What if we combine strategic foresight and theatre in one research project?
According to one of our recent workshop participants, the “theatre way of being” is collaborative, iterative and creative problem solving in 4D. This is the way that we explored the critical uncertainties and possible futures affecting the professional theatre community in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Since the fall of 2021, Creative Futures has been collaborating with an incredible research team focused on the future of prairie-based theatre. From the very outset of the project, we have taken a joint, strengths-based approach to working as a team. It has been an incredible learning journey where we have all had an opportunity to exercise our imagination, creativity and futures thinking competencies.
The work has involved many stages:
[Capacity Building] The project started with a series of training sessions in order to orient the research team to the field of strategic foresight and to identify what tools and resources might be most useful to explore the future of prairie-based theatre.
[Scan Club] To apply our learning, we held a series of scan clubs where the entire team could share signals of change that may impact the future of prairie-based theatre and discuss possible implications. In parallel to the Scan Clubs, the Reimagine and Rebuild community hosted conversations with the theatre community to identify signals of change, which were fed into our process.
[Future Trends] The 200+ signals of change collected through the Scan Clubs and community conversations were organized into 40+ trends impacting prairie-based theatre in 2040. We used Richard Lum’s VERGE framework to organize signals, focusing on the potential impact of each change.
[Scenario Development Sprint] Over the course of four (intense) days, the team co-created four possible futures of prairie-based theatre in 2040. Together we decided to use Wendy Schultz’s Manoa Method to create the scenarios, using 12 of the 40 trends as the foundation of the scenarios. We chose to focus on the year 2040 because we wanted to have a dialogue about a time horizon far enough in the future where there is time to influence change and not too far away that our discussions would be too theoretical.
[Testing and Validation] The draft scenarios were shared and tested with the Reimagine and Rebuild Community in order to refine the content and add depth to the future worlds. We invited participants to consider the scenarios, and describe a day in the life of performers, artistic directors, playwrights, stage hands, or audience members. These personas became a critical part of the scenario content.
[Virtual Workshop Series] The last step of the journey involved bringing together 25+ theatre artists from the prairies to identify a radically optimistic vision for the future of prairie-based theatre, and the steps needed to get there. Held over two weeks, the workshop series was an opportunity to apply and share the learning over the last year.
We feel so fortunate to be a part of the learning journey that has taken place over the last year. Here are three reasons why this project worked so well:
Community participation. The theatre community participated early on in the process to contribute to signals of change, to test possible future scenarios, and to participate in a rich dialogue about the preferred future of prairie-based theatre. This was truly a participatory futures project.
Strengths-based collaboration. The team involved in this project includes researchers, practising artists and strategic foresight practitioners. As a team, we have so much respect for the strengths of each person and the entire team brings curiosity and commitment to the collaboration.
Theatre artists are perfectly suited to futures thinking. Futures thinking requires creativity, imagination and curiosity. The research team and theatre artists involved in this project were open to exploring a new competency and were quickly able to grasp the concepts. Performing artists are natural futurists.
What’s next:
After completing this year-long initiative as a collaborative team, we believe this approach would work well for many other projects. From capacity building to co-creation to participatory futures, this methodology can help to activate communities around a preferred future, it can help to identify actions needed, and it can unlock hope for the future.
About the project
Christine Brubaker as Principal Investigator at the University of Calgary, Dr. Taiwo Afolabi as co-Investigator at the University of Regina, and Yvette Nolan received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant to conduct collective research into the critical uncertainties and possible futures affecting the professional theatre community in the Canadian prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The research project is using participatory action research and strategic foresight to surface and identify signals, trends, critical uncertainties and generate a range of possible futures with an intention to specifically understand the implications and opportunities for prairie-based theatre companies and theatre artists.
