The IF Award winners demonstrated excellence and innovation in strategic foresight methodologies to tackle complex issues. Winners represented diverse global contexts from countries like Australia, New Caledonia, Colombia, Bhutan, Zambia, Malawi and more. By showcasing the vibrant leading edge across regions, disciplines and methodologies, the IF Award winners offer inspiration for the global foresight community while raising the visibility of the field's evolving excellence.
We received ‘record-breaking’ 106 submissions from new, mid-career and veteran futurists and foresight practitioners from across the globe. 310 individuals including team members contributed their work to the futures field. The awards conveyed possibility, exploration, and openness to new perspectives.
The IF Awards celebrates Most Significant Futures Works we have 14 Top Submission Winners and 13 Honourable Mentions. You can read more about each winning submission below.
About the project
CARRYKIN is an experiential art project set in a future where humans can temporarily gestate endangered marine species like seals, sharks, and dugongs using artificial wombs. This interspecies surrogacy program allows cross-species caregiving while helping rebuild devastated ecosystems. CARRYKIN contemplates new modes of kinship, the ethics of care, and the possibility of more equitable, biodiverse futures centered around climate recovery. As an imaginative prompt, CARRYKIN’s surreal concept spurs audiences to confront assumptions about human-animal relations and ecological stewardship.
About the project
The weak signals work by Sitra aims to stretch thinking about possible futures. It consists of a report, workshops and an exhibition of futures artefacts. The report groups different signals of change and situates them into familiar places, such as home, work or nature. It includes a set of “what if?” questions and short stories to broaden futures thinking. These stories were further developed into artefacts about futures in a series of workshops together with stakeholders and selected artists and designers. The artefacts were shown in an exhibition at the Finnish Design Museum.
About the project
"Signs of Change" utilizes imagined future signage and policies to make climate impacts tangible at a human scale. Installed publicly as an immersive landscape, the signs convey diverse local perspectives on shifts in values, environments, infrastructure, and governance over the next 40 years. As an adaptable open-source artifact set archived from workshops and exhibits, "Signs of Change" aims to build climate resilience by turning abstract futures into accessible platforms for collective meaning-making. Blending strategic foresight and design, this project provokes relatable debates about preferable futures.
About the project
Fashion Futuring bridges strategic planning and fictional imagination to shift fashion toward sustainability, rooted in aligned cultural values. As an alternative to forecasting's focus on products and technology, this methodology centers shared ideals to inform systemic change. Tested in collaborative workshops, Fashion Futuring utilizes speculative design fictions, unknown possibilities, and “transition pathways” to collectively re-envision industry transformations. It invites forecasters and designers to adopt long-range, values-first, collaborative attitudes supporting fashion’s ethical reset. Fashion Futuring aims to model how positive values-driven practices can enable industries to transition futures.
About the project
UNDP Uzbekistan conducted an exploratory futures exercise on the country’s green transition to inform emerging government strategic plans. Convening global and local experts, the project utilized foresight methods including signals mapping, driver identification, and scenario modeling to crystallize insights about potential policies and reforms. The resulting report and recommendations aim to support ongoing national sustainability efforts by anticipating change, revealing risks and opportunities, and stress-testing proposed strategies across plausible future contexts. This first national-level foresight project generated further demand, demonstrating the value of speculative approaches in policy formulation.
About the project
The American Planning Association’s annual Trend Report for Planners in partnership with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy utilizes strategic foresight methods to reveal over 100 relevant emerging shifts, preparing communities for impending impacts.Developed with a diverse foresight community scanning wide horizons, the report groups actionable trends by urgency across themed clusters like technology and demographics. Explaining interconnections and potential scenarios, the report aims to raise planner awareness regarding incorporating external change factors into flexible planning processes. By scoping unknowns impinging on communities, APA’s foresight work aspires to upgrade planning itself to get ahead of disruption for more equitable, sustainable futures.
About the project
The experimental Plantiverse project prototyped systems enabling houseplants to gain autonomy, decision-making, and economic participation. Sensor-equipped plants like Herbie can now self-direct mobility seeking light or water. Visualizing plant physiological status as dynamic digital avatars, these “NFTrees” were minted and sold to fund sustainability efforts. A plant-governed DAO allows specimen to allocate resources communally. Depicting potential interspecies metaverse economies, Plantiverse explores conferring rights and reciprocal agency to nature via emerging technologies. Expanding circles of concern beyond the human, this provocative project imagines reconfiguring our systems to enable equitable participation.
