Special Programs Think Tank Tallinn, 2019
The Extrapolation Factory ran this five-day workshop at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn from July 29 to August 2, 2019, as part of the EKA Summer Academy. Participants formed small experimental think tanks to test what a think tank run by the public, rather than by experts alone, might produce. Members of the Estonian Foresight Centre joined us for the launch and introduced their methods. Starting from the centre’s research on the future of work, each think tank developed four alternate scenarios for 2035, set in a specific place, and made them tangible as images, objects and printed matter for a final presentation.
See more documentation of the workshop on Flickr.
See more documentation of the workshop on Flickr.
What if Think Tanks Were Operated by the Public?
Essay by Elliott P. Montgomery & Chris Woebken
Essay by Elliott P. Montgomery & Chris Woebken
The Extrapolation Factory is the studio we formed in 2012, with an interest in developing a participatory practice that uses design to facilitate debate about current issues. We launched our first project in the format of a publicly organized workshop to envision future scenarios embodied as provocative objects for sale in a discount store in Brooklyn, New York.
From there, we’ve evolved to tell stories of possible versions of futures in many ways, leveraging design as a visual language that people are accustomed to experiencing in their daily life. We’ve adapted future narratives as stores, signs, consumer products, advertisements, businesses, junk mail, flyers and more.
This practice stems from a rich history in future studies. Some of the most inspiring and formative work emerged in the 1950s, led by the RAND Corporation and their explorations around game theory and systems theory, driven in part by Herman Kahn. The RAND Corporation was looking at ways to envision multiple scenarios and then make plans of action to be deployed if any of these possibilities became reality.
There were several research groups that emerged over the following decades which evolved these ideas, translating system scenarios into experiential futures. The Manoa School of Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii is one of the programs that spearheaded this exploration, with heavy influence from the former program director, Jim Dator. Dator’s work and that at the University of Houston pioneered some of the early approaches to teaching futures.
In the commercial and policy sectors, Royal Dutch Shell and numerous political think tanks began to explore potential impacts of futures studies, and to communicate scientific research from modeling to social impact and recommendations for policy making. These practices have become deeply ingrained in industry and common practice around the world.
We're particularly interested in developing methods to create and express futures in participatory and accessible ways. This approach is preceded by numerous others such as Robert Jungk, who developed futures workshops as early as the 1970s.
Fundamental to our view of future studies is the premise that we can not predict the future in social contexts. Any effort to predict social futures is probably somewhat misguided unless it’s centered in statistical terms. Most futures studies practitioners and researchers focus instead on envisioning hypotheticals. We also believe that without having specific visual narratives, it's nearly impossible to make plans to work toward those visions, to build consensus or to discuss or debate those visions. The work of futurists in the present really hinges on the scrutiny of events that are taking place in the recent past, offering a sense of what might be possible. Futurists assemble those events, also called signals, into visions that help us see possible versions of futures that we have not seen. Additionally, we operate under the principle that there is no singular future - that futures always come in multiples. Following, we use the plural version of the word ‘future’. Every individual sees futures differently based on their own perspectives and biases. Each person has numerous versions of futures that they can envision. We believe this multiplicity of future narratives should be introduced to conversations on planning as a constructive and necessary step, affording a representative look at societal desires. From here, we can compare, contrast and juxtapose the different ways our world could transform over time.
The Extrapolation Factory has run hundreds of futures workshops at this point, and we’ve noticed that people find relief in thinking of numerous futures, though difficult at first. This approach allows for negotiation between many voices, inspiring conversation and expression. Workshop participants often have empowering realizations as they go through these experiences. Many participants leave feeling an increased sense of agency over their relationship to possible futures, and that the methods and principles that we experiment with in the workshops are potentially useful in their home and work contexts.
