A future workshop is a social invention which could have as profound an effect on human progress as any other yet invented. It is a participatory process which enables people to get together to explore any issue which concerns them, and to develop creative approaches which please them. It releases people's resourcefulness and invites them to take part in creating the kind of future they want.
'At present the future is being colonised by a tiny group of people,' writes Jungk, 'with citizens moving into a future shaped by this elite. I believe that we should not go blindly into this future.'
One of Jungk's early future workshops was run in the coal-mining village of Eisenheim, in Germany. The village was scheduled to be torn down and replaced with modern, high-rise buildings which would bring increased incomes to the developers. The villagers were resisting, but their leaders were being labelled troublemakers and reactionaries who were opposed to change. The villagers felt frustrated and full of bitterness at their powerlessness.
With help from a socially committed planner who lived nearby, they cleaned and painted an old coal wash-house for use as a meeting room, and in the course of one day they then held a future workshop, during which they produced dozens of proposals for a modernisation programme in keeping with their needs. They voiced their frustrations and pent-up anger, and worked in small groups with large sheets of paper, dreaming up ideas they wanted to see in their village. No one had ever consulted them before - their ideas had lain idle all these years. The coal mine owned their houses, and told them what to do. They wanted to set up a park, a lending library, a youth centre and a local newspaper, and to have a notice board where people could post up their complaints about the estate management's negligence and harassment. They wanted to create a meeting place where German and foreign workers could get together, and they considered what could be done for pedestrians, and how the sewers and drains could be restored to working order. Eisenheim, they felt, could become a model for other communities by enhancing its own cultural life, by providing more ways for people to get to know each other, and by continuously involving all its residents.
The future workshop comes in five phases:
- Phase 1, the Preparatory Phase, occurs before the workshop begins, when people are invited to a briefing session so that they know what they will be attending. If the workshop is happening over a weekend, then it starts with:
- Phase 2, the Critique Phase, happens on the Friday night. People take time to share their frustrations, irritations and difficulties, which are written on sheets of paper and stuck on the walls.
- Phase 3, the Creative Phase, takes place on Saturday. Focusing on their main items of worry, people now let their imaginations roll, dreaming up hundreds of ideas which they would like to see take place, using the brainstorming technique.
During the workshop, people grow in confidence, and their horizons stretch.
Robert Jungk writes: 'In the fantasy phase of a workshop on 'Alternative Forms of Work' we were taking a short break. A woman broke the silence by saying 'I'm sorry, but I have say something. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've not felt so well in years as during the last couple of hours. That's all I wanted to say. I just had to get it off my chest.'
Through childhood, and in school, college or training, we are rarely invited to contribute our creativity in an open-ended way. We get used to a method of learning which is one-way, in which someone else has the knowledge and expertise. The systems of state examinations allow a few people through the barriers to power and influence, and they then become the experts. The powers-that-be would have us believe that those who do badly at school are simply less intelligent. In this way, people grow used to the idea that someone else will always govern them, be their boss and determine the future of their community. This is why the future workshop is such a critical invention.
'Individuals get an opportunity to spread their wings,' writes Jungk, 'and they discover what they are capable of when serving a larger cause. In the process, their self-confidence grows as they come to realise that they are capable of constructive planning, and thus take their first steps towards adding more meaning to their lives.'
The Aberdeen hill-farmers, instead of becoming depressed and committing suicide under the pressure of mounting bills, might decide, through holding a future workshop, to help each other with their emotional strains and worries, to set up a debt-management advisory service, to explore ways in which they could reduce their loss-making operations, to diversify into new operations, to experiment with new crops and organic approaches, to develop the tourist potential of their area, to establish a local development agency to pursue their plans further - and so on.
The running of a successful future workshop requires group leaders who understand the facilitator style of leadership, and who are sensitive to the realities of long-term community development. Workshops could be encouraged by locating people who possess these skills and asking them to train a group of local people, who would then become a permanent resource. These people could get in touch with community groups and organisations and interest them in holding workshops as part of a wider community awakening strategy.
- The book 'Future Workshops - How to create desirable futures' by Robert Jungk is published by the Institute for Social Inventions, 20 Heber Road, London NW2 6AA (tel 081 208 2853; fax 081 452 6434) at L4-95.
- Guy Dauncey, 2069 Kings Road, Victoria, BC V8R 2P6, Canada (tel 604 592 4472 h; 604 592 4473 w and fax).