What is your relationship with the future, and how is it affecting you right now?
Join Creative Time Lab founder Anna Sircova on March 17 for a deep, live conversation with Johanne Schwensen from It’s Complicated. They’ll explore futurization—a concept that goes beyond simple future-thinking to examine how our images of tomorrow shape our mental health and actions today.
They’ll be tackling questions like: 🤔 How does “futurization” differ from just “thinking about the future”? 🌍 If someone has an apocalyptic view of the global future, how does that show up in their daily mental health? ✨ How can we use imagination not as escapism, but as a real tool for resilience?
Anna brings her unique perspective as a psychologist, researcher, and visual artist to discuss these and other questions.
📅 When: Tuesday, March 17 | 12:00 PM – 01:00 PM CET 📍 Where: Live stream 🔗 RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/dEuu2Bev
Continuing from the last sneak peek at our installation results..
We invite you to the movies with the theme of exploring the first impressions and images of personal and global futures…
Spoiler alert: It’s a two-plot movie night.
My Personal Future: 🎬 “An Uplifting Coming-of-Age Story” Starring… me! The script is a little vague, sure. We have the usual plot twists with “Challenges” and “Mystery” sprinkled in — but in that inspiring “I’ll overcome them and grow as a person” kind of way.
32.2% of the reviews are positive and aspirational! A solid three-star film with heart.
The World’s Future: 🎬 “A Stress-Inducing Thriller” Rated: 😬 Critics are calling it “Disturbing,” “A Merciless Struggle” and just plain “Meh..” The tagline? “Vague… But somehow also Running Out of Time – no dramatic arc just downright chaos and anguish”.
Over 50% of the audience reported pure anxiety or confusion. Only 18.3% left the theatre feeling good – perhaps a little too dystopian for them. Major studio vibes, zero resolution.
The Director’s Commentary: Turns out, uncertainty is in both films (about 15% each). But in my movie, it’s a “mysterious opportunity.” In the world’s movie, it’s just… “creepy otherness.” Which sounds like a rejected Black Mirror episode.
The Real Plot Twist: We’re all living in both movies at once.
Personally? The hopeful lead with character development.
Globally? Nervous extra in the background wondering why they signed up for this.
So, what’s the takeaway? Are we dealing with an unreliable narrator or maybe just missing the deeper meaning? Or maybe we need to fire the world’s screenwriter. Or at least pitch a hopeful spin-off.
Your turn: Which film are you starring in right now? And does your global future need a rewrite?
At the recent Forum de la Culture Durable in Brussels, we invited participants to step into an ephemeral time-travel machine. Guided by our ongoing research, we didn’t just discuss possible futures—we felt them, questioned them, and began to shape them, together.
Our research points to three recurring narratives about the future of culture: 🤖 one shaped by AI 🌍 one focused on building climate-proof cultural events 🤝 one where social bonds may become our most endangered resource
In this immersive session, participants explored these three paths and helped us map a fourth one, emerging from what they already carried with them.
🌱 What surfaced were very concrete worries: – Fears that AI might replace what makes us human — creativity, sensitivity, craftsmanship. – Concerns about losing skills by delegating too much. – Anxiety about impoverishment, shrinking funding, and cultural work becoming more competitive yet less meaningful. – And a recurring fear of being less together — fewer physical encounters, fewer shared moments, fewer human connections.
🌱 Alongside these worries, strong hopes were voiced: – That AI cannot replace empathy, love, or the ability to really encounter others. – That solidarity and mutual support can still be preserved. – That people — artists, technicians, cooks, teams, audiences — will remain the core ingredient of cultural life. – That rituals like live music, dancing together, celebration, saying hello, and simply being present can endure.
When asked what they would save if culture had to fit into a single van, many answered simply: the people.
In this express and immersive format, research insights became an embodied experience. Despite the late hour, participants stayed attentive and curious — and several lingered afterwards to share reflections about how rarely they get space to speak about emotions, values, and relationships in professional cultural settings.
What struck us most was how consistently one theme returned, across the different futures: the need to stay connected — to one another, to shared rituals, and to what makes culture alive.
