Stuart Candy has integrated Futures, Media and Experiential learning to create a hybrid and creative approach that for him is about enabling futures work live up to its potential to create better for futures for all. In his interview Stuart ranges over storytelling, emotional labour and the juxtaposition of the mundane and dystopian. A wonderful narrative journey of the integration of art, practice and inspiration.
Stuart Candy (@futuryst) is Associate Professor of Design at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of CMU Situation Lab, as well as a Fellow of the World Futures Studies Federation, Museum of Tomorrow, and The Long Now Foundation. For a decade and a half Stuart has helped propel futures into dialogue with design, media and the arts, collaborating with numerous partner organisations and communities worldwide as a facilitator, strategist, and producer. He co-designed the APF award-winning imagination game The Thing From The Future, and recently co-edited the open access collection Design and Futures.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward
More about Stuart
Contact
Blog: The Sceptical Futuryst https://futuryst.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @futuryst https://twitter.com/futuryst
Situation Lab http://situationlab.org/
Carnegie Mellon School of Design https://www.design.cmu.edu/
The Long Now Foundation http://longnow.org/
Museum of Tomorrow https://museudoamanha.org.br/en
References
Design and Futures, edited with Cher Potter (book free to download)
Podcast Question 1:
A story of getting into futures https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2013/04/designing-futures.html
Selections from the 1997 World Futures Studies Federation Conference http://web.archive.org/web/20020824015509/wfsf.org/publications/brisbane.html
My first futures paper, co-written with Bernadett Szél from the Budapest Futures Course, on using film to think about futures https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2017/11/futures-on-film.html
Scenarios written for Hawaii 2050 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253641086
Experiential scenarios staged for Hawaii 2050 https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2016/08/ghosts-of-futures-past.html
Podcast Question 2:
“Gaming Futures Literacy,” a paper about The Thing From the Future, and how it is designed to work https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312016855
The Thing From the Future, print and play edition https://situationlab.org/futurething-print-and-play-edition/
Two examples of applying TFTF in very different contexts, one with a grassroots arts and activism organization http://situationlab.org/augmenting-cities/ , and another with an augmented reality games company http://situationlab.org/augmenting-cities/
Jim Dator on “generic images of the future” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228380947 (pp. 5–10)
Futurematic Vending Machine, a collaboration between Situation Lab and Extrapolation Factory https://extrapolationfactory.com/Futurematic
Podcast Question 3:
The Future Can’t Wait, an article in the Cooper Hewitt Design Journal [opens with the bushfires story; specific link to come] https://www.cooperhewitt.org/publication-category/design-journal/
Postnormal Times https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postnormal_times
Source for the Tom Atlee quote http://www.co-intelligence.org/Evolution-Learning2BEvol.html
A snapshot of the Garnaut Report’s forecast of the effects of climate disruption on bushfires in Australia https://twitter.com/BenPennings/status/1213379733720715264
Cassandra’s Children talk at WFSF 2019 [link to come]
Miri Mogilevsky’s excellent introduction to emotional labour https://the-orbit.net/brutereason/2015/07/27/emotional-labor-what-it-is-and-how-to-do-it/
Podcast Question 4:
On talking to people about futures https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/08/barbershop-futures.html
On taking back the word futurist https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2006/06/meming-of-futures.html
Ashis Nandy’s fantastic take on futures as a “game of dissenting visions” https://www.benlandau.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Nandy-Bearing-witness-to-the-future.pdf
Podcast Question 5:
Has futures failed? The Futures of Everyday Life https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305280378 , a full-length argument for “experiential futures” practice, embodiment, etc, opens Ch. 7 by considering the question of whether futures studies has failed
Designing an Experiential Scenario, an article with Jake Dunagan considering what futurists should be doing more of, and how https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016328716301331
How to Make Stone Soup, on the community practice of storytelling https://futuryst.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-to-make-stone-soup.html
The three earlier collections of futurist profiles mentioned at the end of the conversation
What Futurists Think, 1996, Inayatullah, ed. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/futures/vol/28/issue/6-7
What Futurists Believe, 1989, Coates & Jarratt, ed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0912338660
The Futurists, 1972, Toffler, ed. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394317130