Category: Organizer

Futurist Researcher
Erasmus Hogeschool; Agence Future

Exhibition | ‘A Temporary Futures Institute’
Presentation | Futures Course First Time Report

Maya van Leemput is a professional futurist combining research and consultancy with a creative multi-media practice. Next to her independent practice she is senior researcher developing the new centre of expertise Applied Futures Research – Open Time at the Erasmus Hogeschool. Maya’s background is in media studies, having attained a Ph.D. from the University of Westminster in 02001 for her research on “Visions of the Future on Television.” Her forward looking work on media, culture, arts, (cross-cultural) communication, development, science and technology in society and urban environments is based in critical theory and uses experimental, creative and participatory approaches. Since 1999 she partners with visual artist Bram Goots on Agence Future (AF), a long-term independent project for exploring images of the future through conversation and intercultural experiment.  The project started with a field journey for ethnographic futures research in 25 countries on five continents. The project continued with recorded futures conversations in various settings and contexts. In 2014 Agence Future completed the three-year extracurricular development education project MAONO that brought students from Brussels (Belgium) and Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) together with Congolese artists for the co-creation of images of the future, culminating in a campus event and a one month exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. Maya also leads the World Futures Studies Federation’s ‘World Futures Learing Lab’ project that has been active since 2012 with the support of the UNESCO Participation Programme and that has provided extra-curricular educational activities in six locations in the global South for over 300 participants.

Senior Curator
M HKA

Exhibition | ‘A Temporary Futures Institute’

Senior Curator of M HKA, Anders Kreuger at M HKA in Antwerp and one of the editors of the art journal Afterall, published in London. He was previously Director of the Malmö Art Academy amd Exhibitions Curator at Lunds konsthall, in his native Sweden, and a member of the Programme Team for the European Kunsthalle in Cologne. A frequent contributor to Afterall, Kreuger has also published numerous catalogue essays and other texts (e.g.).

Future and Innovation Designer
Conscious Futures; Teach The Future

Gathering | Teach the Future

Erica Bol is an entrepreneurial future designer who brings together strategy and creativity for sustainable future innovation. At the Dutch futures consulting firm, Conscious Futures, she works as Future and Innovation Designer for international clients in business, governments and Ngo’s. For the foundation, Teach the Future, an international initiative working to integrate future thinking in classrooms, she has the role of ‘Change Maker’ and is responsible for the European section. She has set up the Dutch Node of the Millennium Project and is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and the Dutch Future Society (DFS). Erica is a creative partner in reWrap, an independent brand that designs and produces accessory products inspired by the Cradle to Cradle principle.

Photographer; Cameraman
Agence Future

Exhibition | ‘A Temporary Futures Institute’

Bram Goots grew up in Brussels before he moved to London in 1993 where he received a BA Fine Arts Multi-media from Middlesex University in 1999. As a free-lance photographer Bram shoots reportages for project developers, engineering offices and  architects. He was the set photographer on video-clips for different Belgian musicians and shortfilms. He is the house photographer for the Museum of Contemporary Art of Antwerp. He is a member of the international photographers’ collective OST and of the cooperative Picturetank since they were first established. Bram is responsible for the imagery for Agence Future and also for logistics as well as artistic interpretations and representations of the collection of images of the future brought together with this project. Bram was the second cameraman for the ‘ToekomstEN-AvenirS’ documentary and the director of photography for the pilot episode of the participatory television project Vill9 la serie. Since 2012 he has also worked as cameraman for a range of promotion, publicity films, musicians and visual artists.

Student; Intern 
Dickinson College; Agence Future

Exhibition | ‘A Temporary Futures Institute’

Duanduan Hsieh was born in New York City in 1997 but grew up in Taipei, Taiwan from the age of 5. The son of an acclaimed futurist, Professor Mei-Mei Song, Duanduan was exposed to futures studies at a young age. His 2015 four-part video series, WHAT WORKS IN FUTURES STUDIES, an interview with futurist Sohail Inayatullah, was awarded the Jan Lee Martin Award. Duanduan is currently pursuing a BA in Art and Art History with a Studio Arts Concentration at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Most of his art work is centered around identity and his experience as a Third Culture Kid, growing up as Taiwanese-American. In collaboration with Professor Song, Duanduan designed POSTERS FROM THE FUTURE  (2017) for exhibiting in A Temporary Futures Institute, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (M HKA). From holographic musicians to the autobiography of a spiritual robot, the four hanging posters each represent possible and probable futures.

