Refracting the Futures (Back to the Futures #10)
October has been full, and full of so many futures perspectives. From ecological transition in Ecuador to the three horizons of sustainability, from urban wellbeing to megatrends for design and education, from mental health in the cultural sector to kitchens as the heart of the home, from democracy reimagined in the Basque Country to a hands-on masterclass on how to actually do foresight.
Working on 'refracting the futures' is the thread running through it all. In our Megatrends PRISM, refracting is the act of looking at change through multiple lenses, and noticing how each lens bends the light differently. Helping us re-perceive and gets into the nooks and crannies. It turns noise into context, context into more clarity, and that clarity into choices.
Half a year after releasing our Megatrends, it’s striking how often the framework becomes a conversation starter. When the world throws ten breaking news stories at you before lunch, a shared lens is what keeps the signals from dissolving into static. Used well, the framework invites different disciplines and lived experiences into the same room and turns disagreement into productive friction.
The most learningful moment this month was taking the Megatrends into a public lecture setting. The questions cut deep, into our relationship with the future, our tendency to slip into doom, and the quiet ways we hand over agency. What if the point isn’t to be certain, but to stay capable? What if refracting the futures is how we learn to see our options, and ourselves, in a different light?
So here are some questions we're carrying right now:
→ What changes when we deliberately switch lenses before we decide?
→ Where does agency live when the futures feels crowded and loud?
→ How do we build rooms, and cultures, where refracting is a shared habit?
Let’s dive in.
LOOKING BACK
📍 Reimagining Futures: Ecological Transition (Latin America).
A bilingual session with T’inki where Ana Ines Osorio Rios and Mathias Behn Bjørnhof explored how global patterns meet local agency, and why imagination power matters in transitions. We discussed megatrends, emerging world order shifts, and the tensions between democracy, sustainability, and development.
📍 Ljubljana Forum — Anticipating the City of Wellbeing.
Talk + hands-on Three Horizons workshop with 40 participants. We mapped pressures (H1), visions (H3), and pragmatic pathways (H2) toward fairer, greener, more resilient cities. The insights fed into a Futures Cities Manifesto and key learning were that we need to use foresight to make imagination operational and treat anticipation as civic capacity.
📍 Megatrends for Design & Education
An online workshop (hosted by Mathias and Søs Christine Hejselbæk) where we helped translate the Megatrends PRISM into what it could mean for the futures of design and learning for IED Spain.
📍 Mental Health x Futures
Workshop for museum professionals during Denmark’s Mental Health Week. We (Mathias and Bianca Muresan) worked with anticipatory anxiety, practical foresight tools, and three lenses — society, organization, self — to build calm through clarity and shared language.
📍 Futures of Kitchens
Three talks on kitchens for kitchen retailer group as the evolving interface of home life, where food, energy, social connection, and care converge. We looked at signals spanning attentive homes, shifting diets, and circular design.
📍 Democracy Reimagined (University of Deusto)
Back in San Sebastián to facilitate a session on Futures, Design & Innovation for Shaping the Future of Democracy. Students rapidly prototyped democratic experiments (from AI-enabled assemblies to “Demo Camp” civic labs).
📍 Doing Foresight Masterclass — replay available.
More than 80 people across 30+ countries have watched live or a replay where Mathias and Chloé de Ruffray connected horizon scanning, futures wheels, scenarios, and backcasting into one applied flow, plus a fictive case (Nova Helse).
📍 ANTICIPATE → 5,000 followers.
A milestone powered by community (and good skepticism). Behind-the-scenes notes on audiences, roles, and why we’re building a platform for democratizing foresight.
📍 Speaking via pej gruppen.
You can now book keynotes on megatrends, foresight, AI & imagination, urban futures, and more via Scandinavia’s leading trend house: https://lnkd.in/dmP82_yq
📍 Folkeuniversitetet: Megatrends lecture series.
A packed kickoff with sharp questions on agency and anticipation; next stops include Aarhus and Aalborg. Post:
📍 Mathias and Rio Suzuki hosted Bridging the Horizons, a grounding Three Horizons workshop on sustainability with powerful student energy and action.
