on the decisions that we make as individuals and collectively. Working in groups you will explore alternative future stories and together create a re-authored future narrative which will feed into #ourfutures project on the Futures4Europe platform. After the workshop, we would like to offer 30 minutes for an informal exchange to participants who would like to keep the conversation going after the official program ends. 

Claire Marshall is an Australian doctoral researcher within Transdisciplinary School (TD School) at UTS. Her research is focused on exploring how our brains think about the future and how we can counter dominant narratives through narrative practise to encourage regenerative futures. Her award-winning project Museum of Futures has been exhibited across Australia and internationally and has been recognised as a way to help policy makers and communities connect over shared futures.