Living the life

SF4S is a collaborative action with partners from Higher Education institutions (HEIs), Vocational Education and Training (VET) providers, innovation networks and business entities from the Agri-food, Health and the Mobility sectors. Carried out between July 2022 - June 2025,  SF4S supports our transition to a more sustainable European economy by helping to address the lack of green, digital and future (i.e. sustainability foresight) skills among students and professionals and by connecting knowledge flows between HEI, VET and industry actors that are necessary for Europe to develop cooperative solutions on a large-scale and support the recommendations for action in the major reports and initiatives: Green Deal, NextGenerationEU, European Skills Agenda and OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030.   Partners Designskolen Kolding (coordinator) ISPIM HKMW GEA College IZT - Institute for Futures Studies and Technology Assessment Finland Futures Research Centre Estonian Design Centre EDHEC Business School TalTech Airbus Region Midtjylland Nordic FoodTech VC Lufthansa Help Alliance CoModule North Estonia Medical Centre La Muu Michelin Peter Larsen Kaffe

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.

Resilience and preparedness relate both to coping with the immediate and gradually developing threats, hence contributing also to the transition towards ecological and resilient deliberative communities and society. For instance, we consider personal and community survival skills (both mental and physical wellbeing), deliberative policy and civic skills to avoid polarization and confrontations and sustainable lifestyles based on self-reliance and autonomy. While the challenges considered are global, policy implications are addressed especially from the European research and innovation policy perspective. This project targets toward 2040 exploring the civic (both individual and community level) resilience and preparedness in Europe. We develop scenarios to consider alternative plausible futures characterized by societal uncertainties caused by major disruptions (wars, upheavals, wildfires, floods, etc.) in different hypothetical contexts of reference (where possible changes induced by trends and weak signals are also considered) and try to imagine how Europeans could be prepared at the individual and community level, especially from the perspective of relying less on the external services provided by the public and private sectors. This deep dive is part of the "European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe" project which aims to help valorise foresight elements from R&I projects of Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe by increasing their visibility and the potential uptake of their results in EC R&I policy planning. 

Regenerating the ecosystem of science learning by developing a future-oriented model to enable creative thinking, foresight and active hope as skills needed in formal and informal science education.

MUSAE aims to set up a Human-Centred Factory Model, based on the Design Future Art-driven (DFA) method, and integrate it into a (European) Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) network, to support companies in guiding strategic digital technology innovation and address future challenges in the food domain to improve people and planet wellbeing.  MUSAE will establish a deep connection with the S+T+ARTS ecosystem, bringing together expertise in design, art, nutrition and wellbeing, and human-machine interaction. MUSAE will run 20 S+T+ARTS residencies involving 20 artists and 10 tech companies working with 3 main technologies – Artificial Intelligence, Wearables, and Robotics – to envision 10 future scenarios for technologies application and design 10 prototypes, thus opening up new markets and innovations. To validate replicability, MUSAE will set up and activate one Factory within the DIH partner and create the Factory Model Pack and the Label that will allow other DIHs to adopt it.

Road-STEAMer attempts to develop a STEAM Roadmap for Science Education in Horizon Europe and in educational policy across the continent in order to:  To produce better knowledge and shared understanding of Europe’s particular educational needs and how STEAM can address them.  To explore the opportunities arising through STEAM for integrated science learning approaches and synergies.  To study those policy deficiencies that hinter the impactful adoption of STEAM approaches in Europe’s science education landscape.

The Millennium Project is a global participatory think tank established in 1996 under the American Council for the United Nations University that became independent in 2009 and has grown to 73 Nodes around the world (an MP Node is a group of institutions and individuals that connect local and global perspectives). Purpose: Improve humanity’s prospects for building a better future. Mission: Improve thinking about the future and make that thinking available through a variety of media for feedback to accumulate wisdom about the future for better decisions today. Vision: A global foresight network of Nodes, information, and software, building a global collective intelligence system recognized for its ability to improve prospects for humanity. A think tank on behalf of humanity, not on behalf of a government, or an issue, or an ideology, but on behalf of building a better future for all of us.

