Lesson Series

Narrative Futures Design

Have you ever gotten stuck in the “problem scope” phase of a design-thinking process with your team?  Have you ever watched as people curl and deflate, offering increasingly narrowed thinking as the problem begins to loom large, leading to disengagement and “brainstorm block”?  Sometimes, starting a design process from the problem can make solutions feel too far away to imagine or reach, let alone implement.  That’s where Narrative Futures Design comes in.
What you are going to learn

Narrative Futures Design

Narrative Futures tools allow us to do backwards design, working from “inside a future” in which the problem is already solved! In this course, we’ll learn and practice tools for outside-the-box innovation and backwards futures-design, using story, creative practices, somatic tools, and design-thinking to expand the futures we design and create. Plus, you’ll learn skills for sharing these practices with your team or group. Create beyond apparent contradictions and perceived scarcity. Uncover the stories you’re enacting now, and the ones you actually want to embody, whether as an individual, a team, or an organization. Connect with your team and bring their dreams and offerings into the group ecosystem, and access wild and unexpected innovation, so that you can make the futures you imagine possible starting with actions and designs today.
Throughout this course you will:
  • Utilize and facilitate “backwards design” skills to support projects and teams
  • Gain tools to promote emergent thinking and collaboration (rather than emergency/scarcity thinking)
  • Access wide and unexpected futures innovation frames;
  • Build neurological somatic practices for expanding beyond barriers and roadblocks that can appear in forwards design.

Who Should Attend?

Facilitators

to do backward design, working from “inside a future” in which the problem is already solved.

Trainers

who want to practice tools for outside-the-box innovation and backwards futures-design, using story, creative practices, somatic tools, and design-thinking to expand the futures we design and create. 

Project Managers

with an interest in expanding your group’s possibilities beyond business-as-usual.

Executives

with an interest in expanding your group’s possibilities beyond business-as-usual.

About Rachel

Rachel Economy is a design-thinking coach, facilitator, poet, and ecological designer. She helps people longing for change to imagine and grow just and thriving worlds - at home, at work, at large, and on the land. As a facilitator, Rachel supports creative and liberation-oriented people and organizations to better match their actions with their values and visions. You can find more of Rachel’s work at www.indexforthenextworld.com and www.racheleconomy.com.
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