OCAD SFI grad student Pupul Bisht presented the October DwD on exploring storytelling to decolonize foresight methods. Pupul’s research in OCADU’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program critiques and redefines futures methods by inquiring into cross-cultural and indigenous futures thinking.
Pupul explores several questions in the workshop:
- How might storytelling work as a tool for inclusion of non-western perspectives in foresight?
- How might we make futures methodology pluralistic, and hence more inclusive?
- Who owns images of the future? Can stories help reveal these power structures?
- How do different cultural epistemologies of time & future affect the ability of a community to participate in the current foresight design process?
- How do different cultures visualize progress?
Different cultures around the world have diverse future temporalities and distinct ways of thinking about the future. In the Confucian worldview the future can be in the future as well as the past, so can it be in the Hindu and Buddhist worlds. The concept of time in these cultures is such that one can view the future in or from the past. This cyclic concept of time is often not included in foresight explorations, as most tools and frameworks used by practitioners visualize time as a linear entity, expressed “horizontally.”
This Design with Dialogue workshop was part of Pupul’s major research project in the SFI program, and designed around exploration of the above mentioned questions in multidisciplinary teams of experts in foresight, storytelling and non-western perspectives. Through this dialogic workshop we will try to identify underlying cultural values, worldviews and assumptions that shape the current methods and theories in futures discourse. We will conclude with a generative session where we will explore practical frameworks that could be used to make the discipline more inclusive.
From this workshop, you can expect to:
- Gain a better understanding of the epistemological limitations of the current futures discourse
- Explore scope for intervention in multidisciplinary teams
- Learn new methods and expand your foresight vocabularies and toolkits
Join us if you are interested in exploring ways to open the foresight process to non-western ways of knowing, doing and being through storytelling. This workshop will be an interesting opportunity to co-create frameworks at the intersection of Foresight, Storytelling and Decolonization
About the Presenter
Pupul is an Indian designer with deep passion for exploring cultural plurality in contemporary design practices. With a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design from National Institute of Design, India Pupul moved to Toronto last year to pursue her Master’s in the OCAD Strategic Foresight and Innovation program. She is conducting this workshop as part of her Major Research Project. Her thesis explores the intersection of cultural foresight, storytelling and epistemological pluralism.
With a belief that the stories we tell of our pasts shape our futures, Pupul wants to dedicate her multi-disciplinary creative practice to uncovering narratives of alternative histories and desirable futures that otherwise lie in mundane yet under-explored nooks of our everyday world. Through the tool of storytelling she hopes to move foresight outside organizational confines and engage in mass-dialogue about our collective futures as a civilization.