We often take future for granted, and long-term future considerations are easily surpassed with more urgent issues. We rarely have time to stop to think about what kind of perceptions of future really guide our operations in the present. The first national Finnish Future Day on March 1st, 2019 offers ready-made materials and invites Finns and the international community to discuss alternative futures.
What kind of future do you build with your actions today? The future is constantly present in our everyday lives, guiding our actions and decisions - whether we are aware of that or not. Futures Day is a nationwide theme day aimed at making the future visible, strengthening individuals’ future awareness and faith in the future. Futures Day aims at achieving 10,000 futures discussions during the day. Future discussions can be organized in schools, municipalities, libraries, workplaces or anywhere, in any community.
1st of March is also known as the international Futures Day launched by Millennium Project. Therefore we would like to invite also all our international networks to join to the world’s largest discussion on futures.
– Futures Day brings the future to everyone's reach here and now. Futures Day will challenge us to think and discuss for a day what kind of future we want to build. In the coming decades, we will have to deal with many kinds of wicked problems. In order to solve these, we cannot cling on to the solutions of the past or allow future threats to paralyze us, but we need a new kind of courageous futures thinking. We are all needed to imagine – and to build – a better, sustainable future, says one of the founders of Futures Day, Laura Pouru, from Finland Futures Research Centre.
Organize futures discussion in your community with the ready-made materials
The Finnish Futures Day is organized by Finland Futures Research Centre at the University of Turku, Futures School and Futures Specialists Helsinki in cooperation with the National Board of Education, the Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, Sitra – the National Innovation Fund, Laurea University of Applied Sciences and many other partners. The Futures Day organizing team will prepare ready-made work materials to help anyone organize their own – big or small, official or informal, internal or public - Future Day event on March 1st, 2019.
Materials are specifically designed for three target audiences:
- For schools or other parties working with children and young people
- Municipalities, i.e. municipal decision-makers, employees and residents
- For businesses and other organizations
However, Futures Day can be spent also by anyone else interested in the future. With the ready-made materials it is possible to arrange an easy-going conversation session at a coffee table or arrange a more comprehensive exploration trip to alternative futures following a simplified steps of a foresight process. For more information, registration and materials, please visit www.tulevaisuuspaiva.fi. All materials will be offered also in English.
Futures Day for Schools was organized for the first time during the spring 2018. It raised a lot of attention also outside schools, which is why this year also other sectors of society will be invited to discuss futures. The Futures Day is part of the development work of the UNESCO Chair in Learning Society and Futures of Education held by Professor of Futures Studies Markku Wilenius at the University of Turku.
The future will not arrive, it will be done – together. Come and join us to discuss alternative futures on the Futures Day!
