A conversation with Maggie Greyson, John Sweeney and Lisa Guiliani about the upcoming APF IF Awards.

Interviewed by: Peter Hayward

Show Notes FuturePod with Maggie, John and Lisa

Introductions:

Maggie Greyson - futurist designer, Futures Present, board member, OCAD U, SOIF Fellow, teacher

John Sweeney - futurist, hawaiian shirt enthusiast, falafel lover

Lisa Giuliani - educator and director of Youth Foresight Projects with Teach the Future

What are the IF Awards?

“If” questions (What if? If X, then Y?) are central to what we do as curators, facilitators, and researchers in supporting communities, organizations, and institutions to explore the future(s). In celebration of the APF's 20th anniversary, MSFW was reimagined as the APF IF Awards to reflect the globality, diversity, transdisciplinarity of the organization and the futures and foresight field. The reimagined awards program recognizes the evolving excellence in futures and foresight work with an emphasis on key thematic areas, such as impact, imagination, and indigenous. Last year, we had a record 70 entries from around the world.

Advice for future entrants

Demonstrate real-world implementation and impact of your futures work whenever possible. Judges are looking for concrete evidence of changing mindsets and practices.
Highlight novel, creative communication approaches and formats. Bring futures to life through art, storytelling, experience design etc.
Emphasize participation, inclusivity and democratizing futures literacy in your work. Who is involved and how?
Illuminate interconnections and root your work in systems thinking. Take a broad, contextual view of the issues.
Focus on empowering youth, activating agency and expanding perspectives. How will your work shape the next generation?
Incorporate non-Western, indigenous and unconventional perspectives to challenge the status quo. Whose voices are represented?
Articulate higher purpose and transformative potential. Where could this project lead us in the long run?
Provide clear evidence and metrics for the outcomes and impact achieved. How do you know your work made a difference?
Consider partnerships across sectors, generations, geographies and cultures. Diversity drives innovation!

The data suggests entrants should highlight real-world relevance, purpose, creative communication, inclusive participation, disruptive perspectives, systems thinking, and measurable impact. The awards ultimately celebrate how foresight can expand possibilities and shape a better future.

Nominations open October 1 - November 5 (all time zones inclusive) Keep a look out for a Call to Submission apply here: https://www.apf.org/association/msfw

Transcript

Peter Hayward: Last year, the Association of Professional Futurists changed their award that for a decade or more had recognized the Most Significant Futures Work into something called the I F awards. So what exactly are the IF awards?

John Sweeney: We really felt that the MSFW needed to shift in relation to what we've seen happen to the field. So an increase, of course, in diversity, in globality, in transdisciplinarity. And of course, this has also been realized in the shifts that have occurred within the APF. So moving from MSFW to the IF Awards was a way not only to honor what clearly is the most important question that we ask as futurists, the what if question, but also to bring out the I, which is all about things like impact, indigenous approaches, intergenerational.

Maggie Greyson: It's a very welcoming environment, very community building. And by submitting you're adding to a much larger field of Foresight and Futures Thinking. And what an inclusion does is it helps us to anticipate where the future is going or where the practice might be expanding into. So part of the metrics of what we get shows where there's deficits in the field.

Lisa Giuliani: the 2022 awards provided validation and inspiration while revealing the strengths, trends and areas for improvement. And it's needed in futures and foresight as it approaches continuous maturing to this vibrant and multifaceted field.

Peter Hayward: Those are my guests today on FuturePod. John Sweeney, who is a futurist, a Hawaiian shirt enthusiast and a falafel lover. Maggie Greyson, who is a futurist designer, the principal of Futures Present and an APF board member. And Lisa Giuliani, who is an educator, the Director of Youth Projects in Teach the Future, and the awards coordinator with the APF. And they are here to discuss the upcoming IF awards

welcome back to FuturePod, John, Maggie, and Lisa.

Lisa Giuliani: Hi Peter.

Maggie Greyson: Hi Peter. It's so great to be back.

John Sweeney: Hi Peter. Good to see you.

Peter Hayward: Great. It's been a little while since we've spoken to some of you. I'll start with John. What have you been doing since we last spoke to you?

John Sweeney: Yeah, so I think the last time we spoke, I was in Uzbekistan chatting side by side with my colleague there, and we were prepping for our UNESCO Chair application, which has since been approved, so I'm delighted to say that we are the first Futures UNESCO Chair in Central Asia. Future Studies for Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policymaking at Westminster International University in Tashkent. And we're really hoping to spread further. Thanks. Yeah, we're really hoping to spread further Futures in Foresight, not only in Uzbekistan, but across Central Asia region.

Peter Hayward: Awesome. Awesome. And Maggie last time we spoke, the book was coming out.

Maggie Greyson: Yes. I'm still writing the book as you do. And it's going great. I've got interviews with people from all over the world. The book is called Making Futures Present and it's the handbook for future thinking mavericks and next level decision makers. So I'm really enjoying meeting people. Some are futurists and some are in any sector you could possibly imagine.