Our research keeps pointing to this: it’s not only resources that make the difference. Collective imagination — especially when it is shared — may be one of the most powerful cultural technologies we have.
Moments like this remind us that culture is not fixed. It is dynamic. It is alive, and shaped by what we choose to nurture. And perhaps the future of culture is not a single vision, but something that emerges between anxiety and action, when we choose connection over isolation.
To set the stage, here’s something to ponder about. Imagine walking into the Space of Futurization asking yourself: “What is the colour of the future?” and “What is the weather of the future?“
Our results show a fascinating conflict:
🎨 Colour palette: Cool blues. Fresh greens. Elegant greys. Very Scandinavian. Very calm. Very “we’ve got this.”
☀️ Weather forecast: 🔥🔥🔥 EXTREME HEAT 🔥🔥🔥 (55% of responses. No shade. Literally.)
So on one hand, we imagine the future looking like a peaceful design mood board powered by optimism. On the other hand, it feels like standing barefoot on asphalt in August and the anxiety rises…
To summarize: We see a future that’s aesthetically aligned for maximum calm and growth… while physiologically preparing for the ultimate hot yoga session.
This raises a few questions: – Can we hold on to calm while anticipating disruption? – Are we optimistic aesthetes who are also pragmatic realists? – Are we holding onto the hope that rising temperatures won’t erase the natural world’s colour palette? – Or are we just hoping our future solar-powered indoor air-con units look really nice in mint green?
Or maybe our imagination is already air-conditioned, while our emotions are not. And maybe the real question is whether this coexistence of calm and anxiety is sustainable…
Or, to put it more bluntly: Are we determined that if we’ll soon be walking on hot coals, we might as well look chic while doing so?
💬 If you had to explain this contrast in one sentence, what would you say? 💬 What is the colour palette—or the weather—of your future?
After our recent sessions at Ashoka University, one powerful question stayed with us: “Could this become a permanent installation on our campus?”
That question goes to the heart of our long-term vision. It is not an either/or logic, but an and/and one. We envision multiple futures for the Space — as the starting point of an ecosystem:
🔹 Pop-Up Catalysts – Igniting conversations at festivals and events 🔹 Touring Deep-Dives – Semester-long residencies and co-creation 🔹 Permanent Anchors – A lasting resource for institutions committed to futures literacy and emotional resilience
This work is already growing. We are grateful for Nicolas Fieulaine’s invitation to bring our Images of the Future workshop to students at Sciences Po Lyon on Jan 29 & Feb 5.
We are now looking for our next partners.
Is your university, cultural institution, or organisation looking for a tangible, research-backed way to: • Foster hope and agency in the face of uncertainty? • Bridge the gap between personal optimism and global anxiety? • Create a safe space for sharing the emotions about the future?
We invite you to reach out. Let’s explore how a pop-up, residency, or permanent Space of Futurization could live within your community.
👉 Interested in hosting a conversation or workshop?
Back in 2017–2018, when the Futurization of Thinking and Behaviour project was just beginning, we conducted our first pilot study to understand how people perceive the very word “futurization.”
What does it make you think of? How does it make you feel? What colors or images come to mind?
Our small survey and the first focus-group revealed some fascinating impressions:
💡 Futurization was often linked to technology, innovation, robots, and automation — a kind of ultra-modern world shaped by human design.
🎨 The colors people associated with the future were cold and metallic — white, chrome, silver, steel grey — with only rare traces of green or blue, and almost no warm tones.
🦸♂️ When asked to imagine a “character” of futurization, participants named robots, superheroes, and tech icons — mostly male, mostly artificial.
Emotionally, the future felt mixed: ✨ Curiosity (70%) and optimism were paired with uneasiness (60%), hope (50%) with strangeness (40%), and even fear (30%).
These early findings already hinted at something essential: our collective imagination of the future was technological but emotionally distant — bright and shiny, yet disconnected from nature, humanity, and warmth.
That’s where our work began: to reconnect imagination, emotion, and meaning in how we think about the future.
🌱 The Futurization Project has grown immensely since then — but this first glimpse remains a powerful reminder of why we need to reimagine what the future feels like.
👉 Follow Creative Time Lab to explore how our relationship with the future continues to evolve — through research, art, and collective imagination.
