The joint project Futures Literacy in Teacher and Professional Education in the Nordics will develop and test a training module aimed at future teachers and professionals, designed to provide them with the theoretical insight and practical skills they need to promote Futures Literacy among their students and colleagues.
Last week, Fremtenkt, CIFS and FFRC met up at the offices of CIFS in Copenhagen to develop a first sketch of a futures training module.
The module will provide future teachers and professionals with the theoretical insight and practical skills they need to promote Futures Literacy among their students and colleagues.
During an intense couple of days, we went from presenting our prior experiences in the field to hashing out two complete sketches for the training module.
These will be tested with the students at VIA's SDG ambassador corps this fall, and with the students at NLA's primary school teacher program next spring.
The workshop also served as a test of the hypothesis that combining the different backgrounds and experiences of our three Nordic futures institutions would be fruitfully complementary – an hypothesis that has been decisively strengthened as we now move in to the next phase of testing and evaluating.
Project launch press release
Leading futures and education institutions launch project to promote Futures Literacy education in the Nordics.
Fremtenkt, CIFS, FFRC, NLA and VIA are happy to announce the launch of Futures Literacy in Teacher and Professional Education in the Nordics – a joint project between Nordic futures and teaching institutions, funded by Nordplus.
The FLITAPE Nordic project will develop and test a training module aimed at future teachers and professionals, designed to provide them with the theoretical insight and practical skills they need to promote Futures Literacy among their students and colleagues.
The project has received a EUR 70 000 grant from the Nordplus Horizontal program, and will run from June 2024 through June 2025.
Futures Literacy as an essential skill
Coined by UNESCO, Futures Literacy denotes the capacity to understand how images of the future influence our perceptions of the present, and the ability to generate novel images of possible futures to explore alternative courses of action.
In the face of unprecedented global crises, Futures Literacy has emerged as an essential skill. The future of humankind hinges on the decisions we make today, and Futures Literacy allows us to challenge the dominant “business as usual” narratives, create alternative visions of the future, and discover new opportunities for action towards a truly sustainable society.
International research show that Futures Literacy education stimulates imagination, increases interdisciplinarity, and creates optimism, new perspectives, and new forms of agency. As yet, Futures Literacy oriented teaching is a novel phenomenon in the Nordics. This project aims to promote Futures Literacy education by joining the forces of three futures-oriented organisations and two University Colleges who are each leaders in their field in their respective countries.
Project members
Fremtenkt is a Norwegian private non-profit organisation that assists public institutions and private companies in using the future to address challenges and identify opportunities through which they can hasten the transition to a sustainable society.
Fremtenkt will be acting as project coordinator.
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (CIFS) is an independent, non-profit futures think tank founded in 1969 with the purpose of helping people and organisations imagine, work with, and shape their future. CIFS' vision is a futures literate world where everyone has the right and mandate to engage with the future, participate, and visualise change, so they can create the best possible future for themselves, society, and the planet. CIFS is the Danish node of the Millennium Project, the initiator of Teach the Future Denmark, and shares a UNESCO Chair with Aarhus University in anticipatory leadership & futures capabilities.
Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) is one of the few university departments devoted to futures research in the world. Founded 1992, FFRC is a department within the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, Finland. The Centre works with a transdisciplinary approach in an international environment. The cornerstones of FFRC's activities are developing academic futures studies, critical interdisciplinary research, high quality education, strategic and business foresight and insightfully produced futures knowledge. FFRC holds an Unesco Chair in Learning for Transformation and Planetary Futures.
NLA University College is an accredited private university college with a wide range of practice-oriented and socially relevant courses in Bergen, Oslo and Kristiansand, Norway. Founded upon Christian values, the organisation’s hallmark is close follow-up of students, and an emphasis on the students’ personal development and ethical competence and awareness.
VIA University College is one of Denmark’s six university colleges. VIA’s programmes, courses and research focus on professional practice in areas such as healthcare, teaching, social education, technology, business and design. Danish university colleges are universities of applied sciences and offer the majority of the country's professional bachelor degree programmes. VIA's programmes combine research-based teaching with practical training in public and private companies.
Follow us
Interested in hearing more about the project and following updates from our work as it progresses?
This webpage will be updated with news and other information.
We also encourage you to follow any or all of the project partners on LinkedIn and/or Facebook to get updates:
The project group meets online for the first time.
Today, the project members met virtually for the project kick-off meeting.
The agenda was mostly concerned with practical matters like disbursement of project funds and planning of next steps, but the meeting also served the important function of allowing all the project partners to meet for the first time.
