by David Weigend, Head of Education and Participation at Futurium Berlin

We live in a time of great upheaval. Climate change and the mass extinction of species have show us dramatically, that our current lifestyle is not sustainable. To solve this tremendous task we need to reinvent nearly everything - from technology, over culture to economics. This is not an easy task. We often struggle to imagine a future that looks different from the present. Furthermore, we tend to picture the future in stereotypes like flying cars, robots or even spaceships. These are great visions, but they are of little help in solving our current challenges. That is why everything in the Futurium revolves around the question: How do we want to live? We want people to think and come up with their own solutions.  

The Futurium is in the heart of Berlin and hosts an exhibition, an interactive hands-on laboratory, and an event forum as a place of dialogue. We opened in 2019 and have since welcomed over one million visitors.

Design Thinking plays an imported part in our work. Especially in the education program. Our goal is to promote futures literacy. This means the ability to imagine the future in different scenarios and to shape the future in an inventive way. To achieve this, we developed our own educational materials. The so called "future boxes“ incorporate methods from design thinking, future foresight and the education for sustainable development. They invite students to explore the future in a playful way. They are also open source and can be hacked and further developed by everyone.

The future boxes consist of different modules. A typical process starts with an examination of future trends and making sense of the interdependencies and complexity of the world. Using just a few trend cards, the students can create thousands of different future scenarios. Based on the scenarios, students can create future personas, invent futuristic prototypes and even develop their own project ideas, test them and put them into practice.

Design Thinking also plays an important in the Futurium Lab. It is a space for experimentation and collaboration. There we try to combine visionary thinking with practical engineering. The Lab consists of a workshop with 3D printers, laser cutters and robots, as well as an exhibition with various projects at the intersection of art and science. The shown exhibits are work in progress. We regularly organize workshops where visitors can participate and further develop the shown installations.

In the Lab we use practice called speculative design. The aim of the method is to develop proposals that identify and debate crucial issues about the future and stimulate discussion rather than just offering solutions. This also includes the design of detailed hypothetical prototypes that are not feasible with current technologies.

With our program, we want to invite our visitors to get into a mode of co creation. We want to inspire people to take new paths, provide them the tools to invent novel solutions and give them courage to tackle the big challenges of our time.

About the author

David Weigend is part of the founding team of Futurium, where he leads the Education and Participation department. Since his training at D-School in 2011/2012, he has been a passionate design thinker. David also studied economics and future science. In addition, he worked for several years as a game developer. David's passion is the development of playful learning formats at the intersection of design thinking, foresight and science communication.