Picture the world in 10 years time. What will be different? What new technologies will we be unable to live without? And what will we have lost along the way?
Imaging the world in ten years time isn’t inconceivable; but it isn’t something that is often envisaged. Ten years doesn’t seem that far in the future; yet so much can change in that time.
Remember the world before YouTube, before Facebook, and when Google was just a search engine and not a verb? When we were living in fear of the collapse of the modern world at the turn of the millennium with the Y2K virus, and Sydney was abuzz with excitement and anticipation for the Olympic Games?
A lot can happen in a decade, so how do you envisage the world in 2020?
That’s the question being asked by the Live Futures 2020 Festival, with the debut of their program ‘Future Story’. Run in conjunction with Sydney Design and the Powerhouse Museum, the program asks the public to engage with, and share ideas of, how our world will look in ten years time.
These responses will be videoed and broadcast in public spaces throughout Sydney in the month leading up to the festival, and viewers will be encouraged to engage and respond with other people’s stories.
Future Story will also ask design experts how they envisage the future, and weave their stories into a documentary to be shown at the festival, held on August 14th, at the College of Fine Arts , located in the heart of Sydney’s cultural hub, in Paddington.
The nexus of this project lies with its diversity, and disadvantaged individuals and community groups will also partake in the project; ensuring no one’s story is overlooked.
The program aims to start conversations and to generate change at the community level; and Live Futures are asking anyone and everyone to get involved.
The idea is about embracing the technologies of today to positively work towards a more efficient, sustainable future we’ll all want to live in.
The more people who get involved, the more broadcasts will be shown and the more conversations sparked. The more we start talking about the world in 2020, the more conscious we’ll become about our impact on the world; and of the world of those both near and far.
Following the success of last year’s festival, this year is set to be bigger and better than ever. The theme this year is ‘A World of Transformation’, and focuses on rethinking design; shifting the focus to designing the future.
Designers, scientists, futurists and artists are all converging to provide industry insight into the future of their fields, and to collaborate on projects working toward a greener future. These projects stand as a positive, empowering and encouraging view of what can be achieved through making positive changes in the way we approach things.
Projects will also be run in conjunction with the Powerhouse Museum’s Science Week.
It’s a future we’ll all be a part of, so let’s follow their example and make it a positive one.
Naomi White
