Future Dialogues

Jul 31

Zukunftsdialoge / Dialoghi Futuri / Dialogues pour le Futur

Crises cause great challenges, conflicts and traumatic experiences. At the same time, however, they create spaces for new opportunities to arise. A conscious reflection is needed in phases like the one we just experienced to not only cope with its long-term effects but to create a truly meaningful and systemic transformation through collective learning.

Besides the political analysis of how to avoid such catastrophes, we need a "bottom up learning" from this situation after the lockdown and when "resuming" our daily life. Through the Future Dialogues project, the important issues that have arisen in this crisis will be addressed in and with the entire population (e.g. the interconnectedness of our world, the vulnerability of our systems, the breakdown of all social meeting places, gender inequalities or local resilience).

The aim of this project is to provide a framework for this reflection and the collective ideas, approaches and responses to the consequences of COVID-19 and to use the energy that this crisis has unleashed constructively. In collaboration with local partners, we are conducting citizen dialogues, so-called future dialogues, in 5+ communities or cities in order to make the newly arisen questions and the learned knowledge visible in an exemplary way. Also, the project aims at enabling local politics and population to jointly address the deeper causes of this situation, the coming difficulties and arising possibilities.

On the one hand, the project creates a meaningful effect by alleviating the numbness, the feeling of powerlessness or paralysis that many people felt during those extraordinary times and by consciously processing these as a community. On the other hand, it contains a creative element as we encourage the population to co-create the future together and give regenerative approaches a real chance. We also want to show that there are methods that can do justice to complexity and take away our fear of the apparent uncontrollability.

The current situation also raises questions about the nation state and international cooperation. In Switzerland's border regions in particular, the crisis has highlighted the importance of cross-border mobility and the mutual dependence between different systems in neighbouring countries. In our nation-state democratic structures there is little room for an exchange on these issues. These future dialogues allow for residents and local authorities from two to three countries to participate and co-create solutions.

Currently, there are local teams in three different regions. This project has the potential to not only help us overcome and learn from the current situation but also experience what co-creating the future can look and feel like.