Loes Damhof was elected as Lecturer of the Year of all higher education in The Netherlands in 2016, and decided to spend the attached prestigious Comenis Award on developing Futures Literacy pilots. In 2018, she received the UNESCO Chair on Futures Literacy in Higher Education for her work on researching the impact of Futures Literacy and the design principles of Futures Literacy interventions.
In addition to her research and teaching practices, she consults and trains staff of global organizations such as FutureWomenX, UNESCO, UNFCCC, ClimateKIC, FORMS, UN, Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and Oxfam in multidisciplinary projects.
She is also Future Fellow at Hawkwood College and a steering committee member of the Futures Oriented Museum Synergies.
Interviewed by: Reanna Browne
More about Loes
TEDX Talk : Futures literacy: Shaping your present by reimagining you futures
Futures Literacy: UNESCO Chair on Futures Literacy at Hanze University of Applied Sciences
Emergence Academy: Emergency Academy
Twitter: @LoesDamhof
Transcript
Reanna: What does it mean to be futures literate?
How do we create and nurture regenerative learning ecosystems?
And what does cold water canal swimming have to do with future's work? I'm Reanna Browne and I'm your host for Future Pod Today.
Loes: We often think that we create change. Change is happening constantly, but we have lost the capability to observe and to see the change that is happening around us in our natural environment. And I often quote my friend, Bayo Akomolafe who says "these are urgent times let us slow down". Can we resist the call for urgency and go back to the same space everyday as a ritual and observe change by ourself.
Reanna: That's today's guest, Loes Damhof, an award-winning educator futures consultant, UNESCO Chair on futures literacy and higher education and futures lab designer among many other things.
This is a rich and fascinating episode. We cover future's literacy through both a student and institutional lens. You'll hear insights on how we can nurture future's capability and you'll also learn about Loes' futures kairos moment. A point in time that fractured her life into two parts, everything before that, and everything that came after.
Welcome to Future Pod Loes.
Loes: Thank you. Happy to be here.
Question 1 - Journey to the futures and foresight community
Reanna: Let's start our conversation in the past. So how did you end up where you are today and what brought you to the foresight and futures community?
Loes: Oh, that was quite a journey. First of all, let me start by saying that I'm very happy and pleased to be on FuturePod. I've been listening to FuturePod of course, for many years, and I've seen all my heroes and teachers and mentors passing through and listening to their stories. So, it is an incredible honour to, to join the ranks.
Um, yes. How did I, come on the path of Futures. Years ago, it was before 2016. I was a senior lecturer, my University of Applied Sciences, Hanze, in the Northern part of the Netherlands. And I was a senior lecturer in 21st-century skills back then. For years, I developed courses for students to prepare them for a future that does not exist or jobs that don't exist yet.
And at the same time while I was doing that, I really, you know, thoroughly believed in it. I also wondered if I say I prepare students for a future that doesn't exist, is there a future that does exist? What is it that I'm actually saying? It felt like a kind of marketing, branding kind of tool or saying to sound cool.
And we were developing all these courses that students would take on a Tuesday morning from nine to eleven digital skills, media literacy, communication, and collaboration. And I always felt that there was something missing. And that something missing to me was uncertainty. That if the future does not exist, how do we relate? How do we engage with uncertainty? How do we feel about it? And to me, it seemed kind of odd that in higher education we would be so busy preparing students for a future that we thought was going to happen. But I didn't quite know how to address this issue I didn't quite, there was nothing in the literature or anywhere else that I thought would even come close to this idea. Until I came across the work of Riel Miller, which I'm sure you know since he's been on this podcast a couple of times.
And he was speaking at this summit, and I was really triggered by this notion of futures literacy, what he was talking about. And I listened to him and I thought, wait a minute. I think this could be it. So, I was intrigued, and I wanted to work with this, but I didn't know how to approach him or UNESCO. And then I was very fortunate to win the Teacher of the Year award, which came with the first Comenis grant in the Netherlands. And basically, I got a blank slate that just got full trust. They just gave me this grant and said that I could do with it whatever I pleased, which is very unusual with a lot of grants.
