Articles

Intersecting Design and Foresight for the Climate Crisis

Feb 23, 2020

In the “‘Futuring’ can help us survive the climate crisis. And guess what? You’re a futurist too”  podcast and accompanying essay published 30th of January, Clare Cooper, design lecturer at the University of Sydney, describes how futuring techniques can help us think collectively and build agency, particularly when we feel it is slipping away.

Using the backdrop of the climate crisis and, more specifically the difficult summer Australia has faced with widespread drought and devastating bushfires, Cooper shares that her “research looks at how futuring can help communities work toward a just and fair transition to a drastically warmer world and greater weather extremes.”

Rather than calling in a futurist to solve a problem, Cooper believes that futuring is accessible to us all, and says it’s a way of having a conversation.

“But futurists aren’t magical people who sweep in and solve problems for you. They facilitate discussions and collaboration but the answers ultimately come from communities themselves. Artists and writers have been creatively imagining the future for millennia. Futuring is a crucial part of design and culture-building.”

In many ways, Cooper echoes The Futures School’s core belief that it is our ethical obligation to democratize the future.  Learn more about how her work at the intersection of design and foresight is inviting “audiences to respond to probable, possible, plausible and preposterous future scenarios as the climate crisis sets in.”