📍 Other futures reflections
Strategy Mirror. Four deceptively simple questions (resonance, blind spots, scale of change, past lessons) to surface strategic undercurrents across levels. Post:
Don’t relegate the futures. A short meditation on why even a brief look-ahead can materially shift today’s choices.
Find Your Futures Voice (mentoring). A tailored four-session coaching journey to strengthen method, mindset, and practice — with applications open for late-2025 / early-2026.
We opened an intern call. Strategic Foresight Intern (ECTS-eligible). Copenhagen-based or commuting; two days/week at BLOX. Apply by Fri 7 Nov: https://lnkd.in/dYDBEf9k
LOOKING AHEAD
📍 Dubai Future Forum — The Futures Within (with Darwin Sy Antipolo, pxd labs).
A playful personal-foresight lab using LEGO® Serious Play®, zine-making, and rapid prototyping to deepen futures mindset and pilot a Personal Futures Readiness tool.
📍 ANTICIPATE Academy — ACT: Anticipating Futures (self-paced, early-2026).
Case-based self-paced course on scanning, PRISM, scenarios, AI in foresight, facilitation, and project design, built from practice to help teams apply foresight. Join the waitlist: https://tally.so/r/wkBNjr
📍 Masterclass — Augmenting Foresight (AI x Foresight).
A December deep dive into how AI supports, stretches, and challenges foresight workflows (from scanning to synthesis and facilitation). Waitlist for our masterclass series: https://tally.so/r/w872Qz
📍 Pre-Dubai first-timers coffee (with Amy Daroukakis & Chloé de Ruffray).
A casual meetup to swap tips, build connections, and lower the “big-conference” barrier. Announcement soon.
📍 ConsilioCircle: AI & Emerging Tech.
Peer dialogue with Danish leaders on practical adoption, value creation, and guardrails — designed for candid exchange and shared sense-making.
📍 IIX x ANTICIPATE — Leading the Futures of Finance (in development).
A self-paced course to help finance leaders work futures-back and system-wide. Institute catalog: https://institute.iixglobal.com/course-catalog
📍 Guest lecture — London College of Communication.
Futures & foresight for creative practice: translating signals into studio briefs, and design as a vehicle for anticipatory culture.
📍 Megatrends marathon (late month).
Talks for Rotary International, HK Denmark, Folkeuniversitet (Aarhus & Aalborg), plus two ConsilioCircles — eight days, multiple rooms, one shared aim: refract the futures and act with intent.
SIGNAL OF THE MONTH
The quiet power of awe.
Faced with overexposure and outrage, awe might just be one of the most underrated human technologies we have. As researcher Dacher Keltner shows in Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder, this feeling of reverent wonder, the mix of humility and expansion that hits when we see something vast, beautiful, or deeply human, can soften the edges between us.
People who’ve experienced awe report being less rigid in their beliefs and less eager to distance themselves from those who think differently. Physiologically, awe quiets stress, releases oxytocin and dopamine, and activates the vagus nerve, the part of our system that helps us connect and stay open.
How do we make space for that spark of wonder that moves us from knowing to noticing, from certainty to humility, from distance to connection?
SPOTLIGHT
Megatrends PRISM: Futures by Design
Across two four-hour sessions, we can help you go from outside-in to inside-out. All through the Megatrends PRISM tool, refracting the futures through Possibilities, Risks, Inquiries, Signals, and Mindsets, then turning insights into strategic provocations and tangible strategic directions.
The result: Futures by Design, a bridge from foresight to action. You and your colleague leave not only with a richer grasp of global change but with concrete implications to bring directly into your strategic planning, innovation, or policy work.
We’ve also partnered with a streamlined online strategy platform that connects foresight with implementation all in one place, helping teams move from signals and insights all the way to prioritized actions and shared accountability.
👉 To explore how a PRISM session or integration could work in your organization, reach out at hi@anticipate.dk.
Back to the Futures is your monthly glimpse into what we’re doing at ANTICIPATE. If you’d like to collaborate, bring foresight into your work, or just stay more plugged into the futures space, we’d love to hear from you at hi@anticipate.dk.
Until next time, stay curious.
— The ANTICIPATE Team