About the project
The "Dreams and Disruptions" card game engages players in collaborative, immersive scenario building to stretch imaginaries and stress-test visions. Integrating archetypes, time horizons, trends, and random "disruptions," participants shape hybrid stories while navigating challenges. Seeking inclusive participation, the game focuses on grasping key foresight concepts experientially, envisioning emergent worlds, and creating robust strategies. Accentuating play and unpredictable elements, Dreams and Disruptions aims to catalyze radical, empathy-expanding thinking about leadership, change agency, and designing preferred, "anti-fragile" futures.
About the project
The Well-being of Future Generations Act requires Welsh public bodies to consider long-term impacts of everything they do. A review by the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales assessed in 2022 the Welsh Government's progress on this. The review found that there is a lot of enthusiasm for the legislation in Welsh Government and efforts are underway to build long-term thinking into policies and processes, but multiple barriers, including crises and limited capacity are slowing down progress. .To assist Welsh Government and others with this, the Future Generations Commissioner has developed a Maturity Matrix that can help public service organisations assess where they are on their journey to implementing the legislation, and also provides ideas for next steps towards Leading the Way. The recommendations of the review, as well as the use of the Maturity Matrix by various organisations are currently underway The Future Generations Commissioner will continue reviewing implementation across Wales.
About the project
The "Pacific Pathfinder" toolkit adapts strategic foresight methods for Pacific contexts to build regional capabilities in long-range planning. Created by practitioners at the Pacific Community to share learnings from an organizational strategy project, this interactive guide aims to demystify futures approaches through case studies and tips. Centering Pacific philosophies valuing collectivity and reciprocity, the toolkit nurtures inclusive, intergenerational perspectives. Offered as a "gift" promoting ongoing exchange, Pacific Pathfinder aspires to catalyze confident, customized use of futures thinking across the islands' public policy landscape.
About the project
This project brought together farmers, chefs, and policymakers in Spain’s Navarra region to collaboratively develop a manifesto on sustainable gastronomy. Through the medium of cooking and guided discussions on topics like agriculture, equity, and cultural heritage, participants shared diverse perspectives. This intimate, participatory approach, coined "Transform", facilitates creative thinking about potential policies and actions for the future in an accessible way, moving beyond typical scenarios. It demonstrates an innovative methodology for inclusive, experiential foresight to inform strategic policy decisions.
About the project
FutureCast is an adaptable in-person game for generating insights about emerging threats and opportunities. Players tackle prompts in rounds, building on each other's responses. Designed for the UN to explore fragile democracy election scenarios, the free framework includes customization guides to remix for local contexts. Testing elicited diverse civil society and youth perspectives. The hands-on collaborative format aims to make foresight approaches accessible, helping various stakeholders map risks, identify positive pathways, and enhance preparedness. FutureCast intends to spark ongoing exchanges for navigating complex futures.
About the project
This experimental project utilized an imagined 2052 high school sex education curriculum as a container to explore eradicating shame around intimacy. Through embodied roleplay as parents of teenagers, participants confronted deep taboos, provoking reflection on unexamined beliefs. Iterating the experiential futures protocol across multiple exhibitions, the layered design highlighted navigating uncertainty and discomfort at the edges as a metaphor for overcoming obstacles to social change. Pushing boundaries of permissioned exploration, the project intends to model leaning into challenges in order to radically expand horizons.
About the project
"The Long View" illuminates how reembracing long-term perspectives can counter society’s intensifying presentism. Traversing disciplines, geographies and eras to showcase plural approaches to deep futures, this expansive work aims to shake short-termism’s stranglehold. Calling for collective, intergenerational responsibility, the book spotlights ingenious efforts pushing time horizons. Ranging from ancient indigenous practices to avant-garde art interrogating posterity, these examples offer hope for confronting current crises. Ultimately "The Long View" intends to reinstill lost capacity for farsightedness, restoring agency amid chaos.
APF IF AWARDs
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Imagining 'No-Place' Together: Utopia Labs for Collective Exploration
Jennifer Williams, Matjaz Vidmar, Gintare Kylute
Utopia Labs provide open, collaborative spaces to imagine and feel potential futures without prescriptive frameworks or solutions. Originating as a flicker of an idea in 2017, the interdisciplinary labs question, learn, and create together through events integrating yoga, meditation, poetry, vegetarian meals, and more. They emphasize slowing down, making connections, and exploring both inwardly and together. Though not focused on solutions, insights emerge and reverberate. The flexible, portable labs continue to evolve, now moving into online spaces and new partnerships, continuing their spirit of imaginative collective exploration.
Envisioning Repair and Reconciliation: Museums Exploring Voluntary Repatriation
Elizabeth Merritt
This American Alliance of Museums project launches an effort to shift museum relationships with several historically exploited communities regarding control of cultural artifacts. Through accessible application of the Three Horizons strategic foresight framework, the initiative aims to foster optimism and courage to drive progress on voluntary repatriation and broader reparative practices. By convening diverse voices to share visions of ethical museum stewardship grounded in justice and equity, they seek to chart an actionable path beyond entrenched barriers, bringing nuance while inspiring principled responsibility.
