Foresight Conference 2024

In 2024, the Centre for Strategic Futures convened Foresight Conference 2024 under the theme A Season for Brave Ideas: Another Paradigm is Possible. Held in conjunction with CSF’s 15th anniversary, the conference explored different and better ways of thinking, working, and living together through three subthemes: Another Architecture is Possible, Another Belonging is Possible, and Another Coexistence is Possible.

Across two days, around fifty participants moved through keynotes, open conversations, and participant-led discussions. Rather than follow a fixed conference track, participants helped decide what to explore and where the conversations should go, supported by sherpas from across the Public Service.

As a closing activity, participants were invited to propose entries for a glossary: ideas they collectively believed were worth remembering, revisiting, or doing more of. Another ___ is Possible: A Glossary for Other Worlds (16MB) grows out of those proposals.

Rather than produce a usual post-conference report, CSF took time to sit with the ideas that surfaced. So much of our work moves quickly from event to output, from conversation to summary; the Glossary instead gives these ideas time to settle, in the hope that what took longer to make might also travel further and last longer.

The result is a collection of fifteen concepts that offer fresh ways to analyse, design for, and respond to complex problems. Each entry is developed as an essay, with examples, references, and guiding questions for readers who wish to apply the concepts in their own work.

The Glossary need not be read from start to finish. It can be read modularly: as a source of language, prompts, examples, and questions to return to when familiar frames feel too narrow. It is intended especially for public servants, policymakers, and practitioners looking for better ways to think about policy design, implementation, engagement, crisis response, institutional learning, and service delivery.

At a time when uncertainty can narrow imagination into urgency, control, risk avoidance, or pessimism, this publication offers a different starting point. Another way of thinking, working, and living together is possible — and sometimes, the first step is to find better words for it.

The publication is released under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0. Readers are welcome to share, adapt, and draw from it for non-commercial purposes, with attribution.