How to imagine a better futures in difficult times: a guide for meaningful visioning
A team from Utrecht University has collaborated with the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) to create a practical guide for researchers working on future visions that aim to inspire real societal change. In the face of today’s urgent global challenges—from climate crisis to inequality—the guide offers principles, insights, and tools to help ensure that future-oriented thinking leads to meaningful action.
Why imagine the future at all?
What is the use of imagining a better future when so many people seem focused on destroying it? This is a hard question that cannot be easily brushed aside. The planet is in the middle of an existential crisis: one of injustice, inequality, biodiversity loss, massive climate change - and also one of meaning. “Visions of the future that provide powerful guidance for pathways toward a truly sustainable future are often drowned out by a din of mainstream future imaginings that only strengthen current systems and ways of working,” explains Joost Vervoort, Associate Professor of Transformative Imagination at Utrecht University’s Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development.
It’s important to think first about the wider context that you’re working in instead of directly going to methods. Especially in these times when the context can be so urgent, and so chaotic
According to Vervoort, we are not lacking imagination when it comes to the future - but visions of the future that actually challenge and provide inspiring ways out of our current, unstainable world often do not get traction in terms of present-day action and decision-making. And yet, research has shown clearly that when people encounter future visions that truly differ from the present, there is a good chance that such visions inspire them to action.
Still, doing impactful visioning work is hard, and so many factors come into play: “It’s important to think first about the wider context that you’re working in instead of directly going to methods. Especially in these times when the context can be so urgent, and so chaotic,” says Vervoort.
Collaborating to support visioning work
With this challenge in mind, a team from Utrecht University—Joost Vervoort, Alexis Beaudoin, and Louis van Haasbergen—collaborated with Machteld Schoolenberg, Timo Maas, Astrid Mangnus and Karlijn Muiderman at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) to co-create a guide for future visioning. The result is a comprehensive resource filled with principles, inspirations, and tools to help researchers develop visions of the future that can truly make a difference.
To shape the guide, the team held several meetings with PBL staff to understand what people needed for their visioning work. These conversations were urgent and honest, highlighting the difficulties of imagining meaningful futures in today’s world. Drawing on both theoretical and practical literature, the team tailored the guide to PBL’s specific context and needs.
What the guide offers
The final guide is structured around several key principles, beginning with understanding your goal and extending through societal context and power, the “who” and “what” of visioning, the process itself, and ending with stories and methods.