So, incredible luck to have that title and that, freedom cuz that's what it is money means freedom in higher education. So with that freedom to start experimenting, and I contacted him and I said, look I really wanna work with what you do. And he said, well, come over to Paris. So I went to Paris for a day and spent five hours in his office talking to him.
And I often talk about like, was one of those incredible transformative learning moments that you're just sitting there, and it felt like he was opening up doors to a jungle. Unexplored territory all I had to do was step over, enter that jungle, that unexplored territory and start exploring and I have an incredibly adventurous spirit.
So, I thought, this is amazing. Now mind you, I listened to him for about five hours, and I didn't understand a word he was saying. Anyone who's ever listened to Riel Miller he's one of the most eloquent people that you'll ever hear or listen to. And the work that he was talking about was all very new to me.
But I was mesmerized cuz I felt that this is something that I can explore and work with for many, many years to come. So cognitively, I was still trying to catch up, but you know, on a, on another level, I felt, yeah this feels right. And then you're just stepping over this threshold and then there's this world that is there for you to explore.
So, I came home knowing that this is the answer, although I can't reproduce it yet, but I know intuitively that this is right. And my colleagues asked me, So, how was Paris? And said, it was great. It was amazing. This is it. They said, what is it? And I'm like, I don't know, but I know this is it. And that was the beginning of this, learning journey that I'm still on and I'm still exploring.
Uh, the jungle, the unexplored territory still feels very unexplored to me and, uh, and I'm very happy with that. Every time I feel like I get to know more, and I've been practising, futures literacy, futures thinking for six or seven years now. And I still feel like I'm a newbie And, well, what I did with Riel Miller's work is that he entered it from a policy maker, very UNESCO perspective.
So, he was organizing these laboratories and workshops all around the world and talking about it as a capability, but very much focusing on how do I create spaces where policymakers and citizens and governance come together to rethink the present. And I really zoomed in on this capability part, so I kind of took it and applied it to higher education and started saying that this is not just for policymakers, this is for everybody.
This is for students too, and this idea of this capability that needs nurturing, that needs practice, that needs applications, not just being in a workshop or a laboratory for a few hours or a few days, but actually actively engaging with this skill that takes time. So, we decide to develop training programs, and longer-term training programs and really start thinking about how can we create space in our university in our educational system for students, but also the work field faculty to engage with this kind of thinking constantly. And that in itself is really difficult because futures literacy for those who don't know what it is, it is the capability to imagine multiple futures and using those images of the future, using those futures to rethink the present.
So, to have a closer look at what am I doing today? How do I see the world? When I think about a future, what am I not seeing? And you do this by examining your assumptions about the future. To see what are the blind spots.
And if by becoming aware of those, we can go back to the present and we'll see different things, we'll notice different things, and that can open, up our minds to different ways of doing, different ways of being, different ways of decision making.
That's how I started, and I started my work with uh, pilots, my, my grants. I used it to do a two-week intensive program with master students, four different Master programs. And it was extracurricular. They didn't get any grades, they just signed up cuz I thought they was new and exciting. It was a two-week intensive program. And that again, was one of those incredible experiences for the students and for us, for my team.
Cuz I didn't do it alone. I had an incredible, still have an incredible, uh, team of colleagues that I do this work with. And that's how we started off. And after that experiment, when the grant was spent, I decide there's no way I can go back to the job that I have. I need to explore this further. And not just the content, so get into future thinking, future literacy, but also the way I did my work, it really changed the way I see teaching in higher education that, that we need a lot more space for emergence in the system.
We need a lot more space for uncertainty. So, I uh, took a shot and dove right in and life has been very different ever since.
Reanna: I actually had the great pleasure of studying strategic foresight across two programs here in Australia, so the Sunshine Coast University, and also Swinburne University, before they both closed down, ironically around 2018, and 2019. What I found so different about these programs is that I think the educators could hold onto two opposing missions almost. Teaching is the things that help architect career and become good workers, which of course is the goal of many modern universities. But also creating and holding a space where students could consider how to live and how to shape a society we would like to live in.
