The Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) are undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by emerging technologies like AI and immersive realities. This fast-moving landscape presents a crucial challenge: how do we effectively guide current professionals toward the emerging career opportunities of tomorrow? This is one of the questions we aim to tackle within the ekip project, the European Cultural and Creative Industries Innovation Policy Platform.

The EKIP initiative, funded by Horizon Europe, is dedicated to understanding and accelerating these transitions through research, policy, and collaboration. For each sector it studies, EKIP brings together policymakers, researchers, and creative practitioners to translate emerging needs into actionable frameworks for change.

Our foresight exercise, conducted within ekip's identification phase , addresses this challenge by mapping actionable career paths from the future back to the present. Our method employed social media listening to track real-time conversations across sectors, helping stakeholders anticipate change and enabling the co-creation of smarter innovation policies .

Summary

Core Themes
The book reimagines humanity’s future through planetary foresight, blending historical wisdom with planetary stewardship. It critiques linear Western progress narratives and advocates for a hybrid, cyclical vision of history, emphasizing pluralistic identities and reverence for life.

Structural Framework
Organized into thematic sections, the work begins with “The Mysterious Lord of Time,” challenging linear temporality and introducing non-linear, culturally diverse historical perspectives. “Evolving Belief Systems” contrasts Indo-Iranic, Mesopotamian, and Hellenic thought with Abrahamic traditions, highlighting ancient influences on modern pluralism.

Imagination and Futures
The “Histories of Imagination” section explores myth and storytelling as drivers of civilization, while “Scenarios of Future Worlds” applies foresight methodologies to geopolitical and technological evolution, emphasizing ecological consciousness. The final chapters expand to cosmic intelligence and ethics, framing humanity’s role within universal interconnectedness.

Ethical Vision
Central to the thesis is a call for planetary identity and stewardship, merging forgotten wisdom traditions with modern foresight to navigate ecological and technological uncertainties. The book positions itself as both a philosophical guide and practical framework for ethical transformation in an era of global crises.

Key Argument
Motti asserts that humanity is transitioning from a “Second Nomad Age” (characterized by fragmentation) toward a “Second Settlement Age” marked by planetary consciousness, requiring creative complexity and ethical vigilance.

Stories and narratives are a powerful tool of Futures Literacy and Futures Thinking. In recent years, they have been fighting for attention next to scenarios and trend research within the Foresight discipline, and there is a good reason for it. Adding up to 21 stories, the narratives in this booklet deal with the planetary emergency, the existential threat of climate change and the biodiversity crisis, which are driving the European Green Deal. They were built on ideas by people from all around the world. Some were experts in the field, some purely engaged citizens with a story to tell. Stories from 2050 range from plausible sci-fi stories of the future to fictional fairy tales that provoke abstract thinking. Some stories are hopeful; others are concerning. They are going to stimulate your thinking by providing different perspectives and layers of understanding.

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.