DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17704362
title: Collaging Futures Worksheet Set: A design and arts-based visioning method to exercise collective creativity in transdisciplinary research and practice

description: Collaging Futures is a visioning method that incorporates more democratic and plural conditions to exercise collective creativity in transdisciplinary research and practice by design. This collection of worksheets is part of the Collaging Futures method, developed to support collective creativity in transdisciplinary research and practice. The materials are designed for use by researchers, facilitators, designers, or community partners and can be applied independently or as part of a guided session. The canvases have been designed to help guide participants and facilitators in completing the different phases and capturing the results of the collaborative making process. 

The worksheets can be printed or used digitally. They are best employed in a workshop or collaborative setting, ideally with a facilitator familiar with the method. Collaging Futures consists of three main phases:

Phase 1: Listening to Pasts

Participants assemble a collective library, searching for images from distant and diverse pasts to depict or illustrate a very different and even strange aspect of the issue of concern when compared to the present. Once the library is created, participants negotiate and highlight five to seven elements of the past that are most distinctive and can be captured as insights or wisdoms to preserve or revive and to be listened to, so as to question ‘the real’ and ‘the possible.’ Canvas 1, corresponding to Phase 1: Listening to Pasts, where participants assemble a collective library of images from distant pasts.

Detailed steps for group-work:



Assemble a collective library of images from distant pasts 

Select/negotiate elements/ideas of those pasts to listen to, preserve, or revive and question ‘the real’ and ‘the possible’ 


Phase 2: Filtering Presents 

Changing their gaze to the present, participants identify ‘seeds’ of the future—current initiatives and/or innovations that challenge the status quo. Participants review the contributions of these seeds of the future that they want to preserve or enhance. Based on that, they filter the present to select which elements they want or have to let go. Canvas 2, corresponding to Phase 2:  Filtering Presents, to identify present initiatives/innovations and elements to keep, amplify, or let go.

Detailed Steps for group-work:



Identify current ‘seeds’ of desirable futures (initiatives/innovations) to keep or amplify

Identify parts of the present that you'd like to let go (status quo)

Bring back elements from the past you listened to, as a way to transform the possibilities that could be thought of for the future


Phase 3: Collaging Futures 

Participants create a collective collage recombining the filtered present (seeds of the future) and wisdoms from the past. The collage represents a future world composed of images and ideas that re-exist, transformed in novel ways by surfacing new meanings and associations. Canvas 3, corresponding to Phase 3:  Collaging Futures, to identify, combine and transform elements and assemble the future vision. The canvas provides suggestions on strategies to play with the images while assembling them (i.e., torsion, ordering, weighting).

Steps:



Generate the collage/assemblage (by mixing, transforming, clashing, linking, highlighting elements using images, text, drawings and other materials).

Make sure to add a title and/or short narrative describing the vision.