Culture: Futures Festival: An Intergenerational Participatory Visioning Process

John Engel

A Futures Festival is an intergenerational participatory visioning process for developing new, or recreating existing, communities. A Futures Festival event is a safe space for people of all ages and abilities to creatively express their vision for the future of their community by designing and experiencing interactive exhibits in a festival-like setting. The Futures Festival model was developed by Matthew Kaplan, PhD, who is based at Penn State University and who conducted a train-the-trainer workshop on Futures Festival planning at the Wild Sage Common House in Holiday neighborhood of Boulder, CO in November 2008. In this workshop, participants will learn:

• Brief overview of IISN and its origins
• The story behind the creation of the Futures Festival process
• The value of conducting a Futures Festival
• Community building lessons from a Futures Festival in the Holiday neighborhood in Boulder, CO, which includes two cohousing communities (Wild Sage and Silver Sage)

John Engel’s academic training includes a BA in Psychology, an MA in Political Science and an MA in Ecopsychology. He served as a leadership and development consultant to a variety of client groups from 2000-2007 and an Instructor in the fields of sustainability and community-based leadership at Naropa University from 2003-2007. John currently serves as the Executive Director of the Institute for Intentionally Sustainable Neighborhoods (IISN) and as Community Builder for Wonderland Hill Development Company cohousing and cohousing-inspired communities.