Healing Past Trauma to Unlock Flourishing Futures
Steven Lichty
This research explores how trauma-informed mental health interventions can increase marginalized youth's capacity for futures thinking. It finds that processing past trauma through community-based psychosocial support unlocks youth's potential to envision more positive futures, strengthening their sense of agency and responsibility. This elevates their consciousness across multiple dimensions linked to futures orientation. The research informs international guidelines on investing in youth mental health for broader societal dividends while spotlighting promising avenues to empower traumatized youth to transform used futures.
Turanga Memeitaki no te iti tangata Kuki Airani — Charting Intergenerational Wellbeing for the Cook Islands
Valery Wichman
Te Ara Akapapa’anga Nui privileges indigenous concepts of genealogy and relationships to shape a 100-year national vision for the Cook Islands anchored in collective wellbeing. Developed over 18 months, it incorporates futures methodologies to plan across four generations at 5, 25, and 100-year intervals. The framework challenges Western approaches by valuing traditional knowledge, as embodied in the Akapapa’anga methodology. Initial efforts now focus on researching wellbeing metrics, mainstreaming mechanisms, and structural arrangements to ultimately fulfill the promise of enduring, equitable wellbeing across all generations..
Democratizing Foresight: activating a global network for inclusive anticipation
Narue Shiki, Vanessa Howe-Jones, Darah Aljoudar, Clarice Wilson, Manasi Kumbhat, Scott Smith, John Willshire & UNDP’s global Futures Network
The Futures Trends and Signals System (FTSS) activates UNDP’s worldwide network to collaboratively identify early signals of change for informing organizational strategy. Its participatory design demystifies and mainstreams foresight, capturing diverse inputs from 200+ professionals across contexts. Anchored in values of inclusion and accessibility, FTSS convenes cross-boundary sensemaking while dismantling silos. Its promise as a capability-building instrument that can reshape mindsets and decision-making has sparked excitement within and beyond UNDP. By democratizing foresight through broad participation, FTSS lays the foundation for collectively shaping more inclusive futures.
Bridging the Divide: Immersing Business Leaders in Gen Z Innovation
Dion Chang, Bronwyn Williams, Faeeza Khan, Tumelo Mojapelo, Chili Kier, Cloud Clayton, Bethea Clayton
Flux Trends' Gen Z Innovation Tour transports corporate delegates beyond their comfort zones into the world of boundary-pushing Generation Z entrepreneurs. Through visits to an innovative youth academy, urban agriculture hub, creative collective, and a human library of young changemakers, participants directly engage the mindsets, innovations, and stories of South Africa’s “born free” generation. By showcasing Gen Z’s resilience and motivation in reimagining business and society, Flux Trends advocates reciprocal learning rather than one-way molding, helping leaders listen to and collaborate with youth who are creating more equitable digital futures.
Amplifying Intergenerational Voices to Shape Our Shared Future
Peter Bishop, Lisa Giuliani, Amna Habiba
Teach the Future’s annual World Future Day - Young Voices convenes youth and adults for dialogues across all 24 time zones, seeded by local facilitator pairs. Structurally supporting intergenerational exchange, 2023 saw participation from 54 countries with over 100 under-25 registrants discussing sustainability, technology, education, and more. Outcomes emphasize democratizing futures literacy, embracing plural narratives, and unlocking imagination. Providing an empathetic platform to transform policies and mindsets, this global initiative spotlights diverse youth perspectives vital for inclusive futures. It enhances agency and hope by demonstrating the power of listening across generations to collectively shape the future.
Playing with Possibilities: Sparking Insight on Declining Populations
Adam Sharpe, Siddhi Patil
The People Power Game playfully immerses participants in envisioning futures impacted by declining and aging populations. Participants roleplay emerging scenarios using card combinations representing driving forces. Assessing preferability, they then explore actions to move towards or avoid imagined situations. Honored for modeling inclusive design, the game has been played globally from government offices to design firms. Surfacing diverse views and solutions, it raises awareness, challenges assumptions, and builds capacity to get ahead of disruptions, driving systemic change while protecting rights in a transforming demographic landscape.
