How can we redesign the future?
To say we are living in a time of crisis has become somewhat of a cliché, yet there is no doubt we are at a pivotal moment in human history, where the decisions we make now will dictate what happens in the centuries to come.
We are already witnessing the spectre of climate collapse, and the associated inequalities, geopolitical violence and health risks that are likely to intensify if we continue along our current trajectory. Design is complicit in this global crisis but is also increasingly recognised by organisations and communities as a vector for positive change.
In this one-day symposium, we will explore how design can move away from narratives of ‘progress’ and ‘problem-solution’ paradigms that replicate the status-quo. Using speculative approaches, we will consider how design can move towards radical, sustainable, and equitable alternatives.
If you're curious about Postgraduate Study in Design, you’ll also have the opportunity to view student projects and chat with faculty about your future in the field.
Please register below to attend.
Schedule
9 May 2025 | 10am-5pm | Level 3 Innovation Hub
10:00am – Welcome
Associate Professor Sarah Elsie Baker
10:30am – Dr. Jorge Camacho, CENTRO, IFTF, Mexico
Preferable Worlds: Design and Alternative Futures
In 2021-2022, Jorge Camacho curated “The Great Imagination: Histories of the Future” for Espacio Fundación Telefónica in Madrid. The exhibition traced the explosion of futures imagination since the eighteenth century, which arguably fed into the process of socio-economic and environmental upheaval that Earth scientists call “the Great Acceleration.” This process has delivered us into an era of multiple, converging crises whose resolution will decide what happens in the following decades and beyond. To explore this, the show featured a set of originally-commissioned installations that explored four alternative futures for the world in 2050.
This critical moment and alternative possibilities emerge when design is recognized as a key profession across every industry, and therefore, as a practice that seems uniquely positioned to steer change and turn this crisis into a transition toward preferable futures.
In this talk, Jorge Camacho will explore the evolution of design against the backdrop of the Great Acceleration and four alternative directions for the evolution of design practice by the middle of this century. He will inspire us to imagine ourselves as future designers and how design could contribute and adapt to each of these alternative futures.
11:30am – Coffee Break
11:45am – Alice Dimond, Tokona Te Raki, Aotearoa
Te Korekoreka | Māori Future Making
In a world where many feel powerless to create change, we need design approaches that move beyond replicating the status quo. Our current system leaves people feeling stuck, with dominant Western frameworks dictating how problems are defined and solved. To create a radically different future, we need to equip the next generation to reimagine design, collaboration and collective action. By embracing approaches grounded in Māori worldviews, we can create new perspectives and action that shift power dynamics and challenge conventional thinking, leading to more equitable futures.
12:45pm – Lunch provided by MDS
2:00pm – Dr. Madelena Mañetto Quick, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Langzhou, China
Speculative Worlding with Animals
Speculative design can be used to craft alternative narratives that challenge dominant assumptions about human-animal relationships. Drawing from research about farmed animal narratives, I demonstrate how speculative storytelling can open imaginative spaces for more-than-human world-building. Through creative design experiments—including writing prompts, a fictional sanctuary journal, and an imagined co-design workshop—my work interrogates existing paradigms and envisions multispecies futures. By centering speculative design as a means of critical inquiry, I highlight how designers can navigate complex ethical and ecological concerns without resorting to prescriptive solutions.
2:45pm – Victoria Mulligan, Design Futures Aotearoa
Impact Networks for Better Futures – Tools, Tensions and Transformations
The session will focus on the value of network design and network weaving. Networks are essential to futures thinking - not just to connect futures thinkers with each other but to connect present generations to generations past and future.
If strategic foresight is “step one” in systemic transformation, network formation and strengthening is a critical step two. It’s only through forming partnerships and bridging divides that we can turn thought into action - turn insights into informed decision making. Networks are therefore key to creating change on a meaningful scale.
3:30pm – Andy Blood, Media Design School, Aotearoa
Machines of Loving Disgrace / Those Who Do Not Learn from the Future Are Doomed to Repeat It
Design Fiction operates as low-cost experimentation. Its best practitioners imagine a world, transport you there, and design experiences for you to test out, for minimal outlay.
Inspired by the seminal conjectures of Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, Bill Joy, and Ray Kurzweil, Melanie Mitchell, and more recently by the ideas of Cory Doctorow, Andy has created a brand new design fiction especially for the exhibition.
Machines of Loving Disgrace examines Artificial Intelligence, the breakout problem, containment, the great enshittification and inanification, dead internet theory, and our need to consider de-growth.
Attendees will be gifted a copy of the story.
4:15pm – Drinks & MDS Student Showcase
5:00pm – Event Ends
A little about the speakers -
Jorge Camacho holds a Master’s degree in Cybernetic Culture and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of East London. He is a research affiliate at the Institute for the Future, a world-leading futures organisation, and a co-founder of Diagonal, a research, design, and futures studio based in Mexico City. He is also the director of the Master’s in Design: Methods and Explorations at CENTRO where he also lectures on strategic design, futures thinking, and systems thinking. He has taught postgraduate courses at Ibero (CDMX), UAL (London), IED (Madrid), Domus Academy (Milan), EGADE Business School (Monterrey and CDMX), ISDI (CDMX), h2i institute (Madrid), among others. Both in his professional practice and academic work, he is particularly interested in how design practices can drive social change.
Alice Dimond (Kāi Tahu) is a social innovation and futures practitioner with a passion for using these approaches to create more collective and equitable futures. As Project Manager at Tokona te Raki, she leads Mō Āpōpō Future-Makers, a project that equips young people to imagine and create better futures. This work includes designing a toolkit grounded in Māori perspectives and stories, empowering rangatahi to use these perspectives to navigate complexity and drive transformative change. In addition, Alice is a Fellow with Next Generation Foresight Practitioners and an Advisory Trustee at Ako Ōtautahi Learning City Trust. She is also the National New Zealand Lead for the Futures Methods from Around the World project, where she explores how Māori worldviews, ways of thinking, organising, and acting can unlock new pathways to better futures. Alice has presented at global forums such as the Dubai Future Forum, World Futures Day, and the Building Hopeful Futures Festival. She is passionate about using mātauranga Māori and Indigenous worldviews to challenge dominant thinking, create new solutions, and drive systemic change.
Dr. Madelena Mañetto Quick is a Lecturer in Visual Communication Design at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Madelena completed her PhD at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington with a project that centred farmed animal worlds. She is a creative design researcher who adopts a multidisciplinary approach, entangling multispecies ethnography, narrative studies and speculative design to reimagine our relationships with farmed animals and envision hopeful futures.
Victoria Mulligan builds networks, strategies and futures - and uses foresight and participatory futures tools to cocreate more adaptive ways of working. She is the Founder of the Aotearoa New Zealand Futures Network, Co-Founder and Director of Design Futures Aotearoa and Creator and Host of The Futures Workshop, a podcast showcasing the world's leading futures tools. She is a Reviewer for World Futures Review, a member of the Global Futures Society and a regular contributor to consumer and academic publications worldwide. Based in Auckland, New Zealand, Victoria has worked extensively in governmental, non-governmental, philanthropic and private sector organisations around the world using innovative human solutions to tackle complex global and domestic challenges.
Andy Blood. Fearless creator. Serial innovator. Writer, thinker, strategist, maker. Amazon US Top 100 author. Writer and publisher of seven books. Executive Producer of the award-winning documentary Losing Lena, which challenged gender bias in technology, and is now held in the Australian film archive. Losing Lena, the campaign, was a finalist in Fast Company’s World Changing ideas 2021 and won the Webby for Diversi
