Mapping desired futures together
People are often disheartened by the negative prognosis of many recent attempts to anticipate the future. Positive Cartography is about communities envisioning desired futures, and creating maps that describe them, plus one additional ingredient – the commitment the mapmakers make to think about the futures they really want, and the actions they can take to make them happen. In this way, we take a hopeful step towards futures literacy in society.
On the road to Mission TWO:
‘What does the world look like after Covid-19 recovery’?
We invite groups and communities of all kinds – from children to scientists, from distributed professionals to smart regions and cities to people at neighbourhood scale – to think about and map the futures they want to live in – based on the available knowledge and forecasts, their own interests, and the questions these raise. And then decide how to get there.
During a global mapathon we facilitate visual storytelling about collective imagination and idea-building, positivity and personal commitment, and entrepreneurial steps towards answers for ‘powerful’ questions like:
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What is the future you are preparing for?
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What is the future you are ready to invest in?
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Where will you take the future?
Join up!
Are you representing a group or community, and are you interested to join up or learn more about our initiative?
We are happy to hear from you.
Mapathon 2021
Our vision: To prototype a distributed laboratory for mission-driven innovation
Working together as a ‘league of extraordinary innovation centers’ – excellent future centers, living labs, corporate RDI centers, design labs, thinktanks, NGO’s – these centers together strive to be a distributed laboratory for mission-driven innovation.
An orchestrated initiative to support breakthrough societal change. Providing an infrastructure for collaborative innovation, opportunities, co-learning, and a distributed local network for tackling the global challenges facing society today.
Climate Resilience
Mission ONE
Resilience is the capacity to bounce back from a crisis, and bounce forward with an opportunity. Climate resilience is seen as the capacity of a system to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to trends, stresses, disturbances, crisis and disruptive events related to climate, both in the environment and in society. It is a key building block for societal renewal. Climate resilience relates to many issues, all of which may be focus points for specific projects and practical prototypes. As discussed in our global online conversations in 2020.
Environment
- Sea levels rising
- Extreme weather
- Desertification fresh water
Climate in society
- Massive waves of climate refugees in the next decade
- Climate of fear or hope, for accepting change, for working together
- How we allocate and accept responsibility and resources for resilience
Technology
- Technologies for breakthroughs and opportunities
- Technologies for making a difference for specific places and issues
- Technologies and disruption, and unintended consequences
Our inner climate
- Lifestyle, behaviour and mentality determines how we ‘bounce back’
- Identity and entitlement (freedom to consume, freedom to waste)
- Moving from awareness to interest, from interest to desire, and from desire to action
Envisioned Partners
New initiatives, dealing with concrete questions about ‘societal innovation’, which are anchored in local communities and willing to co-create possible solutions with similar communities elsewhere in the world.
We invite cities, regions, organizations ready to bring their ‘challenge’ to the Global Lab, willing to ‘own’ the challenge, and willing to test and improve promising solutions in their streets, neighborhoods and offices.
We invite excellent innovation labs, committed innovators, societal entrepreneurs and experts ready to work together on these challenges.
To meet each other in action. To be seriously bold together.
Community inspirations
The Global Lab is all around us. It consists of thousands of smaller and larger initiatives already taking place throughout the world, in most cities and almost every country, and tens of thousands of people committed to working on societal issues. These are ‘many small wins’ that deserve our attention.
Sometimes they are hard to see, or find: many of these projects and initiatives do not know about each other or do not have the time or resources to connect with them, learn from them, work with them, or take advantage of possible synergies. We share community inspirations to connect them.
The “Positive future” prize
The Positive Future Prize will recognize the best productions presenting realistic visions of a desirable future. The objective of this competition, open to all, is to give the initiatives carried by Positive Future international visibility and appeal, and to promote exchanges and collaboration between diverse participants such as artists, entrepreneurs, prospectivists, researchers, students and other citizens.
Netherlands in 100 years
Imagine what the world could look like, if we start shaping it from a nature-based perspective today. What will the Netherlands look like in a hundred years’ time when you look at climate change, urbanization, biodiversity, rising sea levels and increasing food production? Wageningen University & Research has drawn up a positive vision for 2021.
Kids have a Dream
Flashback to the inspiring “Kids Have a Dream” project, now almost a decade ago, when over 3000 children in 23 countries where invited to draw up and share their dreams. Using nothing more than paper and pencils. Kids have a dream. Do you?