Peter Hayward: And Lisa we last chatted when I had the chance to talk to a couple of your Young Voices program with Teach the Future.

Lisa Giuliani: That's correct, Peter. Can you believe it's almost been a year? And I know this because in the next week, we'll be announcing this year's Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Young Voices Awards 2023, along with our partners over at School of International Futures, SOIF. And once the announcements go public, we'd love to bring the winners back and have a conversation with you.

Peter Hayward: We will certainly do that, Lisa. Thanks for coming back. I'm absolutely delighted and excited to be here with the three of you to talk about I think the most important contributions from from our Association. But we'll let you guys talk about it. Maggie, we're here to talk about the Most Significant Futures Work awards. Can you just tell all the listeners a little bit about those awards?

Maggie Greyson: Sure. Happy to. So the MSFW started 15 years ago as a book club, and the goal is to identify and reward professional futurists and others work who illuminate aspects of the future. There's a Wikipedia page where you can see past winners and now that is a resource for people who are in academic and professional circles and also people who are learning about what makes interesting futures work. So this is a great resource for for people to come to.

Peter Hayward: And John, last year, it was renamed and went through a bit of a change. Can you just maybe tell us about the change, why we changed?

We have imaginative and then to think about futures, foresight, futurisms, which we've seen, of course, increase over the past decade or so. So really looking to bring a more expansive approach to what I always felt was the key metric and what Andy Hines noted. When we first discussed this is what good work looks like. Good work looks very different than I think it did a decade ago. And so we're trying to honor that by creating an award that upholds the best, of course, not only within the APF, but the best globally.

Peter Hayward: So Lisa, the award was renamed the IF award and we ran this last year. So can you tell us what happened?

Lisa Giuliani: Yes, Peter. And I'll start by saying. The brief, not so brief, we, it's an internal joke that we have a lot of results. So what happened last year, we had over 70 submissions, the work spanned diverse topics and geographies.

We had over 30 volunteers, which was a mix of APF members, Friends of Foresight, and all of them evaluated submissions across those nine I categories. It was through a multi step process. So the nine main category award winners. And eight honorable mentions, we recognized 29 individuals and teams in total for excellence in futures work between 2020 and 2022.

So what's interesting about this is it's a historical perspective. All the material was created during COVID. Winning projects demonstrated a practical application of foresight across sectors, impact focused capacity building, inclusive participation, system thinking, and youth engagement. And more, of course.

I got some key learnings for you, Peter. You ready? The awards illustrated the versatility of high quality foresight work across the context, like art, activism, policy, business, technology. There was new and creative communication methods and approaches, such as some examples were story maps, games, and experiential exhibits. There was an increase in sophistication in how Foresight projects frame complex issues and consider the multiple perspectives. Gaps exist around critical futures, public presence, awareness. evaluation, rigor, implementation science, and addressing existential threats.

I can go into more detail some of the common themes. We're using strategic foresight, scenario planning, a focus on major global issues like climate change, sustainability, technological change, geopolitics, et cetera, exploring the impact of these forces and how societies can respond through foresight.

Peter Hayward: Just a question, Lisa we're talking about last year's awards. Is the information still available to people who are interested in maybe going back and having a look at last year's winners and what they were in that kind of thing.

Lisa Giuliani: Yes, Peter. In fact, we will be publishing an analysis of last year's reports with some of these common themes and key learnings and takeaways. So yeah, so there'll be a report that folks can tune into.

Peter Hayward: Thanks, Lisa. John one of the really important additions was the Indigenous Futures Awardee. Can you maybe just tell us a bit about that part of last year's IF Awards?

John Sweeney: Absolutely. One of the key moments, I think, as we were reconceptualizing MSFW was, of course, trying to come up with as many I words as we could, but realizing that there was a real space to be able to honor and call attention to the amazing work that's being done by Indigenous and Native practitioners all around the world. And the piece that ultimately won, I think, is really indicative of what we want these awards to carry forward. The group that won, the Maori group essentially is a group of Maori future makers. They use traditional Maori approaches and social innovation to work on challenges such as employment. Of course dealing with a variety of issues that youth might face. And I think most importantly is that they're looking to bring a research perspective, but also to have approaches, tools, and methods that are rooted in an indigenous and native knowledge and specifically to try to find a way to do planning, to do policy and ultimately to bring out images of the future that are rooted in hope, that are rooted in community.

And of course, as we know, it's not just about what has to change, but what's important that we need to carry into the future. They've also done quite a lot of work around intergenerationality. And so I think actually it's a really important project in that it brings a message forward about the kinds of power that futurism and foresight can have and how it can be a conduit or a medium to bring out the types of images and imaginings that again can certainly help organizations, but that can really be vital to people in the communities they live in. And so I think it's a real testament to the amazing work that they're doing and of course, the kinds of work that the APF wants to spotlight and call attention to.

