Feminist Dream Space Futures Playbook
We need a 1-2 sentence overview that explain what this is, and is for
We Will Dream our Feminist Futures
We will dream feminist futures.
No one can take the power of dreaming away from us.
Why we need to think about the future(s)
In moments of crisis, high levels of stress, and deep uncertainty, it is common to default to survival mode and trauma responses. However, these are perhaps the moments when we should most think about the future and use our hope, collective agency, and imagination to foster systemic transformations.
The oppressive, extractive, unjust and unequal systems we currently live in are the direct result of the dreams, mindsets, and ambitions of a privileged few, who invested time and resources in imagining a world that would serve their interests, at the cost of the rights, safety, dignity, and joy of so many others. We have been living, for far too long, in the futures created without us, by those who never had our best interests as part of the equation.
To recommit to dreaming in these times is to reconnect with self, the other, and what is possible beyond othering. It is to honestly take stock of the futures we genuinely believed were becoming possible - and grieve their interruption. Naming this grief matters. It honours the labour of those who built openings and bridges before us and helps us understand why this historical moment can feel so disorienting. Rather than seeing grief as an obstacle to imagination, we understand it as evidence of our love, our commitment, and our refusal to become indifferent. Grief is evidence that we loved a possibility enough to fight for it. And that we will find it again.
To think about the future, and dare to dream and imagine it expansively, grounded in our feminist values and principles, is not only an act of resistance to the colonial, patriarchal, heteronormative, capitalist, and exploitative status quo, but an opportunity to reinvent the world and the ways we and future generations will live.
This playbook is an offer to take the time and make space to pause, think, feel, and embody the futures we want to see come true in an intentional way. And then make the necessary steps in the present to move towards its realization.
The Playbook
Connecting
Explores the importance of a quality, caring invitation and gathering. It is about how we come together to dream, aware of who is in the room and who is not.
Sensing
Where we attend to time. It honours those who sustained feminist dreaming long before us, makes room for the many ways communities understand the past and the present, and trains our attention on the signals and the seeds of feminist futures already stirring around us.
Dreaming
Is where we make room for the parts of us that still know how to dream. It engages our body, creativity, imagination, play, and inner child. A space where we reach toward our most desirable feminist futures, even beyond what we can describe.
Acknowledging
Where we face all sorts of future scenarios, including less desirable versions. Rather than ignore the plurality of futures that can end up emerging, we examine them through a feminist lens, understand how they would shape our lives, communities and movements, and co-create strategies and actions to navigate and redirect them back toward feminist futures.
Transforming
Where we ground our feminist dreams in practice and foster systemic transformations in the present that will lead to the emergence of feminist futures.
Sharing
Where we hear from you. It is an open and growing commons where practitioners pass on what they learned, how they adapted a practice, what worked and what did not, and what new practices emerged along the way.
How to play with this playbook
A non-linear journey
The structure within every space
The practices presented in this playbook are designed to be used separately or in combination. There is no fixed order for you to follow in this playbook. The only suggestion we make is for you to explore Our Feminist Principles and then the section titled “Connecting”, because that is where we share some ideas on how to prepare a safe space, gather people, and create the conditions for a joyful experience with all the other practices. It brings the foundational work.
From there, you are free to explore the spaces and the practices that resonate the most with you and serve the needs and interests of the group you are working with. Different moments will call for different practices. And you are free to find your own way through a living landscape of feminist imagination and experimentation.
This playbook holds five core spaces, which contain a similar structure:
It tells you its purpose, so you can easily decide if it is worth entering it;
names what we are invited to unlearn so we can let go of old conditionings and avoid biasing our dreaming and imagination process;
offers a set of learning practices to experiment with, containing
a suggested step by step,
a checklist for keeping it aligned with our feminist principles,
a space for you to annotate and make the practice your own.
Futures, Plural
In our playbook, we use the concept of futures (plural), rather than “the future”. This approach comes from a combination of perspectives that we hold simultaneously as we dream the living realities we want to experience.