We were joined by Thor Svanholm from CIFS, Sari Miettinen from FFRC, Synne Ytre Arna, Julie Borge and Heidi Saure from NLA and Birgitte Woge Nilsen from VIA.
The meeting was hosted by Sveinung Sundfør Sivertsen and Ragnhild Nabben, representing the project manager Fremtenkt.
FLITAPE – Nordic is a joint project of Fremtenkt (🇳🇴), Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (CIFS 🇩🇰), Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC 🇫🇮), NLA University college (🇳🇴) and VIA University college (🇩🇰).
The aim of the project is to design, develop and test a teaching module tailored specifically for university college students training to be teachers at the primary and secondary school level, as well as other relevant professions.
The teaching module will introduce students to the concept of Futures Literacy and equip them with one or more tools to effectively incorporate future-oriented teaching and critical thinking methods into their own practice.
By doing so, the project group aims to empower future educators and related professionals to instill this crucial competency in their students and coworkers, thereby fostering informed decision-making and innovative problem-solving for a more sustainable future.
The project is funded through Nordplus Horizontal and will run from June 2024 through June 2025.
More about the project partners
Fremtenkt is a private non-profit organisation that assists public institutions and private companies in using the future to address challenges and identify opportunities through which they can hasten the transition to a sustainable society.
Fremtenkt will be the project coordinator.
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies (CIFS) is an independent, non-profit futures think tank founded in 1969 with the purpose of helping people and organisations imagine, work with, and shape their future. CIFS' vision is a futures literate world where everyone has the right and mandate to engage with the future, participate, and visualise change, so they can create the best possible future for themselves, society, and the planet. CIFS is the Danish node of the Millennium Project, the initiator of Teach the Future Denmark, and shares a UNESCO Chair with Aarhus University in anticipatory leadership & futures capabilities.
Finland Futures Research Centre (FFRC) is one of the few university departments devoted to futures research in the world. Founded 1992, FFRC is a department within the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, Finland. The Centre works with a transdisciplinary approach in an international environment. The cornerstones of FFRC's activities are developing academic futures studies, critical interdisciplinary research, high quality education, strategic and business foresight and insightfully produced futures knowledge. FFRC holds an Unesco Chair in Learning for Transformation and Planetary Futures.
NLA University College is an accredited private university college with a wide range of practice-oriented and socially relevant courses in Bergen, Oslo and Kristiansand, Norway. Founded upon Christian values, the organisation’s hallmark is close follow-up of students, and an emphasis on the students’ personal development and ethical competence and awareness.
VIA University College is one of Denmark’s six university colleges. VIA’s programmes, courses and research focus on professional practice in areas such as healthcare, teaching, social education, technology, business and design. Danish university colleges are universities of applied sciences and offer the majority of the country's professional bachelor degree programmes. VIA's programmes combine research-based teaching with practical training in public and private companies.
Futures Literacy is about using the future to discover new opportunities in the present.
This is a skill that UNESCO, the EU, and international innovation communities consider crucial for navigating an increasingly uncertain world and successfully achieving the green transition:
Futures Literacy has become an essential skill in the context of the unprecedented crises we are confronting, and where we come to realise that the future of humankind will depend on the kind of decisions we take today. Using Foresight and Futures Literacy, we can question the current way we understand the world, move out from our comfort zone and expand our imagination.
The concept of Futures Literacy was developed by UNESCO.
Being futures literate means understanding how images of the future shape perceptions of the present and being able to use alternative future scenarios as mirrors or prisms to discover other aspects of what is happening around us today.
“The future” does not exist, but everyone has ideas about what it might be like. These ideas shape how we perceive the present: they direct our attention to certain trends and possibilities for action while steering us away from others. By articulating these ideas, we can become aware of how our images of the future frame our understanding. What assumptions do we take for granted when we think about the future? And what happens if we change these assumptions? By changing our assumptions about the future, we can create new frameworks of understanding, which in turn can help us discover new trends and opportunities for action—essentially sources of innovation. This is how we can gradually develop Futures Literacy.
UNESCO calls Futures Literacy an essential skill, equating it with digital literacy, for example. The EU and others highlight Futures Literacy as crucial for enhancing democratic citizenship
Political participation involves helping to chart a course for the future, both in the coming years and in the longer term. Futures Literacy is a key skill in this respect, both for developing the ability to critically assess others' images of the future and to create such images ourselves. Read more in the EU report The Future of Government 2030+.
and to promote radical innovation for sustainable development.
"Based on our experiences in FLxDeep 2020, we see great potential for Futures Literacy to enable innovators to use futures to innovate the present with greater resilience, creativity, and effectiveness." Demystifying futures literacy, a key skill for climate innovation