Peter Hayward: Thanks John. That part of the IF awards was sorely needed and tremendously welcome when we saw we'd actually added that. So well done on that part to the to all the people who worked on the IF.

So Maggie we're here because the IF awards are starting again. So what advice do you have for people who might be wondering if they have something they want to submit to the awards?

Maggie Greyson: The advice is, Do it. It's a very welcoming environment, very community building. And by submitting you're adding to a much larger field of Foresight and Futures Thinking. And what an inclusion does is it helps us to anticipate where the future is going or where the practice might be expanding into. So part of the metrics of what we get shows where there's deficits in the field. So I can point out that if you are demonstrating novel communication formats, democratizing futures literacy, if you demonstrate a presence of a non Western perspective that's countering the colonial futures works, if you highlight case studies, if you demonstrate public presence of futures work right now, it still remains quite niche. And some of the winners last year were highlighted because they actually had quite broad reach with their exhibits. And also concrete evidence of changing minds and practices.

I would say that something that we did last year, which really added a lot to the flavor of the submissions is asking questions like, how will your work shape the next generation and where could this project lead us in the long run? And then further, we ask them questions like, where do you want to see this work go next? And what do you want others to know about this? We highly encourage diversity in submissions. And this year we're even talking about how we might create invitations in other languages and how we might receive content in other languages too. Because we've got the magic of Google Translate to see things in English. And it really will help us to highlight work that is from the non Western and Northern perspectives. So we're really excited about seeing some of those new entrants.

Peter Hayward: Thanks, Maggie. So Lisa, what's the plan? How is it going to happen?

Lisa Giuliani: Yes. And I will tell you right now, Peter, but I wanted to add that the 2022 awards provided validation and inspiration while revealing the strengths, trends and areas for improvement. And it's needed in futures and foresight as it approaches continuous maturing to this vibrant and multifaceted field. So I wanted to highlight those takeaways.

And so for this year, the Call for Submissions opens on October 1st. It'll be open for the month. The deadline for submissions will be Sunday, November 5th. And we are very clear that all time zones are welcomed, all time zones are included. Eligible futures works. We want them to be publicly accessible between January 1st of 2021 all the way to 2023. So pretty much anything over the past three years. And the application. Maggie mentioned some things in the application. They'll be submit a 300 word statement. And this year, the video will be, we're asking for it to be mandatory versus optional. I don't like the word mandatory, but we really believe that the video really showcases and highlights, especially with techno, the way we're heading in this techno advanced world. The video we're going to ask, We're going to ask for them to explain the futures in Foresight Field and any impacts that have been felt through the work, specifically. And the last thing I'll add is submissions in languages other than English are welcome. Very much welcome. We do ask for English translation and subtitles so it'll help our diverse global judging panel.

Peter Hayward: Hopefully this podcast is arriving to highlight the opening month that we have for submissions. We're encouraging people really as the broadest community possible, you could imagine in terms of this work. If people still want more, if they're still not sure, they're hesitant. What are the things that the committee can offer to support people who they're not sure.

John Sweeney: So I'm sure that they'll be able to find us through a variety of means. Certainly we are completely and willing and able to connect with anyone who has any specific questions. I think that one of the things that we've seen, is as Maggie had noted, is that willingness that people would have. So we certainly don't want this to be an award, by the APF for, people in the APF. So definitely an open door policy on our side. I think we can certainly schedule and look at like a Drop in Session. I think we did that last year. So we really do want to be available to support people if they have any questions or any concerns about submitting.

Peter Hayward: So there will be a way that if people have questions. There'll be certainly links for people who are actually asking questions to reach out. We do want to encourage submissions, however we can.

Lisa Giuliani: Yeah I'll echo what Maggie said. She said Just Do It. Just fill out the application. And see what happens. We really want diverse perspectives and not everyone has to be an expert foresight practitioner. They could be in their beginning years or just inquiring. Everyone has an idea of how to make the world a better place. So let's hear about it.

Peter Hayward: On behalf of the FuturePod community, but also the broader futures diaspora, thanks to all the work you did on rebranding important work into the IF awards and last year's awards were sensational and really looking forward to this year's awards process. So thanks for everything. And let's hope it's a good one.

Maggie Greyson: Thank you. Thank you. We have so much support from a fantastic advisory board and they are from all over the world as well. We couldn't be here without all of the people who are helping us to make decisions. To make this a really inclusive and interesting process. Thanks to you, Peter, for opening up the door for this conversation. We really appreciate it.

John Sweeney: Thanks, Peter.

Peter Hayward: I hope you will consider applying, or if you know somebody who you think should apply for an IF award then please send them this podcast. And if you're in doubt as to whether you should apply then as Maggie said, Just do It. The future needs you to apply.

Future pod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to spot the Pod please check out our Patreon link on the website. I'm Peter Hayward. Thanks for joining us today.