The leadership team of Foresight Europe Network (FEN) cordially invites you to the upcoming in-person meeting on Wednesday 12 June 2024 in Turku, Finland - University of Turku, building: Medisiina D, room: ’Skooppi 1–2’, address: Kiinamyllynkatu 10, Turku, Finland

The meeting is free and open to all who are interested in futures and foresight in Europe. Whether you have signed up as a FEN Member, are wise and experienced in futures or newly starting in this field, professor or student of futures – we welcome you.

Agenda*

Welcoming Remarks (5 minutes) Nicolas Balcom Raleigh, FEN President

Icebreaker (10 minutes) Lena Tünkers, FEN Future President

Presentations: (á 15 minutes)

• Eye of Europe project and futures4europe.eu platform: Project coordinator Dr. Radu Gheorghiu, UEFISCDI, Romania & Bianca Dragomir, Institutul de Prospectiva, Romania
• Updates from The Millennium Project: Executive Director and Co-Founder Jerome Glenn & Deputy Director Ibon Zugasti
• Parliamentary/National Committees for Future: Dr. Sofi Kurki, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd
  

Group Discussions (30 minutes) & Plenary (20 minutes) FEN members discuss emergent topics sparked by the presentations.

Closing Remarks (10 minutes) Lena Tünkers, FEN Future President

Foresight Europe Network brings together foresight practitioners and users, futures educators and researchers, and futures studies/foresight students doing futures work in European contexts. FEN thanks the organizers of Futures Conference 2024 for providing the meeting space in conjunction with the conference. This meeting is free and open. All who are interested are welcome to attend, even if you are not already a member of FEN.

* Agenda is subject to change.

https://futuresconference2024.com/side-events/120624-fen/

Democracy across Europe has experienced immense challenge, change and uncertainty in recent years (Canal 2014; European Commission & Merkel; 2019) - from the rise of populism to decreasing levels of public trust in governance institutions and processes, to the war in Ukraine. Set against the backdrop of these issues, EUARENAS has been investigating how cities and urban spaces can strengthen legitimacy, identification and engagement within the democratic public sphere. Specifically, EUARENAS has been exploring how participation and deliberation in democracy and decision-making can be increased, and how voices and communities who are excluded from such arenas can be more actively involved.

Foresight is one of the research strands present in EUARENAS. In this project, foresight is both a tool for understanding democratic innovations as they emerge, and for engaging citizens and other actors in such innovations within the participatory and deliberative realms. Mixed method approaches to foresight that incorporate a diversity of activities such as media discourse analysis, lived experience storytelling, social media analysis, three horizons mapping, driver-mapping, scenario and visioning exercises and policy stress- testing have been used in EUARENAS to investigate and hypothesise over future trends and scenarios in participatory democracies. 

From this work, we propose the following recommendations for Cities wanting to strive towards more equitable local democracies:

1. Address structural barriers to participation
2. Build relationships of trust
3. Invest in formal and civic education
4. Make decisions for the long-term

A more equitable, inclusive local democracy landscape is not too far in the distance for us to conceive it being possible. In fact, the future is now – the seeds to create it are already being planted, they just need nurturing by:

• Scaling and mainstreaming existing pilot or niche practices that are working locally – whether that beparticipatory budgeting, citizen assemblies or other smaller-scale projects – so that these become thenew ‘status quo’
• Adopting test and learn approaches to promote experimentation and on-going learning – this will enableongoing innovation and be responsive to society's needs
• Finding ways to celebrate and connect-up the small changes that are taking place - this will help people see that progress is being made, even when it feels like things are changing too slow