About Parque Explora Consulting and Design
Parque Explora: an interactive science museum, planetarium, education and conservation aquarium, and public experimentation workshop in Medellín, Colombia. // Parque Explora: un museo interactivo de ciencias, un planetario, un acuario de educación y conservación y un taller público de experimentación. Together with our allies, we design and build museums, exhibitions, interactive centers and mobile and editorial strategies. We explore new ways of telling, we conceive inclusion as a central premise of design, we call for a transdisciplinary view to put preconceived ideas in tension and we are committed to an immersive museography that allows memorable experiences. We design guaranteeing a balance between user experience and project viability. We have created more than 122 thousand square meters of new spaces for culture and knowledge in five countries. During the last ten years we have capitalized on our experience to accompany others in the development of their public appropriation of knowledge initiatives. We focus on our lines of projects—and their connections—: exhibition and cultural settings, educational communities, active citizenship and conservation. We accompany you from the structuring of a basic idea to the development of research for public policies. We work with all types of organizations to build social ties and to reflect, plan and materialize citizen participation and public trust. The entire world is in a time of extreme uncertainty, with complex crises like poverty, species extinction, and rising sea levels. It is a time when we need to envision futures that we want. There are better ways of coping with uncertainty than how we do it now. Fight. Flight. Freeze. Experiential learning in places of public discourse can shift the sense of hopelessness that youth feel today. Museums are Mavericks of society that expose us to new thinking through curatorial practice. There, we can conjure the Muses for new narratives for next-level decision-making.
This book is for museum people, and people who love'm. Together, we can imagine inclusive futures that support planetary systems. When we can bring them coming to life in museums and science centres, we can begin to make our futures present. Launching in 2024
When we think of distant futures, we tend to envision trends coming to their full expression. “In 30 years… everyone will…” or “No one has…” statements. We often neglect to imagine a “day-in-the-life” that evokes “sometimes” or “might” statements. It’s just much easier to do this (I’ve described it in my paper Making the Futures Present, AHM Greyson). Those nuances affect the difference in how we make strategic decisions today. We can do this by practicing living in the future, as if it is the present. The Tofflers propose that an individual can be “pre-adapted” to an otherwise unfamiliar future by seeing and hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling a new world.
Experiential simulations The Tofflers describe “experiential simulations” that are designed for the public to help people to pre-adapt. “He will be able to interact vicariously with the people in his future,” they wrote, “and to undergo carefully contrived experiences designed to improve his coping abilities.” The Tofflers suggest that experiences within a myriad of future-oriented environments encourage and develop long-term thinking skills. For example, their concept of “enclaves of the future” help compensate for our temporal lack of “future heritage.” These enclaves are environments like a community square, a gated community, or remote villages. These communities provide a focal point for contrived “work-learn-and-play” environments staffed with artists, poets, labourers, and other skilled talent. They are a public design studio for families and communities to become conditioned and prepared to “cope with their own personal tomorrows.” “Local government, schools, voluntary associations and others,” they wrote, “also need to examine their potential futures imaginatively. One way to help them do so would be to establish community ‘imaginetic centers’ devoted to technically assisted brainstorming. These would be places where people noted for creative imagination, rather than technical expertise, are brought together to examine present crises, to anticipate future crises, and to speculate freely, even playfully, about possible futures.” A perspective An experience of the future is a shot in the arm in the present. We can immerse ourselves in authentic debates. We designers must practice humanizing our futures for the citizens, customers, and creators we serve. Ideally, when we design we aspire to address the burning question of people like Greta Thunberg, “Is this what we want for our next generation?” Experiential learning can help us to be deliberate about creating the future we want. Elements of storytelling: character development, setting, plot, conflict, theme, narrative arc, situation, and props, contribute dimensions of understanding. It is a process and a product for constructing future experiences and artifacts to help us think critically. Uncertainty is a fertile space. It can help us learn how to cope. A call to action I call on all designers to address an immediate question in our work, “Is this what we want for our next generation?” Robust imagining of a person, place or thing supports the scenario in our mind to become a reality. We get to decide, if it’s a reality that we prefer, long before we see it play out in the real world. Speculative design is an emergent form of experiential simulations that connects people with uncertain consequences. Anab Jain is a speculative designer, Professor of Design, TED Speaker, Futurist, and director of the design and film studio Superflux. She says, “We have learned in our work that one of the most powerful means of effecting change is when people can directly, tangibly, and emotionally experience some of the future consequences of their actions today.” |