
Postcards from the Future
A creative warm-up and visioning exercise that invites participants to imagine a future world or situation and describe what it feels like to be there. This approach helps surface early assumptions, hopes, and curiosities, while gently introducing the idea that the future can be imagined and shaped.
Goal
To spark imagination and open up a futures mindset in a low-pressure, engaging way. Helps participants begin to explore possible futures from a personal perspective.
Materials
Instructions
- Invite participants to imagine they are living in a future. This might be 5, 10, or even 20 years from now. The exact time horizon can be adjusted to fit your workshop.
- Ask them to write a postcard to someone in the present day, describing a moment from their day in this future. Encourage sensory details: what they see, hear, do, or feel. If time allows, offer time to design the postcards - adding an image, a collage, colours etc.
- If helpful, you can prompt with a few questions: Where are you? What’s different? What’s surprising?
- After writing, invite participants to share their postcards in pairs or small groups.
- Optionally, gather a few examples with the whole group to notice themes, surprises, or patterns. Use these to segue into your workshop.
Facilitation tips
- Providing a focal point for the exercise to help guide participants in their thinking. Is your purpose to envision a business future, innovate by getting ideas from possible futures, explore risks and opportunities, imagine sustainable futures? As with most facilitation, the initial positioning is key.
- Communicate that there’s no “right” future to imagine. Allow participants to be optimistic, critical, playful, or reflective. This ensures a diversity of perspectives.
- Consider assigning personas to prompt insights for a specific group of people.
- Some may focus on big shifts; others on personal experiences. Both are valid and valuable.
- You can vary the tone by adjusting the prompt: “Imagine a desirable future…” or “a future where one big challenge has been solved…”
Background
This method is widely used in futures and design workshops as a light, narrative entry point into thinking about change over time.
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