Our practice comes from an overlapping between this field of future studies and the work that's often done in think tanks focusing on foresight and the connection to design. In 2006, Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby launched a program at the Royal College of Art, which proposed that design might serve purposes beyond problem solving and consumer good creation. They proposed that design be used to ask critical questions of the systems around us. They initially called this approach critical design. Subsequently, they explored framings such as speculative design and discursive design. Each of these orientations of design moved away from creating solutions, and opened up the realm of possibility for what design might be capable of.
As the speculative design community starts to find linkages between their own work and the work of foresight strategists and futures researchers, a new field seems to be emerging, which we call ‘design futures’. Design futures is essentially the integration of this visual approach to envisioning alternate possibilities through the creation of immersive visual media, objects, artifacts, images, film and video.
Through The Extrapolation Factory, we see the opportunity to broaden the spectrum of people who do design futures and to make these approaches accessible to diverse communities. Through workshops that break down futures approaches into clear steps we experiment with ways to make these ideas more accessible.
For our latest workshop at the Estonian Academy of Arts, we introduced a challenge to question the operation and procedures being used by present-day think tanks. Many think tanks in the modern era have shifted away from their initial premise, which was to serve as non-partisan, expert groups who research and then propose strategic pathways that could lead to policy advancement with the objective of bettering society. In recent decades though, many think tanks have shifted to serving specific interests put forth by influential individuals and special interest groups with very large amounts of money. The result is an ecosystem of think tanks that are much more partisan, and therefore, don’t serve the role of helping diverse groups come to agreements.
In this project, we set up an experiment in which we questioned the exclusive expert staffing of think tanks. Although experts have deep knowledge, they don't necessarily represent the perspectives of the broader public. We were interested to see if a publicly operated think tank might democratize the narrative outcomes that influence policy. We asked the participants to form small experimental think tanks and to run a project based on some prior work by the Estonian Foresight Centre. We were privileged to have members of the centre join us for the launch of the project and introduce us to their processes and methods.
We set the participants off with a portfolio of methods, tools and approaches to investigate a topic originally researched by the Estonian Foresight Centre. The goal was to imagine scenarios for futures of work in 2035. The projects that you see in this publication are the outcomes of this experimental effort. Each one is comprised of four alternate scenarios, developed through research around the issues that may transform work in specific geographic locations. The students adapted the information they found through their research to help them visualize ways that people may support themselves in some version of 2035.
From there, we’ve evolved to tell stories of possible versions of futures in many ways, leveraging design as a visual language that people are accustomed to experiencing in their daily life. We’ve adapted future narratives as stores, signs, consumer products, advertisements, businesses, junk mail, flyers and more.
This practice stems from a rich history in future studies. Some of the most inspiring and formative work emerged in the 1950s, led by the RAND Corporation and their explorations around game theory and systems theory, driven in part by Herman Kahn. The RAND Corporation was looking at ways to envision multiple scenarios and then make plans of action to be deployed if any of these possibilities became reality.
There were several research groups that emerged over the following decades which evolved these ideas, translating system scenarios into experiential futures. The Manoa School of Futures Studies at the University of Hawaii is one of the programs that spearheaded this exploration, with heavy influence from the former program director, Jim Dator. Dator’s work and that at the University of Houston pioneered some of the early approaches to teaching futures.
In the commercial and policy sectors, Royal Dutch Shell and numerous political think tanks began to explore potential impacts of futures studies, and to communicate scientific research from modeling to social impact and recommendations for policy making. These practices have become deeply ingrained in industry and common practice around the world.
We're particularly interested in developing methods to create and express futures in participatory and accessible ways. This approach is preceded by numerous others such as Robert Jungk, who developed futures workshops as early as the 1970s.
