World Futures Day 2025
On December 2, our founder Maurits Montañez participated in UNESCO’s World Futures Day 2025 at their headquarters in Paris.
The session 'Futures Literacy in Art and Design Higher Education' brought together Maurits’ students at Parsons Paris to share how futures thinking and speculative design expanded their creative practice, enabled them to explore diverse futures, and challenged conventional narratives.
Through short presentations on themes such as the future of cities, education, and agriculture, students reflected on how they used participatory foresight methods to respond with innovative proposals for both near and distant futures.
Empowering young creatives
The projects featured in this session were developed in the SDM Futures Lab, an initiative created in partnership with the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and its UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory Leadership and Futures Capabilities.
By combining lectures with hands-on experimentation and co-creation with industry practitioners, the lab equips students to navigate a rapidly evolving world by integrating futures studies with design practice to map possibilities and prototype future-oriented concepts.
Together, their voices offered a vivid glimpse into how the next generation is applying futures design to build more inclusive, adaptable, and transformative visions for the world.
