The Power of Future Design. The Northern California Chapter of Elders Climate Action builds multi-generational approaches to climate change by gathering elders, mid-life practitioners and youth around a method called future design, which is practiced commonly and successfully in Japan but only recently introduced into the United States.
Future design draws upon three perspectives:
It is this third step that’s the essence of “future design.” It is also what we call "an indirect approach" to changemaking, where we bring into sharp relief situations that we tend to overlook in our daily lives. Future situations are prominent among them. There is added power in bringing young people into direct contact with mid-lifers to advocate for their generation when they, too, become mid-lifers and eventually elders.
The Promise of Intergenerational Future Design. We held a day-long retreat for Bay Area climate activists in Silicon Valley in the fall of 2024, followed this winter with a hands-on workshop to develop a toolkit that climate activists can put to use in their own communities, governmental agencies and non profit organizations. As Tatsuyoshi Saijo says, “Once you go to the future you can never go back.” And once our youth are given a stake in their own futures, their elders have no choice than to become better ancestors.
If you are interested in starting your own Future Design Team, contact: Clint Wilkins at [email protected].
Future design draws upon three perspectives:
- looking backwards to understand how the problem originated;
- drawing on the way we think today we venture forward, say twenty-five years into the future;
- taking an imaginative leap into the future (and in some cases donning distinctive robes), participants develop tangible and vivid scenarios of the world to be -- ten, twenty-five and even fifty years into the future which form the basis for a group of citizens-of-the future negotiating directly with citizens of today.
It is this third step that’s the essence of “future design.” It is also what we call "an indirect approach" to changemaking, where we bring into sharp relief situations that we tend to overlook in our daily lives. Future situations are prominent among them. There is added power in bringing young people into direct contact with mid-lifers to advocate for their generation when they, too, become mid-lifers and eventually elders.
The Promise of Intergenerational Future Design. We held a day-long retreat for Bay Area climate activists in Silicon Valley in the fall of 2024, followed this winter with a hands-on workshop to develop a toolkit that climate activists can put to use in their own communities, governmental agencies and non profit organizations. As Tatsuyoshi Saijo says, “Once you go to the future you can never go back.” And once our youth are given a stake in their own futures, their elders have no choice than to become better ancestors.
If you are interested in starting your own Future Design Team, contact: Clint Wilkins at [email protected].