Future generations, death doulas and how to talk about climate without talking about climate

Each month, we are interviewing a range of influential and inspirational leaders from across the climate and nature transition. These interviews are intended as a window into innovative and exciting ways of approaching the transition and to spotlight the people who are at the forefront of these changes. This month, we sat down with Finn Strivens and Eva Oosterlaken from Futurall, a Rotterdam and London based creative studio for people led change. Their work combines at-scale public engagement with values-based, collective reimagining for systems transformation. While playful in form and interaction, their work looks to challenge dominant narratives and subvert power structures.

Finn: On my desk I keep a post-it note with a scrawled drawing of a fox and the phrase “BE MORE FINN”. Its meaning changes often, but at the moment it's a reminder to be aloof yet alert. Playful! To say no to things and sit in the weeds instead. To make sure my work channels my spirit.

Eva: Post-it notes - about eighteen of them at the moment, oops. I always have some paper on hand to doodle on during meetings. Most of them I never come back to but it helps to process ideas and test out connections I’m making in my brain.

Finn: What do you want to be when you grow up? What do you want the world to look like? What difference do you want to make? Shall we tell a story together about the future?

That's what we do! We tell stories about the future that change how we think and act in the present. But we don't come up with these stories all on our own. We get loads of smart and creative people to help us write the stories. We learn from how they see the world, and they learn from us and each other about what new worlds might be possible.

At the end of each story writing process we also like to throw a party. We think about who we want to tell that story to and who needs to hear it. Should the story be written down, read aloud, drawn, acted out, played or experienced? Then we bring together all the right people in just the right place to hear the story and think about how to respond to it.

Eva: It's the playful ‘Aha!’ moments that give us joy. When people ever-so-reluctantly let themselves try something silly or seemingly trivial, it reveals something new.

We just worked with the Dutch ministry of social affairs and employment to make a playful public exhibition about the futures of work. We immersed visitors into four different workplaces of the future that told different stories about the role of the government in providing their job security and workers rights.

The ‘Aha!’ moments in this project were when Dutch policymakers manned the exhibition for ten days and really got talking to citizens. At first they were a bit uncomfortable and apprehensive to be representing a creative and provocative display. Then, throughout the day- they were surprised by people’s willingness to engage in thoughtful and nuanced discussion about workers rights. By the end the policy makers had challenged their assumptions about members of the public, and were excited to engage more of their team.

Finn: One of our projects is called Earthlings. We are trying to channel local cultural histories to develop and socialise new stories that acknowledge both the need, and inevitability of large-scale change to the ways we live. Traditional forms of public engagement on climate often end up reaching all the same groups. The climate with a capital “C” work turns people off, and all too often they are focused on nudging downstream policy discussions or behavioural tweaks (think heat pumps and plastic straws). We think public engagement with climate could strive to inspire systemic change by telling new stories about our societies.

This leads to a number of questions we’re mulling over. How do we talk about climate without talking about climate? What new languages, framings or cultural ‘routes-in’ can we explore to connect people to interconnected poly-crises? How can public institutions embrace an upstream role for citizens in shaping the stories of their roles in society? (And many more).

Finn: I’m quite excited by the growing traction of narratives around ‘Intergenerational Fairness’ and ‘Future Generations’ in policy spaces. This shift is creating space for futures-focused, values-led conversations at national and international levels. For example, the UK’s recent signing of the UN Declaration for Future Generations (DFG) commits it to developing policies and reporting back of how it is prioritising long-term societal interests and adopting foresight-driven, whole-of-society approaches.

While the need for UN reporting might not be a strong driver for action, there are weak signals of these principles being adopted at different levels, for example Oxfordshire County Council committing to be accountable to future generations in its decisions.

Initiatives such as the proposed Future Generations Act and recent Liaison Committee recommendations to establish a parliamentary Committee for the Future, signal increasing political will to embed long-term thinking. While not explicitly climate related, the framing of future generations feels like it's gaining momentum as a way to embed a whole of society dialogue and long-termism into national and local decision making.

Eva: Currently, I’m most inspired by local communities telling stories about their own futures, on their own terms. Communities around the world have been doing this since the beginning of time, but it seems recent that this local capacity is starting to be recognised by institutions and decision makers.

In ballroom culture, for example, performers deconstruct, remix and play with social standards to imagine other forms of expression, and perform these with an engaged audience. An inspiring initiative is the Rotterdams Wijktheather, a theatre group in Rotterdam where a group of local participants create and perform a play based on the stories that they want to tell. One of their plays, Lost Innocence, not only went on national tour, but also was performed for policy-makers, directly influencing legislation.

I’m interested in how we can both learn from and strengthen these types of imagination. How could those stories travel outwards and upwards to create change on a systems level? And what would community-owned climate futuring look like?

Finn: We like to think it wouldn't be boring.

We want to organise a festival of collapse. A chance to collectively look down the barrel of the gun. To take stock, and to question our direction of travel. But also to ritualise endings, mourn collective losses and to tell stories of the next iteration of our society. It will be a celebration!

It would happen every year, be collectively owned and curated, and bring together actors from across the system into one room. From dancers to drag kings to death doulas. Policy planners, business leaders, film makers, archivists, children and more. And It would blend music, arts, imagination, storytelling and policy discussions with no strict outcomes but an intention to find new narratives and challenge old ones. To maximise emergent connections and play together! To let new stories bloom.

Find out more about Futurall's work on their website or follow them on Instagram.

We recently collaborated with Eva to create visuals to accompany our report on the bioeconomy. Check them out in our visual essay, 'Welcome to the bio-age', below.