How can we navigate an emerging future? - RSA

Part 3: How can we navigate an emerging future?

What might be? image

INTRO - Guide to the terrain

PART 1 - Before the pandemic

PART 2 - Transitional space

PART 3 - The emerging future

PART 4 - Your reality

We set out to see if people were already turning their minds to the future, to a world after the pandemic, and if so, what changes they wanted to see emerge.

We thought that there would be a range of different ambitions for the future and that these would be place and context specific. We also anticipated that such ambitions might be tempered by loss and fatigue and a desire for things to ‘return to normal’.

We asked:

  • What are your hopes for the post-pandemic future for you, your families and community and the nation as a whole?

Our investigation of the possible futures emerging from the pandemic is captured in the themes below. We invite you to explore these and add your reflections in the comments section.

Funding partner

Navigating the emerging future

  • Flotilla of different boats

    How can we support everyone to build greater resilience into their lives and communities and face the future with increased confidence?

  • Redistributed investment

    How could we resource a reconstruction effort that takes account of the needs of different people and places?

  • Redesigned systems

    What does it take to create the enabling conditions for people to come together and design systems that work for them?

  • Changing perspectives

    How could we encourage new ways of doing things that overcome resistance to change and the anti-risk instinct?

  • Crises on the horizon

    How can we acknowledge the diverse realities of our individual and collective losses?

  • Beacons of hope

    How could we enable every community to design its own future, to imagine what that might look like, and to have a powerful say about the decisions that impact them?