Futures Researcher
Open Time, Erasmus University College Brussels

Presentation | Creating artifacts from four futures of Brussels 2060.

Kim De Vidts is a structural futures researcher at the centre of expertise “Applied Futures Research – Open Time”, at the Erasmus University College in Brussels. While instructing political science at Hawaii Pacific University and working for the American Intelligence community, she equally completed her PhD. This under the direct mentorship of Jim Dator at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where her interest in two of her passions thrived: the application of the Manoa approach, and the in-depth study of contemporary and futures notions of nationalism and the concept of identity within a European context. Kim’s past professional experiences in both change management and futures studies allow her to manage expectations within both domains, while facilitating a convergence between both if so desired. 

This presentation revisits notions of civic versus ethnic nationalism to envision what the future of identity may develop into by 2060 applying the Manoa School of Futures Studies’ four generic futures methodology, bringing in an ID card as an artifact from the future.

Foresight Consultant
Future Impacts Consulting

Game session | Foresight game centred on “Future Disruptions”

Cornelia Daheim is a foresight expert and consultant, founder and principal of Future Impacts. Since 2000, she has been leading corporate foresight projects for corporate customers such as Alstom, Evonik, SKT or BASF, up to CEO level, and public sector projects, e.g. within the framework of international as well as European research networks, with customers such as the Korean innovation institute STEPI or the European Commission. Recently, her topic focus was on the future of work, societal change, and the future of energy and mobility. Recent published projects include scenarios on precision agriculture for the European Parliament, the study “Jobs and Skills – Work 2030” for UKCES, or a study on the “Future of Work 2050” by the Millennium Project published with Bertelsmann Foundation. Ms. Daheim has experience in foresight assignments in Europe, the US and Asia, and has spoken on foresight and future trends on all continents. In 2003, she founded and has since acted as head of the Millennium Project’s German Node – the MP is the world’s largest continuous foresight NGO working on future global change. She is also the President of the Foresight Europe Network, aiming to advance foresight in Europe.

The session introduces a game focused on possible disruptions, and participants will experience the game by playing it themselves. Set up as a board game, it uses gaming techniques such as randomisation and competition, and players can “score” by identifying credible and plausible future disruptions.

Structural Researcher
Erasmus University

Trackmaker | Co-creating the future of leisure time: A case study of Pasar

Eva De Smedt holds a PhD in Media and Communication Studies and is a structural researcher at the ‘Applied Futures Research – Open Time’ Knowledge Centre of the Erasmus University College in Brussels. She is affiliated to the bachelor degree’s programme in Tourism and Recreation Management at the same institution. Her research interests include futures studies, discourse studies, journalism, tourism, and leisure.

Privatisation, individualisation, a demand-driven economy, digitalisation, urbanisation, multiculturalism and sustainability: these are just a few of the major tendencies that frame, shape and guide our society and everyday life. This study takes this ever-changing context as a framework and opportunity for analysing one crucial aspect upon which these tendencies tend to bear: the future of leisure time. The study sets out to examine the changing meaning of leisure time in the future, and anticipate how the professional field could respond to these changes. To concretise this twofold research objective, the study partnered with Pasar, a Flemish sociocultural organisation that has been committed to the organisation of and participation in activities in tourism and leisure for over 77 years.

Futures Researcher
Erasmus University

Game Introduction | Shuffle the Future

Yannick Dujardin is a lecturer of Communication Research in Communication Management at the Erasmus University College. He is also Futures Researcher at the centre of expertise Applied Futures Research – Open Time. In the field of communication he has mainly studied games and narrativity in video games. He has a natural interest in storytelling and narrative media. An interest that, as an avid gamer itself, turns into a particular interest in storytelling in games. With Open Time, he is mainly engaged in gaming & simulations as research methods. Other than with his nose in (digital) books and behind his television screen with an Xbox controller in his hands, in the right conditions you can find him in the North Sea. Surfing is the last of his passions, which he has not yet been able to integrate into his job yet, but who knows what the future brings …

Yannick made the serious game Shuffle the Future, about young people’s behavior in a sustainable future, in a research project with Greenpeace.