Let's Get Real About Futures Activism + Future Days offer
Published about 1 month ago • 6 min read
For Creatives Seeking Emergent and Regenerative Future Foresight
Thought this week
“What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.”
— Samuel Johnson (1791)
Introduction
I haven't connected with you in a minute as I've been nursing today's extensive piece for a while. My biomimicry training has also been taking on a new dimension towards a very systemic approach, something I want to update you on. But for now, here's today's deep dive: What is a Futures Activist? Honouring History, Reimagining Practice. Together let's examine the relationship between activism and futures work, how we can honour activism’s deep legacy while creating meaningful partnerships for social change.
As the concept of “futures activism” gains momentum in our field, it invites us to thoughtfully consider how we can honour the rich legacy of activist traditions while bringing foresight expertise to urgent social and environmental challenges. While the concept represents a noble aspiration to use forecasting for positive change, it demands closer examination.
Words don't just build worlds; they are deliberate choices with histories and meanings. Since the soft science of foresight prides itself on precision and exact definitions, we must apply the same rigour when adopting a term with the deep history and profound sacrifices associated with activism and its role in social change.
As always, thank you for being here! I would love to hear your thoughts. I've included extensive resources in the piece AND please stick around as the impactful Future Days conference have kindly extended an offer exclusively for us, details below. Let's jump in.
The Weight Behind the Word "Activist"
When we use the terms "futures activist" we're standing on the shoulders of the civil rights movement, indigenous people's struggles, women's rights campaigns, Extinction Rebellion, ACT UP, the Standing Rock movement (NoDAPL), Black Lives Matter, Greenpeace, and countless other who have defined what activism truly means.
These movements share common elements that define activism:
Challenging powerful interests
Working outside established power structures
Taking actions that may jeopardise one's professional standing or security
Organizing collective resistance, direct action and protest
Building grassroots power rather than exercising institutional authority
Creating direct confrontation
We cannot work in futures if we don’t understand history. “Memory is for the Future” to quote Thomas Suddendorf and Janie Busby.
My own experience with Extinction Rebellion and as a founding member of Fashion Act Now taught me the meaning of organising an action. While I wasn't prepared to be arrested, I supported those who were, witnessing firsthand the extensive organisation, risk-taking, and collective effort involved.
Resources:
History Teaches us to resist by Mary Frances Berry, American historian, civil rights activist and professor – A book about the power of resistance featuring many diverse historical examples of how protest and progressive movements flourish, even in perilous times.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by political activist Angela Davis - Essays connecting movements across time and space, emphasizing the long-term nature of activist work and solidarity.
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit - Explores the unpredictable nature of activism and social change tracing a history of activism over the past five decades - from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the worldwide marches against the war in Iraq.”
Freedom Riders – The film shows the strategic courage of civil rights activists and the personal sacrifices they made, based in part on the book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by historian Raymond Arsenault.
Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism by L.A. Kauffman - The introduction provides an excellent framework for understanding why direct action and disruption became central to modern activism.
How to Survive a Plague : The Story of How Activists and Scientists Tamed AIDS - Chronicles AIDS activism and direct-action strategies.
Examining 'Futures Activism': Promise and Tensions
Futurist Sarah DaVanzo and cultural theorist, strategist Matt Klein have been thoughtful advocates for this concept to be introduced within the field of futures thinking. Klein wrote the piece Foresight as Activism in 2023, highlighting the need to work with marginalised communities. Their vision of using foresight to help usher social transformation reflects a genuine desire for positive change. While their intentions are admirable, it's worth carefully examining this framing against the backdrop of activism's history and practice.
Looking at Sarah DaVanzo's definition of futures activist, which positions it as using "creative tactics to bring about social change as it relates to the future" , I've identified potential disconnects, looking at this through the critical lens of activism:
1. Direct Action vs. Creative Interventions
While the definition mentions "guerrilla social experiments," it's unclear if these involve actual confrontation with power structures or personal risk. There's a crucial difference between art and experiences that make people think and inspire about better futures, with actions that actively disrupt harmful systems and challenge their power. The "guerrilla" element suggests some edge of disruption, but if powers are not directly challenged, with collective capacity built, it's difficult to determine whether this meets the criteria of activist work.