From what I can hear, it sounds like you also experienced this tension too when you mentioned that you were teaching 21st-century skills that were mostly about job readiness, less so about equipping students with the kind of skills that we now need to thrive and navigate post-normal times. I'm really interested to know as someone that's still inside a university living and breathing this, how do you manage these tensions in the work that you do?
Loes: Absolutely. I've come to realize pretty quickly that was way before even I encountered future literacy. I've always been a pioneer in higher education, always trying on new things, but I've learned that if you approach this from a capability point standpoint, then you can't just teach students this capability in very structured plans prepared environment, right?
Because in future literacy, in the foresight, the strategic foresight as well, you need that openness and that space for futures to emerge. You need that kind of open mindset. So, you need to create space within the system and within the institution. So, the institution in itself needs to become futures literate as well. So, you need approaches from a very holistic point of view is that if I only focus on the students I'm teaching that's not going to work. Then I will create pockets where they can practice that skill, but then they go back into the world of concrete, as I call it, go back out of the jungle into the world of concrete, having these tools, but no way, no place to use it.
So, at my university very early on, we started to experiment with the policymaker decision makers at the university, with the management, with the staff, together with students, get people from the work field, the professionals involved. So every time we experiment with future literacy, we try to do it with students, professionals from outside our communities, our stakeholders, and people at the university from supporting staff, researchers, faculty, team leaders. Not only do you get a much richer, playground, because the futures differ. There's a lot more diversity in futures, which of course, so much richer for imagination and creativity. But you're also creating a much richer playground and fertile ground for the institution to become future literacy, and that is just much better for students ultimately as well. So, I don't believe in teaching a skill. It's like ticking a box, without the rest of the environment changing along with it.
And this is not easy it's hard because you are trying to shake up things and sometimes move and testing the boundaries, you know, where do I go? And it takes time. yeah, It's not a two week , not a one course, one workshop thing. But I think that is idea of linearity and this very disciplinary approach of one group of people that you teach this capability is just not sustainable in the long end.
So, this is a work that needs practice and needs time. But that's how I see this. We started very early on from moving away from teaching students to training faculty because faculty, if they become future literate, whether they are biology teachers, communication professors or physical therapist. It doesn't matter whatever their discipline is, this kind of thinking needs to be integrated throughout the curriculum.
And so, there's, you can already see that there are two different, pathways. I think one of them is, future studies, foresight. Future literacy is a discipline that needs research. It needs courses, it needs Master programs. It needs to be studied as a discipline on its own, and it is a way of thinking that needs to be applied and practiced throughout each discipline.
So, in order to do that, those two pathways need to go hand in hand. You need more research to understand how to apply these things, how anticipation works. And you need, the playgrounds, the testing pilots to apply your research. So, these two need to go hand in hand to do that, you'll need all the friends that you can get that uh, believe in this work.
Reanna: I absolutely agree. I have an underpinning ethos to all of the work that I do, whether it's strategy scanning, scenarios, even speculative design that everyone has to enter this work through a process where we first unlearn the way that we think about the future. And the underpinning premises here is that when we change the way we think about the future, we change the way that we act in the present.
I spent a lot of time early in my career thinking that if only I have enough compelling evidence, then people might actually change behavior and act as if the future was in here and now, not something that was out there and then down the track. But most of the time, of course, nothing happened come Monday.
As a result, the work was often seen as something that was really interesting, but not necessarily important enough to act on. So, from that point on, I think I realized that I actually need start with the thinking. Once you challenge some of these fundamental beliefs and myths in terms of the way that we think about the future, people tend to be far more receptive to the idea that the future may be different to today and also the idea that we can use the future to shape action in the present.
Loes: Absolutely, I really have this fundamental belief as an educator that I need to practice what I preach. If I have not experienced this impact that it has on my thinking, there's no way I can take students on this similar journey.
So, for us it always starts with an experience that understanding the discipline of future studies and future thinking. If you do not experience the powerful impact of this kind of thinking yourself. There is a risk you'll continue to study futures but not study how we think about futures.
