Special Interest Group
How do we facilitate conversations and thinking about the future with groups?
Welcome to the Facilitating Futures and Foresight Special Interest Group (SIG) at IAF!
Every gathering of this SIG explores this question in some way: by experimenting with a method, investigating a specific question about the practice of facilitating futures, or learning from practitioners who share how they approach this work.
The purpose of this SIG
In the Facilitating Futures and Foresight SIG, we focus on developing our practice as facilitators of futures thinking and conversations.
We are interested in how facilitation can help groups look beyond the present, explore what might happen, imagine what could be different, and use that thinking to inform choices today.
Why the focus on futures and foresight? Isn't good facilitation enough?
Good facilitation is the foundation. But when it comes to having conversations about “the future”, groups tend to plan for the future they expect, rather than use multiple futures to think differently about the present.
Futures facilitation asks something more: how do we help groups move beyond assumptions about what will happen, explore multiple possible futures, and then use those perspectives to make better choices in the present?
That requires particular ways of framing questions, opening up possibilities, working with uncertainty and assumptions, and bringing insights back into present-day decisions. That’s the practice this SIG explores.
This SIG is part of the IAF Special Interest Group eco-system, and is hosted by futurer, facilitator, and foresight practitioner, Suzanne Whitby, and community manager Rena Bilgin Koç, in collaboration with the IAF.
Please contact communitymanager@iaf-world.org to express your interest in joining this SIG, or join an upcoming event on the IAF events calendar!