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“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” — William Gibson
When we look at the world through an intersectional lens, the plurality of futures is evident. Individuals, groups and communities with specific and intersecting identities might dream different futures that resonate with their specific needs, experiences, perspectives, interests, and preferences.
At the same time, when we consider the unequal and discriminatory nature of our current systems, it is incontestable that people with certain identities are exposed to different and disproportionate risks and threats and access fewer rights and opportunities, which impacts what presents and futures will be available to them.
Despite systemic exclusions — and sometimes because of these —, communities and movements left at the margins succeeded in protecting ancestral practices throughout history, and creating alternative ways of doing things and relating to each other that are core to our feminist futures imaginaries. In these instances, we can see that the future is not always something new to be invented, but it also contains the memories of certain pasts that we wished never ceased to exist.
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When we adopt a linear perspective of past-present-future, it is fair to say that the future does not exist yet. In other time cosmovisions, one could argue that, in fact, all versions of the future exist already as a potential. Or that past, present, and future exist at the same time, intertwined with one another. In any case, it is fair to say that the futures hold many possibilities, and our role is not to predict which one will come into being, but to engage with various options and reassess our decisions in the present in light of them.
This perspective contains an assumption that we have agency and power to plan, prepare for, influence, and even shape a desired future. It sees the future as a goal to be accomplished, a destination we are striving to arrive at. Although useful, this linear interpretation of time can limit our imagination on what seems possible to be achieved, based on certain pasts and presents we have in mind, and make us seek certainty and “safe bets”.
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When we adopt a linear perspective of past-present-future, it is fair to say that the future does not exist yet. In other time cosmovisions, one could argue that, in fact, all versions of the future exist already as a potential. Or that past, present, and future exist at the same time, intertwined with one another. In any case, it is fair to say that the futures hold many possibilities, and our role is not to predict which one will come into being, but to engage with various options and reassess our decisions in the present in light of them.
This perspective contains an assumption that we have agency and power to plan, prepare for, influence, and even shape a desired future. It sees the future as a goal to be accomplished, a destination we are striving to arrive at. Although useful, this linear interpretation of time can limit our imagination on what seems possible to be achieved, based on certain pasts and presents we have in mind, and make us seek certainty and “safe bets”.
“There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness . . . that time is now.”
Our Feminist Principles
Note: for this mock up I am adding only the principles - not their description. If people want to see the description the can click to the their specific page
Advance Inclusive and Intersectional Feminisms
Ground the Work in Care and Ethics
Design Collective Decolonial Processes
Centre Global Majority Individuals and Knowledge
Value and Nurture Multiple Ways of Knowing
Building Just and Equal Power Relations
Honour and Work with Different Time Cosmovisions
Advance Imagination and Share New Actionable Visions
Integrate our Relationship to Nature and the More-Than-Human World for a Planetary Regeneration and Responsible Stewardship of the Commons
Why we are inviting you to use futures thinking and foresight methods with a feminist lens
Throughout our playbook, you will encounter several methods from the fields of futures thinking and strategic foresight. These academic and practice-based areas of expertise are dedicated to exploring how change might unfold into different possible futures and how individuals, institutions and societies can prepare for, influence and respond to them.
These methods do not have the intention to predict the future. They help us make sense of forces driving changes, and early signals that may indicate that a certain future is emerging on the horizon. In futures thinking and foresight, it is understood that the wider the range of versions of the future we are able to picture and anticipate, the better our preparedness to prevent, influence, respond to, strengthen or transform them.
Although there is a big overlap between futures’ thinking and foresight in terms of methods used, their purposes are slightly different. Foresight is understood as a more structured methodology to:
identify drivers and signals of change happening in the present;
explore the implications of these emerging issues;
project a range of possible future scenarios;
gain clarity on desirable or preferred futures;
strategize how to co-create or influence towards desirable futures;
test the efficiency of strategies if other scenarios happen instead;
Develop an effective action plan to reduce risks, foster resilience, and potentialize opportunities, while navigating uncertainty and pushing towards the realization of a preferred future.