And that is different. And since, I approach this field from this capability standpoint, seeing future literacy as a skill that you need to nurture, practice, that's gonna change your thinking, gonna change your being and how you enter the world. It is really important that you constantly reflect on your own capabilities as well as a futurist. So, I ask myself all the time am I futures literate? Am I still embracing uncertainty? Can I still see the present differently? Or am I overwhelmed with anxiety or control? For me, that is really important and you don't always see that because if we see future studies and I call the discipline of future studies or discipline of anticipation that's still an ongoing debate, of what we should call it. But if you see it as something you can study then I think we're missing a huge opportunity to make it sustainable and meaningful.
But then it just remains this discipline but not something that we can take to the streets, or that actually changes our thinking and that we will never really fully feel or experience that impact. That is really crucial to me. You can't do one without the other.
Reanna: It's kind of an acupuncture point, isn't it? Before we apply anything or jump into any tools or processes, we need to first challenge the thinking. So, for me, that's why I front-load any of the work that I now do with this notion of unlearning the future.
In fact, I'm increasingly starting to think that actually the unlearning bit is the work.
Loes: Absolutely. Absolutely. I completely agree. And I think because I encountered this work of, through UNESCO which of course, an amazing organization that does tremendous things, and at the same time, it also comes from a very academic kind of ivory tower.
To me that there's a, a, a, not a danger, but it's a little risky to continue to see it as something that's only for a certain group of people, which I think it's not. Everybody uses the future. Nobody owns her. So, there's no one in a certain position that can I own the future I know what's best. You just don't. So, for me it is crucial to take it out of that position and really continue to apply it also with yourself. And that reflection on your own thinking and being and how you enter this world to me, has to go hand in hand with the practices, that I teach.
Question 2 - Describing your work to others
Reanna: Now this might seem like a simple question, but given that you work across so many spaces, it may be more difficult to answer than most. How do you describe what it is that you do?
Loes: That's so interesting cuz this past summer, I was travelling, throughout Europe and every time I encounter people, they say, So what do you do? ,I just say, Oh, I work at the university or whatever. Sometimes I say I'm a futurist, although it doesn't really cut it. To me, being a futurist almost implies that I study the future, but I don't, I study how people think about the future, or a futurist implies that I know what's coming and I don't. But then I explain, I facilitate learning spaces where people, can explore multiple future.
To understand, their assumptions and that can help them, , make better informed decision. and see the presence, differently. Then people uh, get a little bit uneasy and I say, I work at a university. Like, oh, okay, okay, that's good, that I understand and then they say, but is it a course?
I'm like no. Cuz I teach these labs and these workshops throughout university. So, in all disciplines we encounter mostly in Master programs, but as changing also in honours programs and certain bachelor programs. Is, where we uh, organize these learning spaces and we are training and teaching faculty at the same time. And of course, all the staff and the personnel, so throughout the whole institution. And that's very local here in Haronian, but I do this all over the world. So, I have a UNESCO chair in futures literacy. With uh, six people and, um, yeah, we have different roles and responsibilities within that team.
There's of course research there are supportive teaching parts there is the travelling around the world spreading the words, the gospel. And we're, engaging in long-term international projects collaborative projects within but also international with large parties and institutions.
So, all of that, when I get into it, that's what we do. It's not a job. I invented this job myself. It did not exist. So, it's here. So, I say I have a UNESCO chair. Oh, okay. And I say I do research, I teach, I travel over the world to spread the world.
Question 3 - Got to tools and methods
Reanna: Let's talk about your carrier bag. I'd love to know some of your go-to methods and how you've applied them in live settings.
Loes: Sure. Uh I entered this field through Riel Miller's work at UNESCO, and that is the future literacy framework that he has developed years ago. And he had been practicing in these future literacy laboratories, which are very hands-on, cutting-edge kind of workshops, very experimental. So, I entered it through that space.
So, in the beginning, because I didn't quite know how this capability worked, I just decided to practice and do all these workshops and I had a few of these, um plans, like lesson plans or overviews, agendas of these workshops and I just started doing it.
And by practising that and playing with students, I came to understand the capability after a while and the studying, et cetera. So, we still use his framework. As an introduction into the capability. So, the laboratories always follow this three-step process and you start by exploring desirable and probable futures to understand what people's assumptions are.
