These four interrelated aspects of our work comprise the foundation of the Lab’s mission.
RELATE
Foresight is not just about “the information” or “the tools” - it’s also about the people who express their commitment to the future in community.
We believe that the intentional cultivation of community and authentic relationships where we can learn together, challenge assumptions in creative and constructive ways, and pull the field forward is essential.
We assert that foresight is made better in the context of relationships.
CREATE
We invest in and cultivate imagination in all kinds of ways in this Lab. We believe in, see and grow positive emergence as a principle of complexity.
Stretching our ways of thinking is risky and intense — even uncomfortable at times. Bumping up into our own thinking patterns and limitations is always tricky, but it is an essential element of respecting and engaging with the imaginaries of the communities we work with.
With sufficient time and energy, and with the support of our relationships, we believe that foresight can help us create new kinds of innovations (individually and collectively) and ways of working together that are needed to advance health, well-being, and justice.
NAVIGATE
We realize that the “norms” of social work are not explicitly about the future. We are a profession that is actively working on and committed to social issues, social injustices and, frankly, emergencies of the here and now.
We are respectful of the important work being done in urgent terms. However, we reject the false binary that either we attend to the future or the present. We believe that learning to help the profession of social work focus on liberatory futures — as well as to work against its opposition — is an energizing, visionary, and essential element of making better decisions in the present.
We aspire to learn to better navigate across this bridge together. Addressing the resistance to longer-term thinking and the traps associated with being stuck in short-term reactive cycles of thinking and action.
Our aims are to continue thinking about how to apply and use foresight in social work education, social work scholarship, and social work practice (at micro, meso, & macro levels) in addition to participating in the global futures community and bringing our social work sensibilities into these spaces.
We believe that we belong in these spaces — that we can both learn AND contribute.
COMPLICATE
As much as we collectively and individually can find inspiration in foresight, we also see that white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, racism and power asymmetries can so easily find their ways into futures conversations, frameworks and economies.
Foresight to advance western, extractive, racial capitalism in ahistorical ways is not something we are interested in participating in or contributing to. Foresight in community to advance social justice, equity, antiracism and new horizons of well-being for humans and the planet is where our commitments lay.
We believe that critical foresight can and should politicize the future.
We acknowledge the intersections and trap doors of doing work in these spaces and we commit to a praxis that rigorously attends to this tension. We see a need to keep complicating foresight regarding many of these embedded power issues — and challenge ourselves and foresight writ large to continue growing with regard to these issues.
This ability to challenge AND stay engaged may be among our greatest contributions as social workers.