I’ve been working on this project for a while and it’s beginning to take shape.
Summary
A locally run project led by experienced practitioners, Stephen Oram and Christine Aicardi. The project will facilitate a discussion between subject specialists in areas that will affect the future and the local community on those possible futures for Fitzrovia. Through workshops and storytelling, the project will use participatory foresight and applied science fiction to create a ‘level playing field’ for all involved, to explore what’s possible and what’s preferable for Fitzrovia in the 2050s.
Why
Often community involvement in future related decisions are around immediate and specific issues. By using applied science fiction as a tool in participatory foresight, this project will look at a 30-year horizon through a fictional lens, enabling those who take part to think in everyday terms about what and how they want their local area to become in the future, grounded in the plausibility that the subject specialists bring to the process.
What
The project is made up of different stages, gradually increasing its reach at each stage.
Six local specialists have been recruited and are: Dr. Pooja Basnett (The Cavendish Living Lab), Prof. Tim Waterman (Bartlett School of Architecture), Eva Pascoe (The Retail Practice), Dr Bradley Elliot (University of Westminster), Dr Rachel Benchekroun (UCL) and Catherine Loveday (University of Westminster), covering future looking themes, for example: sustainable biotechnology such as algae and bioplastics, retail and the high street, food production, urban landscape and architecture, biology of ageing, and food security.
Six people from the local community will join the project, a mix of those who live and work in the area.
These twelve people will join the project’s applied science fiction practitioner (Stephen Oram) and the participatory foresight social scientist (Dr. Christine Aicardi) in a workshop to discuss the potential futures. The subject specialists bring their particular knowledge to the discussion and the local residents bring their expert knowledge and perspective of the local area to the discussion. Through creating a ‘level playing field’ between all these experts, the discussion will be both informed and holistic.
Leading on from the workshop, two short stories (5 minutes each in length) will be written by the project authors (Stephen Oram and Penny Walker), in collaboration with Christine and in consultation with the workshop attendees. These stories, designed to highlight some of the pluses and minuses of these possible futures, will then be used in an interactive public event to open the conversation up more widely. The workshop attendees will be encouraged to attend that public event and engage in the conversation.
This approach has been tried and tested by Stephen and Christine over the past 9 years, particularly in projects with: Furtherfield’s Citizen Sci-fi to celebrate 150 years of Finsbury Park; with the thinktank Cybersalon; and multiple projects with King’s College London. Each project has its own ‘flavour’ but have similar underpinning principles.
Additionally, documenting the process from beginning to end will be important for transparency and for other areas to use as a guide in their localities i.e. the process, but also to give sense of what was discussed, what was important, public reaction etc.
The stories and commentary from the subject specialists, the local residents and the public discourse should be published via a website, preferably one that already exists to serve the local community.
When
April 2025 to October 2025 (public event is 10 August at the Fitzrovia Fete, Foley Street.)
Who
Alongside the participants, the following people are leading, advising or supporting the project: Fitzrovia Community Centre; Dr Lewis Dartnell, professor of science communication at the University of Westminster; Steph Troeth, service designer and speculative fiction author; Dr Christine Aicardi, Senior Research Fellow, King’s College London and specialist in participatory foresight; Stephen Oram, social science fiction author and applied science fiction practitioner.
Legacy
Ideally, this project alongside the previous Finsbury Park project would provide a template and a proof of concept for similar projects around the UK, all with their own local flavour but within the broad parameters devised through the course of this project. Once established, this methodology can be rolled out in any area of any country.