Then we provoke them with a reframe, with an alternative scenario, so they become aware of their blind spots and assumptions and that can open them up for new questions and seeing the present differently. That's a three-step process. And then after that there's another phase four that you can use to use those new questions, new ways of seeing for next steps, new decisions, et cetera. So, that three-step process is a methodology, a tool to get introduced into the capability. Now, if you do a workshop like that, and that can last from three or four or five days, or sometimes I only have a couple of hours, or sometimes I even take people through this process in half an hour that, uh, that can really differ.
But the stepping stone is always basically the same, but it's very important to understand that this is an introduction, it's an experience like I was talking about earlier. It's an experience of the impact. What does it do to you if you become aware of the assumptions you have about the future? What does it do to you if you are being exposed to multiple futures of other people that other people have that does something to your mind that opens you up.
So, after that workshop, after that experience, that always happens within a group, with a collective, it's a collective knowledge creation process. After that process, after that experience, that is the key to create and continue to engage in spaces where you can practice and apply that openness and thinking.
And that is really difficult because our world consists of planned activities often driven by the desire to eliminate uncertainty. So, we prepare ourselves for everything. We plan everything. That's certainly the case in higher education. So how do you make space for, for emergence to, happen, in an environment like that.
So, after the first experience, the lab, that's when the real work starts. And for the longest time we wanted to introduce people to these capabilities. So, we did we ran a lot of laboratories workshops, all very different, cater to different target groups, different environments, very contextualized, very customized, but always with the same idea let's introduce people to do this new way of thinking.
But now we are seeing, uh, we need to create sustainable learning ecosystems where they feel safe enough to practice, continue to practice this thinking. And that is, that's when the real challenge is for us now. We're now experimenting with these sanctuaries, we call them.
Future literacy, in essence, is about navigating, between using the future for planning and preparation, when to do that, when it's efficient, when it's handy, when it's good, and using the future to be open for emergence you need both. So, you're basically trying to apply future thinking in different contexts for different purposes.
If you're in a workshop like that and you're becoming aware of your assumptions. You need to find these same pockets, these same opportunities in your context afterwards to be able to navigate and to be able to find a balance and using both. Because otherwise you'll go back into the same way of thinking.
Reanna: The concrete world.
Loes: The concrete world. Yes.
Reanna: I really love this idea of creating a community where people can return to a safe space and continue to learn and reflect together. Are there any other tools that you'd like to share?
Loes: One tool, I wanted to use is that, uh, I find important that if you are, um, really using future literacy to create sustainable change to impact and not just see it as a workshop or a tool that we use sometimes but actually as a capability, you need to really pay attention to what you are letting go of as well in your context.
And that includes mapping the context of what you're in. And we're using tools like Futures Triangle to also look at the weight of the past. What have been obstacles for us so far? And that takes some time too, cuz if people wanna take advantage of change or chaos or uncertainty, complexity, they need to let go of things too.
And that sometimes comes with grief. Maybe even a little bit of trauma. So, it's really important to map out the context of where you are introducing that capability. And that can be at a university, that can be for students in their internship or their study environment where they are, or that is really important.
It's not just a one-trick pony cut and paste, workshops, tools you can use in any context. So, mapping that, context and looking, what are the power dynamics, what are do people need to let go of? You can use future tools for that as well. So, just to make it more sustainable and make it land and nurturing the fertile ground for the capability to grow, over time.
Reanna: I think one of the principle aims for this work is to encourage people, including ourselves, to step away from the present so we can ask more elegant questions of what is, what might be, and what are some of those underpinning beliefs and assumptions that we have behind these futures?
Loes: Yep, absolutely
Question 4 - Emerging futures
Reanna: Let's lift our gaze now to ideas and images of possible futures. What are some of the changes that you are paying attention to today and why?
Loes: What I find interesting is, is how we see knowledge creation and how we learn. We call it epistemic literacy, Ilka Tuomi he's uh published about that as well. That coming to understand and looking at how we learn and how we create knowledge, how we view knowledge and especially in the current debate and polarization on what science is, what knowledge is, what is true, what is fake, what are facts, what is real.