“Foresight is the systematic exploration and analysis of possible futures to better prepare for change. It is based on a plurality of practices and approaches, informed by research, and aims to create a better understanding of where a system stands, to inform decision-making or to trace the most effective path towards an organisation’s preferred future.”
Source: Futures Glossary
Futures Literacy is interested in the ways in which we engage with the future and how that informs the kinds of futures we are capable of anticipating. It usually leaves more room to explore different futures freely, using imagination, creativity, and playfulness.
“Futures Literacy helps people understand why and how we use the future to prepare, plan, and interact with the complexity and novelty of our societies. Through structured on-the-ground learning-by-doing activities, communities and individuals can learn how the origins of what they imagine can empower them to diversify their actions.”
Source: UNESCO
In this playbook, we draw from both fields, because we see the value of these resources in supporting feminist, queer, and Indigenous activists and movements to increase their capacity in anticipating multiple future scenarios, navigating uncertainties with greater preparedness, and rehearsing what we want to see come true, instead of solely reacting and responding to daunting present reality. These skills are crucial for exercising our power to dream and influence the realization of feminist futures.
However, we incorporate these methods into our practice with an important critique in mind and important questions and adaptations. Many scholars and practitioners, particularly from the Global Majority, have called attention to the embedded biases in futures and foresight methods. Strategic foresight as a discipline emerged from military and private capital fields, often operating through a colonial, patriarchal, capitalist, competitive, technology-reliant, and fear-based paradigm that frames the future as something to be won over others, colonized first, or heavily monetized. This mindset clearly does not resonate with the purpose, values, and ways of operating of feminists and social justice activists and movements. It risks biasing the anticipated futures into a mere perpetuation of the unequal and oppressive status quo, rather than actively proposing systemic transformations for better and fairer futures for all.
We believe that the quality of outcomes and learnings of a futures and foresight exercise depend significantly on the intentions behind it, and the core values and principles that inform its design choices and processes. That is why we are opening this playbook with nine feminist principles and definitions. As we play with the tools, we will come back to these principles in the form of questions and reflections, to make sure that the way we are engaging with the methods is not unintendedly trapping us into old conditionings and limiting our dreams. In every space of this playbook, you will also see a section called “Unlearning”, where we name and challenge some of the worldviews deeply ingrained in our systems, so that we can widen our perspectives and increase the feminist transformative power of our imaginations.
A collective dream come true
The Dreaming Feminist Futures Playbook is itself a collective dream. It emerged from a beautiful weaving of imaginaries, desires, longings, discomforts, questions, and experimentations, among feminists from diverse backgrounds, geographies, and practices. It builds on the knowledge and wisdom of feminist, queer, and Indigenous activists, particularly from the Global Majority, who dreamed feminist futures long before us, many of whose names we will never know.
Developed by the Feminist Dream Space, in partnership with Feminist Futures, this playbook is offered as an open, living resource to the movements who will continue to dream and manifest our collective feminist futures.
“In these times what we need to do is turn towards each other, towards ourselves, turn towards all the creativity and life that has watered us, fed us…” - Kayhan Irani
Credits:
Led by: Thays Prado — Feminist Futures and Leila Hessini — Feminist Dream Space
Edited by: Gitta (TBC)
Design: Claudia Lopez
In co-creation with:
Angelika Arutyunova — Independent Activist
Annie Hillar — Gender Funders Co-Lab
Chhavi Doonga — Independent Activist
Emma Rhule — Hibiscus Horizons
Margarita Antonio — FIMI
Maria Alejandra Escalante — Climate Activist
Nikita Patodia — Just Associates (JASS)
Shamah Bulangis — Independent Activist
Shumona Goel — Hopper-Dean Foundation
Tiffany Nassiri-Ansari — Hibiscus Horizons
Terry de Vries — Urgent Action Fund – Latin America & the Caribbean
Lame Olebile — Independent Activist: Weavers Advisory t; Sativerse Collective