Eye of Europe - The Research and Innovation foresight community

As a Coordination and Support Action funded by the EU, project “Eye of Europe” aims to enhance the integration of foresight practices into Research and Innovation (R&I) policy making across Europe. Ultimately, the project envisions a more cohesive and influential R&I foresight community that contributes significantly, as a collective intelligence, to shaping and guiding policy decisions. To this end, Eye of Europe builds on existing initiatives and experiences to foster knowledge-sharing between foresight practitioners and policy makers, attract domain experts in foresight endeavours, and engage a broader audience in futures thinking. Nurturing futures4europe as the online home for the community and running various face-to-face events with different stakeholders will underpin these ambitions. The project runs between November 2023 - October 2026 and relies, methodologically, on the following building blocks: Futures4Europe.eu as the online hub for the R&I foresight community in Europe: The existing platform will be upgraded to better accommodate the interests of various stakeholders such as foresight experts, beneficiaries, domain experts, and an active audience. It will operate on multiple integration levels, from mapping organizations and experts to sharing foresight results and capabilities. Moreover, it will act as the communication gateway for ongoing foresight activities, events, educational and inspirational materials. More on the platform here. Sharing of practices: This entails mapping institutions engaged in R&I foresight activities, promoting mutual learning through interactive formats, developing shared visions for the future of foresight in R&I policy within the European Research Area (ERA), fostering exchanges among the foresight in R&I policy community through conferences, encouraging dialogues between futurist/expert communities, academics and policy practitioners. Key figures: 5 mutual learning events (MLE): 2 online, 3 face-to-face events; 1 vision building event for the Future of R&I Foresight in ERA; 2 conferences Running foresight pilots: Conducting a series of pilot workshops and online consultations with diverse formats, methodologies, and participants. This involves identifying topics of common interest within the European Research Area (ERA), where foresight perspectives offer added value, designing and implementing tailored pilot foresight activities involving various stakeholders, harnessing lessons learnt and feeding them into the platform and other dissemination channels. Key figures: 11 Foresight pilot processes: 3 exclusively with citizens, 4  mainly with experts and researchers tackling specific R&I topics, 4 involving a bespoke group of participants. Out of the 11 events,  8 will be face-to-face events, and 3 pilots will take place online Boosting futures literacy: The project encourages meaningful engagement with diverse audiences, from foresight professionals, researchers, policy-makers to various futures sensitive profiles (e.g. entrepreneurs, journalists, artists) and the wider civil society. The project will provide guides, methodology toolboxes, and training modules for R&I foresight and futures literacy, incorporating written and multimedia content. Key figures: 5-10 short training sets for participants in foresight exercises; 1 training module for foresight beneficiaries; 1 foresight training for early career researchers, 1 Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on R&I foresight; 12 conversational podcasts; 6-8 Short videos and/or animated materials showcasing foresight processes and outcomes Fueling the public discourse around futures: Promoting the project and fostering the foresight community via the online platform Futures4Europe and complementary channels such as social media and a dedicated newsletter. In addition to highlighting the project's own initiatives, Eye of Europe will also aim to promote foresight content developed in other projects, showcasing a diverse range of perspectives and insights within the foresight field. The quarterly newsletter will feature various content types like interviews, project updates, and foresight-related articles. Social media, particularly futures4europe's LinkedIn page, will be used to engage professional communities and wider audiences, with a focus on sharing project activities and fostering discussions. Eye of Europe leverages the experience of 18 partners across Europe coming from all walks of foresight expertise and practice: Unitatea Executiva Pentru Finantarea Invatamantului Superior A Cercetarii Dezvoltarii Si Inovarii (UEFISCDI) – coordinator Austrian Institute Of Technology GmbH (AIT) Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Zur Forderung Der Angewandten Forschung EV (Fraunhofer) Turun Yliopisto (UTU) VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH (VDI/VDE IT) Deutsches Zentrum Fur Luft - Und Raumfahrt (DLR) Fundacao Para A Ciencia E A Tecnologia (FCT) Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche (CNR) Technologicke Centrum Praha ZSPO (TC Praha) Agentia Nationala pentru Cercetare si Dezvoltare (ANCD) Urad Vlady Slovenskej Republiky (UV SR) Asociatia Institutul De Prospectiva (Prospectiva) Institut National De Recherche Pour L'agriculture, L'alimentation Et L'environnement (INRAE) S. MANTZANAKIS KAI SIA O.E (Helenos) Insight Foresight Institute SL (IFI) ARCTIK SRL (ARCTIK) Kozgazdasag- Es Regionalis Tudomanyi Kutatokozpont (CERS) Technopolis

Collaborative research on the human capacity to understand, anticipate, prepare for, and embrace the future. About Futures Consciousness The futures consciousness concept and scale has been developed by researchers at the Finland Futures Research Centre (University of Turku) and University of Geneva, with help from other contributors. Teach the Future received a grant from the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) and the Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University (PMU) to adapt the Scale for use by young people, ages 12-18.  The results of that grant are being submitted for publication by the partners. After that, the Scale will be available for use by schools and other organizations that work with youth. The details will be published on this page shortly. Take the test: https://fctest.utu.fi/ The Five Dimensions of Futures Consciousness are: time perspective; the ability to be aware of the past, present and future, as well as the way events follow each other over time agency beliefs; basic sense of confidence that an individual has in their own ability to influence the external world openness to alternatives; abilities used to critically question commonly accepted ideas and influences an individual’s willingness to consider alternative ways of being and doing systems perception; the ability to recognize human and natural systems around us including groups, societies and ecosystems concern for others; relates to the degree to which an individual pursues favourable futures for a group beyond themselves Full article explaining the concept: The Five Dimensions of Futures Consciousness (Ahvenharju et al., 2018) Our partners Teach the Future collaborates with the University of Turku in Finland, the Finland Futures Research Centre and Digital Futures to research and promote the work in the context of education and (young) students. Sanna Ahvenharju, Matti Minkkinen and Fanny Lalot are the research experts that developed the futures consciousness concept and scale.  Our activities Teach the Future supports the development of a scale matching the language and level of young people. This project is in collaboration with schools in the Netherlands, Italy, Turkiye, United States, and United Kingdom. And we thank our sponsor the Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd, Center for Futuristic Studies. Next to this we support the testing. Erica Bol has worked with Martin de Wolf of the Master Learning and Innovation at the Fontys University of Applied Sciene. She designed a futures lesson program supporting the Master program and tested if the students futures consciousness improved. The students did a test before and after the lessons program. A paper on the project and results are published in FUTURES issue 12-2022.