Develop and experience habitable futures
Imagining Futures We Want to Live In
For several years, especially technical development has been advancing so rapidly that we, our society, and every individual can only react. No one can predict what our reality will look like in 10 or 20 years. But we no longer even have an idea of what futures could or should look like. Without a vision of livable futures, we cannot act. We are flying blind, reacting to whatever comes our way.
Reclaiming our future
Our goal is to actively shape the future: By collectively brainstorming ideas for a livable future, documenting them, bringing them together, and creating opportunities to implement them.
Everyone can imagine a desirable future
We work towards this goal by merging structured and creative thinking about the future with writing, particularly using methods from science fiction writing. This can create realities that are accessible and understandable to others, serving as a starting point for exchange, discussion, and collaboration.
Our projects:
Future & Innovation Workshops
How can we create ideas for the future and make them implementable? We build on the strong methodologies of Futures Labs and other formats to develop and write short stories in/from the future. This allows us not only to describe precisely and plausibly what they should look like (from a human perspective) but also serves as a starting point for concrete projects that can emerge. Examples include: "What could sustainable tourism look like in our region" or "What could our organization look like if we transfer responsibility to the teams"? More at Future-as-a-Service ...
Open Future Writing Workshops
Through our experimental and open Future Writing Workshops, we host thematic sessions via via Meetup where we transfer experiences into a thematic future and write short stories about/from these futures, e.g., "Future of Water" or "Future of Travel". These stories can be extended, linked, and layered over each other. They can form the basis for more complex stories, or the starting point for projects. More ...
SF4Scientists
In the newly launched SF4Scientists project (short for Speculative/Science/Social Fiction for Scientists), we collaborate with Otherland Berlin to provide writing workshops specifically for scientists. The aim is to make complex (technical, scientific) topics accessible to a broader/different audience. At the same time, it allows (technical, scientific) topics to be considered in a broader context beyond the narrow niche of everyday scientific work. Typically, SF authors delve deeply enough into topics to support the plot credibly. Here, we reverse it: Experts in their field learn and try to "package" expertise into a plot through character and world-building and play with it. More ...
New German ScienceFiction
An exciting generation of new German science fiction authors is exploring highly relevant topics to make the future tangible and experiential, creating a discourse on the futures we want to live in. In collaboration with Otherland Berlin Otherland Berlin, we are launching a translation and internationalization project to translate five selected contemporary works (Pantopia, Athos 2643, Transfusion, NeonGrau, and Three Phases of Uprooting) into English, to publish them, and to disseminate and make them available through various networks and channels. Mehr Infos zum Stand und zur Unterstützung hier.
Kids SciFi Buchclub
Together with Otherland Berlin, since the summer of 2023, we have been hosting a very exciting book club for young people aged 11 to 15, where we read and discuss science fiction or fantasy books. Since spring 2024, we have been conducting these book clubs together with the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek Berlin to reach an even larger and more diverse group of people. These book clubs are also small experiments to understand how texts about the future work but can also be written - developing future skills playfully and entertainingly. More ...
