World Futures Day
Celebrating World Futures Day for the first time in 2022!
In its inaugural celebration, World Futures Day focused on “Inclusive and Resilient Futures”.
Hosted at UNESCO Headquarters, on 2 December 2022, this iteration of World Futures Day spotlighted efforts from the UN system and its Member States, on new visions for multilateralism and how futures approaches inform inclusive and resilient policy design. This was an opportunity for international organizations, Member States, civil society and non-governmental actors alike to celebrate new ways to use the future.
World Futures Day highlights the universality of human anticipatory activities, nurtures collective intelligence processes, promotes and increases the research of futures thinking and its application in different contexts.
As Canadian novelist Steven Erikson has written, “the future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises”. It is up to us collectively to ensure that this element of surprise contains powerful factors for progress. That is why, on this World Futures Day, UNESCO is calling on its Member States, and on our societies as a whole, to open up the field of possibilities through knowledge and imagination
Futures literacy
UNESCO encourages the dissemination of futures literacy as a capability-based approach to development – a skill accessible to each and every individual. Finding and implementing more sustainable and participatory approaches to development in this decade will be key to ensure effective and inclusive decision-making worldwide.
Images of the future are a powerful force, influencing not only what we perceive and pay attention to, but also, in shaping our hopes and fears. Perception precedes action, therefore understanding the sources of our images of the future is of great importance. The need for innovation and creativity to create hopeful images of the future that inspire us to take action has never been more evident. As we have all experienced, the fundamental disruptions of our social and economic systems by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic have challenged how we imagine and anticipate the future. At the same time, educational advancement bringing opportunities to youth, empowerment of scientists driving the next technological innovation inspire hopeful images of the future. Such realisations have bred broader interest in understanding how we perceive the future and its impact on our present decision-making.
Futures Literacy has become an essential skill in the context of the unprecedented crises we are confronting, and where we come to realise that the future of humankind will depend on the kind of decisions we take today. Using Foresight and Futures Literacy, we can question the current way we understand the world, move out from our comfort zone and expand our imagination.
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