Experiential Futures scaling down

Me trying to manifest my hopeful future where my social justice hero regularly attends visioning retreats at my Center for Practical Dreaming. (Photo courtesy of Judi Brown @ CivicMakers)

At the Dignified Futures conference on June 3 & 4, 2025, I gave a keynote talk on hopeful futures. Creating visions of inspiring future outcomes
can be a leverage point for change. You can download the slides and learn more about it here.

The talk and Experiential Futures (XF) workshop led to several amazing conversations about how people could embrace XF practices for their own organizations. But then I worried about how intensive XF projects can be to undertake.

Leah Tremblay-Adams acts as a Researcher for the Hopeful State of California to demonstrate a fictional future technology at the Dignified Futures Conference. (Photo courtesy of Venece S.)

I want to advocate for the power of Experiential Futures to communicate the futures we WANT to create in the world. But also caution people about how complex and intensive it can seem to build out an XF project.

Judi Brown acts as a sales representative to explore possible uses for the fictional technology developed by the researchers at the Hopeful State of California. (Photo courtesy of Venece S.)

Then on the plane home from Atlanta, I had time to reflect. Maybe it’s not true that XF has to be big.

I want to propose that there are Large, Medium, and Small ways to engage people in a tangible moment of a possible future.

These methods are from Stuart Candy’s fantastic work combining Futures Studies + Design.

Large = Full-scale immersions
Medium = Artifacts from the future
Small = Future things brainstorming

Large — Walk-in.

Build a scene of a potential future that is interactive. This requires a clear vision of what is different in your future, a specific moment that can demonstrate how your future is different from the present, a plausible reason that strangers are walking into your scene and doing something, and costumes, props, and scenery to transport people into the future. For example, alongside CivicMakers and the amazing Virginia Hamilton, Hillary guided a process of collectively imagining a future where government had fully embraced co-designing. We then built two experiential futures for county government partners to literally ‘step into’ and experience what that future might feel like.

Full-scale XF workshop: County government folks gathered for a celebration of 15 years of successful co-design councils where civil servants partner with community members to redesign services and programs together. Created as a collaboration between CiviciMakers, Virginia Hamilton, and Hillary Carey. (Photo by Laureen Andalib)

Full-scale XF workshop: At the awards ceremony participants were surprised with awards for their service to their communities in the future. (Photo by Laureen Andalib)

Medium — Hand-held.

But maybe it’s not fully room-sized. Maybe just an object. Stuart Candy describes these as ‘artifacts from the future’, and Nick Foster and Julian Bleecker describe these as ‘design fictions’. Rather than building out an immersive scene and storyline, you can hand people a provocation in the form of an object that looks as if it arrives through time travel into your hands. For example, this could be

• a brochure from the job fair of the future
• an advertisement for a new type of food
• a new way of celebrating

It should show, not tell, that the future is different. And when you hand it to another person, they can imagine the everyday moment that would surround this artifact in the future.

Medium-sized Experiential Future: Instead of full-scale, you could communicate the value of the awards ceremony through a high-quality brochure. This realistic welcome to the awards describes the projects that are possible when government embraces co-design and celebrates community successes. (Photo by Laureen Andalib 2025)

Medium-sized: This realistic brochure offers details about the projects that would win awards at our fictional future ceremony. (Designed by Leah Tremblay-Adams)

Small — Play.

A third way to engage people in thinking tangibly about a possible future is to ask them to imagine with you. You can describe the qualities of a potential future and invite people to play a modification of the Candy & Watson game, Thing from the Future. That game ask people to imagine things that would exist in futures prompted by a deck of cards. But to invite people to focus on a specific vision of the future, you can skip the shuffled cards and use only the prompts that help people to imagine everyday moments that would occur in your future story.

For example, In a future where government has fully embraced co-design, what would we see?

• What new celebrations might there be?
• What new jobs?
• What new infrastructure?
• How would citizens see that their government is working differently?

This can be a fun way to ask people to actively imagine what your vision means for everyday life.

Small-sized Experiential Futures: Ask people to imagine what things would exist that show evidence that this specific future has come to be. (Screenshot from Miro board created by Hillary Carey)

Small-sized: When people are asked to imagine what might exist in a possible, hoped-for future, they are forced to imagine that future being true. (Screenshot from Miro board co-created by participants in a CivicMakers brainstorm)

Toni Cade Bambara, the beloved Black Feminist poet, said

“The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.”

I hope we can do that by giving people glimpses of what a ridiculously hopeful future will look and feel like.

Graphic design by Leah Tremblay-Adams