I find that really interesting is that, sometimes I see this movement towards this constant backlash of well, people abolish one dogma and embrace another dogma saying, oh this is not true but therefore the opposite must be true, and I'll embrace that. I think we; I hope we are moving towards more of a space where we have trust and that there is doubt.
That we trust that there's always uncertainty and that should not make us afraid. But, we feel that the way we are learning is constantly with doubt and self-doubt and not knowing and making assumptions. But if we trust that that is a valid and true process, then I think we are getting somewhere we can have a conversation about it.
And I think a lot of debates on what is true or not true is fuelled by fear. And I think what I see is that just by imagining multiple futures, that is an act of hope in itself. So not creating hopeful futures per se, but just saying I do not accept a premise of this particular scenario, but I'm actually putting future scenarios next to it.
That in itself is an act of hope, and that's what I see. So, and then hopefully we can have a more sophisticated debate on how we learn things and that there are different ways of learning. Like I mentioned before, this bodily experience that I had when I encounter future literacy, stepping over this threshold, it was a, a very physical experience to me.
You know, I, I didn't understand it yet, but I felt intuitively this is the right way to go. Knowledge that's also learning, but just in a different way. And I feel that there's a lot more, um, interest now in those yeah whether it's indigenous wisdom or just different ways of knowing that are just equally valid as long as we trust.
That is also, full of doubt sometimes uncertainty, complexity. But that learning and complexity is not something, to solve or uncertainty, something to eliminate, but it's something to appreciate and that requires trust and courage. But yeah, that's what I'm paying attention to. How do we get a better understanding of how we are learning and is there space for different ways to learn and to create knowledge?
I find that really interesting.
Reanna: What about hopeful and fearful futures?
Loes: I, uh, of course, uh but every time I, um, when I think of a future, when I create an image of the future, I automatically think about what does it tell me about the present. So, to me, all these future images are completely irrelevant and disposable. They just give me information. But sometimes I fear that what I see, it's not going great. A lot of system in place I worry about the world, about the health of our planet, the health of our sanity, our civility. So, I worry about that quite a bit. I see the assumptions that we had about democracy, that things would get better, that about progress. Turns out that these are all assumptions.
And I think the question that we should ask ourself is not how did we get here, but what made us think we were never gonna get here in the first place. So why was I thinking that the world would become more democratic or that human rights would be more widespread?
Why was I making that assumption? That's interesting to me. So, I've come to learn not to be afraid. And if I worry, that tells me, just gives me information about the things that I find important. For hopeful futures I see a desire, all over the world to really stay connected.
And not through technology per se, but just this reconnection with natural things. All over the world. I ask people these two questions, what do you think is going to happen, your powerful future, and what do you hope is going to happen? I'm generalizing, but overall people say what I think is often very tech-based.
It's just technology. That's what they, that's projecting, extrapolating. And what they hope is all of it is the same as well, connecting, respect, equality, and yeah. And that in itself is incredibly hopeful and sad because sometimes we forget and then you realize what connectivity. In my very white, Northern European contexts means something else in Lagos, Nigeria. And that is beautiful in itself too. And when you do this work all over the world like I do, you see that people enter the world differently and have their own cultural contexts and norms and values, et cetera. And that in itself is also beautiful. So, I've come to understand that every time I make assumptions about the future I know that they are assumptions they can help me and guide me in my values and what I find important.
But ultimately, when something else happens my thought is it was just an assumption that I had and I can grieve, I can let go of them and that can be painful sometimes, but ultimately, it's just not a future that's popping
Question 5 - Emergence Academy
Reanna: Now I'd really love to hear more about this new learning space that you're exploring, the Emergence Academy. Can you tell us a bit more about the Academy, why you set it up and what you hope to get from it?
Loes: Thank you. It goes back to what we talked about before is that I feel that the workshops that, that our team, that my chair and that's people, the amazing people at UNESCO and all of the world, we are teaching these laboratories, these workshops, which are great spaces for people to explore, but I always miss the sustainable place where that can actually set roots. That can be nurtured and harvest and explored and I miss the compost where all this learning goes to. I miss the community where the insights and the different decision-making and the fruits of the cognitive labour, where does it land? And I know it's the curse and the blessing of an educator.
