The New School - 100 Year Futures
workshop design & facilitation
Team: Lauren Suiter, Hanna de Vries, Nam Pham
Role: asset creation & co-facilitator
Overview:
My team and I invited The New School community at large to join a workshop aimed to construct alternative visions for the university's next 100 years, including desirable, undesirable and ambiguous possibilities.
This workshop established a forum for discussing the potential impacts higher education institutions could face in the next century, as well as ambitions which should lead our actions. Participants worked with futures-oriented thought tools to rigorously examine and devise concrete scenarios that can serve to influence decisions made in the near term.
Process:
Over the series of several weeks my team and I designed, prototyped and iterated-on several workshop formats leading to the final workshop form. Final assets included a timeline, futures wheel and curated handbook.
Result:
The result of this workshop was the creation of new thought models which could be taken into consideration as The New School plans its next 100 years. Key points that emerged through the workshop included:
Changing power dynamics in education: negotiation of powers between existing and new decision-makers (market, institution, faculty, student, and others)
Value-based system: how can we integrate new values with existing structures
Confronting equity: futures are usually speculated with the assumption of technological availability, accessibility, and progress. How would this issue be addressed moving forward?
The monopoly of corporations within the education sphere: for-profit vs. academic integrity/freedom
Exposure to options: K-12 students would have more exposure to a diversity of options to orient their interests. At the same time, this creates a condition for lifelong learning
