Bristol immersive futures jam
Experiential futures making with creatives, futurists and technologists
Background
Visiting professor Stuart Candy (Tecnológico de Monterrey) worked with us in the Centre to run the first ‘Bristol Immersive Futures Jam.’ The jam enabled a group of researchers in the Centre to work alongside Prof Candy, and a group of local creatives, futurists and technologists, to organise and facilitate a process for building immersive theatre ‘time machines’ or ‘situations’ from the future. Using media arts led, experiential techniques for futuring has become particularly popular in design-based work but there has been little research interrogating these methods. The jam was an opportunity to document and reflect on the process and what we might learn about tactics for immersive and participatory futuring. The learning will play into the Immersive TAP and support the Design thread to adapt these methods for work with communities and partners across the Centre’s research activities.
Our approach
The Immersive Jam took place over a weekend. 20 creatives, futurists, academics and technologists worked in five groups to create ‘situations’ from the future in locations in Bristol 2024. The rooms engaged with the problems of Bristol today such as increasingly fragmented communities, human relations with nature, health inequalities and economic disparities. Each room was ‘performed’ at the end of the weekend to invited guests and discussions around the main themes that emerged were facilitated. We asked questions such as: what might need to change today to bring about this preferred future? What’s getting in the way of change? Whose voices are not being considered? Film makers documented the event and we held a de-brief and reflective session for all those taking part in order to understand the application of experiential, immersive futures techniques.
Opportunities and outcomes
As a result of Stuart Candy’s visit we have established a group of creatives, technologists and futurists, working across disciplines and sectors, who are interested in forming a ‘Bristol Futures Collective’. This will support the Centre to grow our work around participatory and creative futuring methods and techniques and to influence others in this area. We hope this may lead to interventions across and beyond Bristol. Stuart’s visit also created important links with South and Central American futurists which we hope will enable more international connections for the Centre in this space.
CenSoF investigators: Laurene Cheilen, Paul Clarke, Keri Facer, Marisela Gutierrez- Lopez, Helen Manchester.
Partners and collaborators: Distinguished visiting professor Stuart Candy, Centre for Creative Technologies University of Bristol, Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship University of Bristol.