That's the moment you're finished with a class. Students go into the world; you don't know where it's going. Sometimes it comes back at you and a lot of the times you never know, they do amazing things you'll never know. That's the curse and the blessing, and that's great, but with a capability it's not just, oh, it goes into the world and it's, it will find a place. I trust that it will find a place, but very often because it is such a fundamentally different way of thinking, of approaching and understanding the world, just giving workshops for moments in time, pockets and time is not enough. We need to create regenerative learning ecosystem that not only does the knowledge and the lessons learned to come back, but actually more comes out of it. It just becomes a better learning space. So, I came up uh, with this idea years back, it's called Emergence Academy, to really create, a learning environment where you're not only get introduced into this capability, but you constantly have time to apply the capability to think about it, reflect upon it, and that's through very planned and structured moments that you can go back to those that are sanctuaries.
But I also work together with Alex Lamby, he's an artist. And we do this work at Hawkwood College, which is a centre for Future Thinking in the Cotswolds in the UK. And we dare offer very intensive three, four day, courses where we use the environment, the beautiful surroundings as an inspiration. And art installations to really give more body to what does it mean to anticipate for emergence?
We anticipate for the future through planning a preparation all the time, but what does it really mean to use futures, to be open for the unknown, to be open for emergence, to see things differently. What does that mean? And one of the things that we are trying by using space actually stems from habits that me and Alex both have is that, that we swim every morning in cold water, in natural water.
He does it on the Isle of Wight and the sea. I do it in a canal, different environment. Uh, but every morning, throughout the whole year, we step into the same spot on the water and we swim and we feel the water temperature changing.
So, this immersive experience of change is so different than how we usually view change. We often think that we create change. A lot of language around that is now happening. We are change makers. We create change. Change is happening constantly, but we have lost the capability to observe and to view it and to see the change that is happening around us in our natural environment. And I often quote my friend, Bayo Akomolafe, who says "these are urgent times let us slow down". So can we resist the call for urgency and go back to the same space everyday as a ritual and observe change by ourself and every time we do that, we'll see something different.
That to me, is also creating that openness for emergence. But you need to practice that. It takes discipline to do that, to be open for emergence. It takes planning to be that spontaneous and to observe. And that to me is really, really interesting.
So in this, uh, emergence academy, we are creating an eco-learning system where all partners involved, students who apply future literacy with companies, NGOs, and artists, they all become fellows. No one is better or higher or worse than the other. We're all fellows and we're all contributing to the same compost where we leave our lessons and hopefully the harvest that comes out of that compost, active composting, comes back into the learning space.
A very circular way of learning uh, as you will. And, uh, and by doing that, is really using the space, locality, rituals, arts, to really, yeah, give extra meaning to what it means to be open for emergence and to be comfortable and appreciate complexity. And that's what we're trying, to experiment with and it's very, the first cohort wasn't July incredible, successful, amazing group of people and, uh doing one in November.
So, to me, that's a very interesting and exciting future ahead.
Closing
Reanna: Loes, this has been such an enjoyable conversation. There are some really powerful themes that have already cemented in my mind. So much of what you speak of for me goes to the heart of this work, I think, which is stepping away from the present, challenging our assumptions, and also building agency and pathways.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom, your insights, your stories, and for contributing to the FuturePod compost.
Loes: Oh, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.
Reanna: My guest today was Loes Damhof. She's the kind of educator I think that aspires to be of service in times where the value of modern education itself is being questioned.
The kind that I also think is not in the business of education by numbers. It's through her own unrelenting curiosity that she has created these deep relational learning experiences that equips learners with knowledge sense making and also imagining that is required in post-normal times.
If you're curious to learn more about Loes' work, she has a TEDx talk on Future's literacy that I definitely think is worth watching. I'll also share other links to her work in the show notes.
I hope that you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did.
Future Pod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you'd like to support the pod, please check out the Patreon on the website.
I'm Reanna Browne. Thanks for joining us today.