Patterns, anticipation and participatory futures

TL;DR

This paper explores how pattern methods can be applied to futures discourse and anticipatory practices, emphasizing local knowledge, multi-voiced coordination, and play to build capacity for facing future challenges.

Contribution

It introduces the novel application of pattern methods to future studies, focusing on participatory, context-sensitive, and communicative approaches.

Findings

Pattern methods facilitate coordination in distributed projects.

They enable integration of multiple voices in futures discourse.

Play-based approaches build anticipatory capacity.

Abstract

Patterns embody repeating phenomena, and, as such, they are partly but not fully detachable from their context. 'Design patterns' and 'pattern languages' are established methods for working with patterns. They have been applied in architecture, software engineering, and other design fields, but have so far seen little application in the field of future studies. We reimagine futures discourse and anticipatory practices using pattern methods. We focus specifically on processes for coordinating distributed projects, integrating multiple voices, and on play that builds capability to face what's yet to come. One of the advantages of the method as a whole is that it deals with local knowledge and does not subsume everything within one overall 'global' strategy, while nevertheless offering a way to communicate between contexts and disciplines.