Fundamental to our view of future studies is the premise that we can not predict the future in social contexts. Any effort to predict social futures is probably somewhat misguided unless it’s centered in statistical terms. Most futures studies practitioners and researchers focus instead on envisioning hypotheticals. We also believe that without having specific visual narratives, it's nearly impossible to make plans to work toward those visions, to build consensus or to discuss or debate those visions. The work of futurists in the present really hinges on the scrutiny of events that are taking place in the recent past, offering a sense of what might be possible. Futurists assemble those events, also called signals, into visions that help us see possible versions of futures that we have not seen. Additionally, we operate under the principle that there is no singular future - that futures always come in multiples. Following, we use the plural version of the word ‘future’. Every individual sees futures differently based on their own perspectives and biases. Each person has numerous versions of futures that they can envision. We believe this multiplicity of future narratives should be introduced to conversations on planning as a constructive and necessary step, affording a representative look at societal desires. From here, we can compare, contrast and juxtapose the different ways our world could transform over time.
The Extrapolation Factory has run hundreds of futures workshops at this point, and we’ve noticed that people find relief in thinking of numerous futures, though difficult at first. This approach allows for negotiation between many voices, inspiring conversation and expression. Workshop participants often have empowering realizations as they go through these experiences. Many participants leave feeling an increased sense of agency over their relationship to possible futures, and that the methods and principles that we experiment with in the workshops are potentially useful in their home and work contexts.
Our practice comes from an overlapping between this field of future studies and the work that's often done in think tanks focusing on foresight and the connection to design. In 2006, Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby launched a program at the Royal College of Art, which proposed that design might serve purposes beyond problem solving and consumer good creation. They proposed that design be used to ask critical questions of the systems around us. They initially called this approach critical design. Subsequently, they explored framings such as speculative design and discursive design. Each of these orientations of design moved away from creating solutions, and opened up the realm of possibility for what design might be capable of.
As the speculative design community starts to find linkages between their own work and the work of foresight strategists and futures researchers, a new field seems to be emerging, which we call ‘design futures’. Design futures is essentially the integration of this visual approach to envisioning alternate possibilities through the creation of immersive visual media, objects, artifacts, images, film and video.
Through The Extrapolation Factory, we see the opportunity to broaden the spectrum of people who do design futures and to make these approaches accessible to diverse communities. Through workshops that break down futures approaches into clear steps we experiment with ways to make these ideas more accessible.
For our latest workshop at the Estonian Academy of Arts, we introduced a challenge to question the operation and procedures being used by present-day think tanks. Many think tanks in the modern era have shifted away from their initial premise, which was to serve as non-partisan, expert groups who research and then propose strategic pathways that could lead to policy advancement with the objective of bettering society. In recent decades though, many think tanks have shifted to serving specific interests put forth by influential individuals and special interest groups with very large amounts of money. The result is an ecosystem of think tanks that are much more partisan, and therefore, don’t serve the role of helping diverse groups come to agreements.
In this project, we set up an experiment in which we questioned the exclusive expert staffing of think tanks. Although experts have deep knowledge, they don't necessarily represent the perspectives of the broader public. We were interested to see if a publicly operated think tank might democratize the narrative outcomes that influence policy. We asked the participants to form small experimental think tanks and to run a project based on some prior work by the Estonian Foresight Centre. We were privileged to have members of the centre join us for the launch of the project and introduce us to their processes and methods.
We set the participants off with a portfolio of methods, tools and approaches to investigate a topic originally researched by the Estonian Foresight Centre. The goal was to imagine scenarios for futures of work in 2035. The projects that you see in this publication are the outcomes of this experimental effort. Each one is comprised of four alternate scenarios, developed through research around the issues that may transform work in specific geographic locations. The students adapted the information they found through their research to help them visualize ways that people may support themselves in some version of 2035.
Workshop scenarios
The following fictional scenarios for work in 2035 were created by the participating think tanks.
Exhibitions & related material
Articles, publications & talks
- What if Think Tanks Were Operated by the Public? — Estonian Academy of ArtsAnna-Liisa Laarits, Estonian Academy of Arts, 2019. Interview about the Tallinn workshop and public think tanks.