Mapping the Future

Below is an array of drivers of change that might inform your process of horizon-scanning. It is evidenced by a wealth of research, but the selection is informed by my personal mindset — which is strongly concerned with environmental and social justice. In horizon-scanning with any organisation, we would facilitate in a neutral way, enabling staff to identify what matters to them.

This is a long post, and we would like your feedback on how this might be best presented (for example, broken up into separate posts?) and would be keen to hear from infographics experts if they would like to create an accessible, visual way in to the information.

We also welcome comments throughout the text (which Medium allows you to do). Please feel free to share examples of ways you are responding to these challenges.

Always start with the environment frame, as this is the most all-encompassing of any frame for looking at change. Everything else sits within it. This is even more important now that several planetary boundaries have been breached.

Three main factors will worsen the current trend for losses of biodiversity:

Overarching issues: the social fall-out and drop in wellbeing from untethered neoliberal economics, the ‘othering’ of people in migrant or diaspora communities, and the unfolding environmental challenges brought by a growth-based economy on a finite planet.

The overarching issue is that health and wellbeing for individuals and communities is strongly impacted by environmental factors, which can be a rich area of enquiry and work for the cultural sector

…which also links to…

See Frames for Society and Environment sections for more opportunities

Drivers for change in culture are not described in detail because they are interwoven throughout above, in the responses that Culture might make to this changing context. In sum, however, the UK publicly-funded Cultural sector is under severe pressure, as a result of the Covid-19 lockdown. In 2021, the impact of a hard crash out of the EU will see even worse trouble, with potential losses of funding, a likely intensification of racism, problems with touring and flow of talent, and the general economic downturn that is inevitable. In the coming years, the impacts of the climate and ecological emergency will also add a triple whammy to this situation, increasing stresses in deprived communities, threatening heritage and buildings, and reducing tourist income.

The challenge for cultural organisations will lie in how to prove their relevance with their communities, be anticipatory of critical blows and harness the power of imagination to create a thriving world.

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