Teach the Future is a global non-profit movement that promotes ‘futures literacy’ as a life skill for students and educators. In a rapidly evolving world it is essential to learn how to deal with uncertain and ever-changing futures. Let’s prepare our next generations with these skills in the classroom! Our aspiration is that every student is prepared to navigate an uncertain world and has the agency to imagine and create their preferred future. Our mission is to teach futures-thinking skills to students and educators around the world and to inspire them to influence their futures. The impact we want to achieve for generations to come: Stimulate futures consciousness Activate different ways of thinking (critically and creatively) Teach the ability to navigate and influence change in the face of uncertainty and complexity Engage in better decision-making Create more active citizens Spark more empathy, particularly for future generations, in solving societal issues

Science, technology and arts (STARTS for short) limn a nexus at which insightful observers have identified extraordinarily high potential for innovation.

This rapid exploration is part of the Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan project. Individual and public health are probably THE most important issues for citizens and governments. In spite of major advances in curing of major diseases over the past century and a half, and a growing recognition of the importance of preventative measures, there are constantly new frontiers emerging in health-related S&T. In a nutshell, the most important threats to individual and public health are: Emergence of new thus far unknown communicable diseases (most recently COVID 19), possibly given rise to global pandemics; The declining effectivity of existing antibiotics, and growing difficulties in discovering new ones or finding other ways of strengthening antimicrobial resistance; Growing incidence of non-communicable diseases (dementia, mental illness, obesity, diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases and the like), often resulting from unhealthy environmental conditions (e.g. air pollution), malnutrition and lack of physical exercise. These growing health threats are counteracted by new biomedical insights and technological means to help maintain and restore health: Insights into how our individual internal and external health “ecosystems” and microbioms influence our state of health; Understanding of the mechanisms and pre-dispositions of various diseases, which opens up new opportunities for identifying new vaccines and more personalised possibilities of medication treatment; New possibilities of repairing or even replacing organs and influencing the process of cellular division, which open up further possibilities of human enhancement (see Deep Dive on Transhumanism). Latest developments in better exploiting inter-connected health data for personalised treatmetns and prevention. About this topic A major challenge consists of preparing public health systems to better handle health risks and make novel medical possibilities widely available at affordable costs to the individual and to society. To be future-proof, health systems need to change in many regards, but opinions are split about the right way forward. They are supposed to absorb innovative approaches for cure and prevention, set incentices right, while at the same time keeping the costs for fair and sustainable health as low as possible. The recent COVID 19 pandemic has also shown that optimising health system capacities may well be cost-efficient under normal circumstances, but it endangers the ability to respond in a resilient manner to high-pressure situations like the one we have been experiencing during the past two COVID years. At the same time, the health systems in most European countries are confronted with shortages of health professional, from medical doctors to care professions. Drivers of change The interaction between new threats and new promises is influenced by a range of other factors. Closer interaction with thus far untouched natural ecosystems, where humans can get in contact with novel life-threatening diseases, represents a real challenge for public and individual health. The fast spread of dangerous communicable diseases is accelerated by global individual mobility. The prevalence of unhealthy lifestyles represents an issue of major concern, in particular the widespread adoption of “Western” and meat-rich diets. Although there are counter-movements, not least for climate-related reasons, the climate footprint of food supply continues to grow. Environmental degradation and air pollution represent important factors negatively influencing individual health, and well beyond respiratory damages. Climate change can at least reinforce health-threatening incidences, and lead to the spread of diseases and of their carriers to areas where they have not been detected before. Micro and nano-devices can be used for prostetics and implants as well as for carrying drugs to designated places in the body. Digitalisation opens up new opportunities for addressing a range of health challenges: from pacemakers to brain interfaces, and from online medical advice to big data analytics for diagnosis and personalised health services. The promise of pharmacogenomics for personalised health services continues to be held up by industry. It projects a huge potential once genetic information is decoded and understood. Costs of public health systems have been growing, and while digitalisation may well help reduce costs, it is also a factor driving a shift towards a two- or three-tier health system. Futures What if healthy life styles were rewarded, and unhealthy ones penalised? What if the most advanced preventative measures and treatments were available to the most well-off citizens? What if digital implants were hacked and manipulated? What if environmental degradation and air pollution continued to rise in major urban agglomerations? What if the costs of the opportunities inherent to new health technologies exceeded 25% of GDP? What if major pandemics arise much more frequently than in the past, demanding high flexibility from the health system and its employees?