Entangling and Elevating Creativity and Criticality in Participatory Futuring Engagements

Abstract

This article proposes that creativity and criticality not only can but should be entangled and elevated in participatory futuring engagements. Selected concepts from creativity theory and critical futures studies are applied to develop a set of futuring games through action research. We claim that participatory processes designed to entangle and elevate creativity and criticality produce more novel and varied ideas that better fit the purposes of futures studies. This article offers four arguments for combining creativity and criticality in participatory futuring engagements. First, due to complexity and uncertainty, the future is ultimately unknowable and requires tools to probe the unknown. Second, novelty is difficult to achieve in practice while creativity and criticality can help overcome these challenges. Third, discontinuities are the main sources of futures that are most radically different from the present and will have the biggest impact. Fourth, creativity and criticality support the rigorous imagining required for exploring and discovering new possible futures. This article analyzes three experimentations in entangling and elevating creativity and criticality in game-based futuring, stemming from Causal Layered Analysis. Based on these examples, we demonstrate that creativity and criticality, when combined, help people break through the limitations of current understanding, reveal approaching tipping points, and find the "unvisited cavities" through rhizomatic knowledge creation. However, there remain challenges in evaluating how well various participatory designs support creativity and criticality in practice. Context-sensitive evaluation tools and open sharing of outcomes are needed to develop participation design principles capable of supporting creativity and criticality in participatory futuring.

Knowledge creation and mobility in and through futures workshops

“…These differences may have been due to personal characteristics (Burt et al., 2017), that is, how easily the participants could envisage the future. Producing futures knowledge requires liberation from the current situation (Balcom Raleigh & Heinonen, 2019).…”

“…To enable all the workshop participants to feel comfortable about participating in the process, all their ideas and perceptions should be accepted broadmindedly (Mitchell & Nicholas, 2006). This broadmindedness also facilitates liberation from the current situation that is required when creating futures knowledge (Balcom Raleigh & Heinonen, 2019).…”

Responsible Innovation in Industry: The Role of Firm’s Multi-Stakeholder Network

“…The game functions from a mixture of individualdriven and group-driven creativity and is designed to be fun to play. It also enables people to produce diverse, perspective-bound details about a future (Balcom Raleigh and Heinonen 2019).…”

“…The next step is the metaphor transformation -the gameplayers who created the roles involved in the 'most influential' relationship come up with new Metaphor Atom for their roles. This step is argued to be the game's moment of highest, most entangled creativity and criticality (Balcom Raleigh & Heinonen 2019). After the transformation step, there is typically a discussion about how the impacted relationship has changed and those changes cascade into the relationships among all of the roles and between the roles and the scenario.…”

Quantitative Foresighting as a Means of Improving Anticipatory Scientific Capacity and Strategic Planning

“…30 Foresighting and scenario generation require imagination, broad knowledge, and a propensity toward intellectual adventure. [42][43][44] Feedback is provided mostly in terms of intellectual Strategic planning planning is a structured process to integrate information and to conceptualize. Strategic planning involves creating a vision, setting goals, and determining resource allocation and other actions to pursue those goals; 31 planning by organizations or sectors aimed at improving the long-term effectiveness of operations; commonly based on some form of macro-environmental analysis of social, technological, and political trends, or scenarios which narrate internal and external drivers for future development 32,33 Foresighting foresight is the process involved in systematically attempting to look into the longer-term future of science, technology, the economy, and society with the aim of identifying the areas of strategic research and the emerging of generic technologies likely to yield the greatest economic and social benefits; 34 the purpose of foresight is to imagine different futures and their consequences and, on that basis, to engage in informed decision making.…”