About
Museums connect us with the past; they shape how we understand the present and what we carry into the future. This full-day Futures Literacy Laboratory invites participants to imagine the futures of museums and the possibilities they hold for people, communities and the wider living world. The National Museum of Ireland will be the setting for our exploration and a starting point for thinking together.
Together, we will ask: What might museums become? How might our relationships with them evolve? And what does imagining their futures help us notice about the present?
Futures Literacy
UNESCO describes Futures Literacy as a capability that helps people understand how ideas about the future influence what they perceive and do in the present. A Futures Literacy Laboratory is a participatory, learning-by-doing process.
Participants explore futures they expect and desire, encounter alternative ways of
framing the future, and return to the present with different questions, perspectives
and possibilities for action.
During the workshop, participants will:
No previous knowledge of Futures Literacy, futures studies or creative practice is
required.
Imagination in the Symbiocene
The workshop forms part of Futures Literacy and Imagination: Knowledge Production in the Symbiocene, an ongoing series of laboratories situated within cultural and civic spaces. Environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht uses the term Symbiocene to imagine a possible era shaped by ecological interdependence and mutually sustaining relationships between humans and the wider living world.
The Symbiocene provides an imaginative horizon for the series. Within the museum, it opens questions about the relationships among people, culture, memory, materials, places, other species and generations:
How might museums help us notice, imagine and care for these relationships?
Who is this for?
The laboratory is open to anyone interested in Futures Literacy, museums, culture, imagination or the future. It welcomes members of the public alongside artists, educators, students, researchers, designers, museum and heritage professionals, curators, cultural workers and community practitioners. A diversity of experiences and perspectives is important to the process.
Activities will take place individually, in pairs and in small groups, with several ways to participate and contribute throughout the day. As this is a participatory laboratory, places are limited and advance booking is essential.
About the facilitator
The laboratory is devised and co-facilitated by Justyna Doherty, an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and educator based at IADT, alongside special guest Dr Ciarán Dunne, Transversal Skills Director at DCU.
This is a Free event, but booking is essential.
