From Classrooms to Policy: Teach the Future at Reclaiming Hope Conference
- Lourdes Rodriguez
- Oct 11
- 3 min read
Last month, Teach the Future took part in Reclaiming Hope Navigate (un)certainty, imagine better (local) futures, an international symposium held in Nova Gorica on 18–19 September 2025, as part of the GO! 2025 European Capital of Culture program. The event brought together designers, educators, researchers, and policymakers to explore how speculative design and futures literacy can engage with uncertainty and help reimagine more just, resilient, and imaginative futures.
Organized by The Centre for Creativity and The Museum of Architecture & Design (MAO); curated by Dr. Ivica Mitrović of the Arts Academy, University of Split (UMAS), the symposium reflected on how speculative and critical design practices can contribute to addressing the polycrisis, the convergence of environmental, social, and political challenges shaping our collective reality. The event invited participants to reflect on how local, bottom-up initiatives can influence policy-level action and reclaim hope in the face of uncertainty.
Panel on Policy: Bridging Bottom-Up Practices and Top-Down Change
Teach the Future co-executive director Lourdes Rodríguez participated in the Policy Panel, moderated by Sara Božanić (Institute for Transmedia Design), alongside:
David Martens, Policy Analyst at the EU Policy Lab of the European Commission (Joint Research Centre)
Tim Boykett from Time’s Up, a Linz-based laboratory constructing experiential models of possible futures to explore emerging sociopolitical issues
Gerin Trautenberger, Managing Director of EIT Culture & Creativity Co-Location Center South East & Alps
The discussion explored a central question:
How can we transfer our educational and professional activities, often developed from the ground up, into policies that nurture better futures and collective hope?
Lourdes shared how Teach the Future is working to bridge the gap between policy and practice through the integration of futures literacy into education systems worldwide.
Teach the Future: Exploring Futures Through Education
In her presentation, Lourdes introduced Teach the Future’s case study “Exploring Futures Through Education”, highlighting how futures literacy enables young people and educators to navigate complexity, question assumptions, and reimagine possibilities.
Recognized by UNESCO, the OECD, and the European Commission’s GreenComp, futures literacy is the capability to understand the role the future plays in shaping perceptions, choices, and actions in the present. Despite its importance, it remains largely absent from formal education systems, something Teach the Future is working to change through:
Curriculum resources, such as FutureWISE, a program that helps students and educators acquire the skills necessary to explore and understand change, identify emerging issues, imagine multiple futures and take action.
Teacher capacity building, supporting educators to facilitate imagination-based learning where curiosity, not prediction, drives discovery.
Youth engagement, through the TTF Young Voices Council (YVC), a global network of young foresight practitioners who translate futures thinking into creative, community-based action.
From Futures Thinking to Futures Policy
Teach the Future’s participation in the Policy Panel underscored the need to connect grassroots educational innovation with institutional frameworks. Embedding futures literacy in policy is not simply an educational reform; it is an enabler of systemic transformation. It equips citizens to think long-term, act collaboratively, and engage critically with uncertainty.
As Lourdes emphasized during the panel:
“When students learn to imagine and question the future, they’re not just learning about what might come, they’re learning how to shape it. Embedding this mindset into policy ensures that imagination, care, and anticipation become part of how we govern and design our shared futures.”
Looking Forward
Reclaiming Hope offered a space for dialogue between speculative design, futures literacy, and public policy. For Teach the Future, it was an opportunity to connect with European institutions and communities committed to fostering futures-literate societies.
Our participation continues a relationship that began through the SpeculativeEDU residency in Maribor (Slovenia 2019), where Lourdes Rodríguez first met the symposium’s curators and collaborators, including Ivica Mitrović and Sara Božanić. This long-standing connection reflects both a shared commitment and Teach the Future’s ongoing mission to make futures literacy an integral part of how education prepares the next generation for complexity, creativity, and collective hope.
About Reclaiming Hope
The symposium was organized by The Centre for Creativity (CzK) and The Museum of Architecture and Design (MAO), curated by Ivica Mitrović (Arts Academy, University of Split), with editorial contributions by Dora Vanette (UMAS). The organizational team included Simon Gmajner (CzK), Maja Šuštaršič, and Maja Dobnik (MAO). Expert advisors: Sara Božanić (Institute for Transmedia Design) and Anja Zorko (CzK).Expert board: Academy of Arts and Design (UL ALUO), Boštjan Botas Kenda, Mario Ciarmitaro (IUAV – University of Venice), and Peter Purg (School of Humanities, University of Nova Gorica).