2. Corporate Positioning vs. Activist Stance
Corporate foresight inherently serves institutional interests and leadership, while true activism typically positions itself in opposition to or outside dominant power structures. For anyone working within corporations or for them as a consultant, and I count myself included, to claim the activist mantle creates cognitive dissonance. The very structures we're embedded in may be what activists would challenge because we:
Serve corporate interests
Work within established power systems
Exercise individual expert authority rather than build grassroots power
Seek to maintain professional standing and security
Alternatively, these very tensions could be why activists might invite us as partners because as people serving corporations, we are structurally positioned to target systemic power issues from within.
3. Individual Practice vs. Collective Movement
Traditional activism is fundamentally collective - building movements, training organisers, creating sustainable and impactful structures for resistance. Whilst our abilities to cultivate deep networks, advocate for key issues and engage with people all over the world are key, they remain different than someone radically disrupting, creating infrastructure for protest, organising capacity in others to lead change. This is activism's fundamentally collective nature.
Resources:
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic by Saul Alinsky – A reference tactical guide for community organising and creating effective pressure on "the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one."
Beautiful Trouble - A web toolbox of activist tactics, principles, and case studies. More info available here.
People Power Change by Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organising, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University - Explains how ordinary people can work together to turn the resources they have into the power they need to achieve real change in their lives
This piece continues with deeper analysis, historical examples, and extensive resources exploring:
The Problem with Semantic Co-optation
Bridging Worlds: How Foresight Can Authentically Embrace Activist Principles
Partnership: Reframing the Foresight x Activism Relationship
A Shared Path Forward
Click below to discover how futures practitioners can honour activist work while creating meaningful partnerships for social change.
Future Days brings together futures and systemic thinkers, innovation-seekers, creatives, purpose-driven organisations, and policymakers to collectively shape the future of urban life and equitable societies, through and beyond technology.
This year’s theme is "Towards Symbiotic Futures.”
"The world depends on cultivating synergies between all living and non-living systems. Future Days 2025 is dedicated to envisioning and shaping those futures through imagination and action. We envision a future where the environment, natural world, and communities are deeply interconnected. A future where all species are intricately linked to their ecosystems, where humans reconnect with their lands by learning from traditional models of co-existence. A future where intergenerational synergies thrive, fostering harmony and respect between society, nature, and technology."
Held at the stunning Estufa Fria, the festival includes:
Conference: Official talks and labs, the Unconference: Unofficial voices
Garden Gallery: Project exhibitions (happening through to May 4th) and Many exciting Networking opportunities!
For groups of 5 or more from the same organisation, institution, or corporation (outside of Trend Atelier), please contact Christina Bifano for bespoke group experiences: cg.bifano@gmail.com |+34 607 294 664
Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) - The British East India Company on Trial
Radha D'Souza and Jonas Staal, Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021), Framer Framed, Amsterdam
The Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) is a project by Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal that stages public hearings in immersive installations functioning as a court, to prosecute intergenerational climate crimes committed by states and corporations acting together. These hearings address crimes of the past, present and future, reflecting the intergenerational impacts of climate crimes on ecologies and communities.
This newly commissioned chapter of the CICC consists of a specially appointed court constructed within the former concrete hall of Ambika P3 in London. It was in London that the East India Company was founded in 1600, and where the corporate entity would subsequently shape the city in its own interests and image. The court will interrogate witnesses regarding the crimes committed by the British East India Company, highlighting the interconnectedness of colonial and climate crimes that continue to shape our devastating present and future.
The audience present will have the task to act as public jury members.
Following the public hearings, Ambika P3 will host an installation with selected materials from the tribunals in combination with the CICC School: an ongoing programme of lectures, workshops, screenings and trainings to deepen the relationship between artistic and legal imaginaries in the struggle for climate justice.