Envisioning Radical Solutions for a Minister of the Future
Laurie Smith, Celia Hannon, Rees Howell, Florence Engasser, Nesta Comms Team, Prospect Team
Nesta and Prospect magazine collaborated to spark debate on future challenges through an innovative thought experiment – proposals pitched to a hypothetical UK Minister for the Future. Exploring eight critical themes from healthcare to democracy, contributors offered a cross-section of radical ideas to tackle looming issues. Seeking diversity, they engaged bright minds spanning business, academia and more to move discussion beyond problem diagnosis toward solutions. Designed to inspire long-term thinking amid short-termism, this engaging format brought future-oriented discourse into mainstream conversations. By modeling openness to fresh perspectives, it highlighted the need to shape change proactively through plurality and imagination.
Democratizing Foresight: AI-enabled participatory scenarios for all
Mike Jackson
PreEmpt.life pioneers the world's first free online foresight service, enabling anyone to strategically anticipate personal or organizational futures. Users participate in scenario thinking tailored to their dreams and context, receiving a comprehensive analysis within 90 minutes that would take over 10,000 hours manually. Integrating 150+ intelligence tools to systematically explore the past, present and future 360 degrees around a topic, it provides customized strategic insight and recommendations. By exponentially increasing access to strategic foresight, this groundbreaking system aims to help decision-makers globally become their best possible selves.
"PAN": Exploring Time and Memory to Liberate Futures
Alex de las Heras
"PAN" encompasses documentary essays and a journey through time, space, and perspective in the Andean region. Catalyzed by the question "what time is it?," this collaborative work intricately weaves together diverse voices to delve into conceptions of future time, challenge notions of presentism, and explore the re-signification of colonial pasts from a futures orientation. Blending participatory research, social foresight, and decolonial approaches, "PAN" fosters collective reflection toward constructing liberatory narratives that catalyze desire, hope, and social emancipation. As an invitation to engage with multidimensional temporality and inclusive worldbuilding, it aims to provoke thought and inspire creative envisioning of alternative futures.
Charting an Equitable Course: Exploring Bhutan's Workforce Futures
Jose Ramos, John Sweeney, Gareth Priday, Jayarethanam Pillai, Reanna Browne, UNDP Bhutan, Ministry of Labour and Human Resources
This project explored potential workforce futures for Bhutan by engaging diverse stakeholders across key sectors. Centering marginalized rural farmers, it incorporated analytical and community research to surface creative ideas. Incorporating extensive research and challenging existing paradigms, the project centered the perspectives of vulnerable groups like rural farmers. It aimed to articulate visions aligned with Bhutanese cultural values and focused on upskilling programs, sustainable agriculture, and other ideas to empower and include marginalized citizens. The participatory process provided a model for economic development grounded in a nation’s strengths.
Envisioning the Future of Humanitarian Aid: Innovating Food Security through Foresight
This Red Cross Red Crescent project applied systems mapping, strategic foresight, and design thinking to generate innovative concepts for improving food security and livelihoods programming. Over several months, teams in Zambia, Malawi, and Kenya visualized the complex system dynamics driving food insecurity, explored plausible futures and community aspirations, and ideated concepts with diverse stakeholders. The creative, experimental process embedded foresight capabilities within the National Societies and produced exciting, robust ideas to influence the system's leverage points. There are now plans to expand the approach across more countries to ultimately transform global humanitarian programming, increasing community resilience and dignity.
Ben Holt, Yuve Guluma, with Patricia Mugenzi, Sara Gullet, Priyanka Patel and Derrick Mugasia
2023 Advisory Committee
Grayce
Canada
Slobodian
Martín
Chile
Comisso
James
United States
Lee
Rahul
Canada
Chandran
Shakil
Bangladesh
Ahmed
Terry
United States
Grim
Kulbir
Canada
Bachher
Ashish
India
Manwar
Tim
United States
Balko
Valerie
Canada
Fox
David
United States
Hamon
2023 APF IF AWARD JUDGES
Abril
Chimal
México
Christine
Martin
Canada
Grace
Okubo
Nigeria
Jenny
Hwang
Canada
Marna
Kagele
United States
Ozcan
Saritas
London UK
Sanjay
Rout
India
Vikita
Shahani
Dubai
Anthea
Foyer
Canada
Daniel
Riveong
Spain
Grayce
Slobodian
Canada
Justyna
Linke
Poland
Martín
Pérez Comisso
Chile
Peter
Bishop
United States
Susan
Gorbet
Canada
Ashish
Manwar
New Delhi
David
Hamon
USA
Hillary
Spencer
United States
Lakin
Anderson
Sweden
Rathana
Peou Norbert- Munns
Thailand
Tara
O'Neil
Canada
Aurelio
Escobar
Spain
Erran
Carme
USA
Mwaffaq
Alziadat
Jordan
Robin
Lobb
Canada
Terry
Grim
USA
Cheryl
May
Toronto, Canada
Giulia Maria
Moschen Bracho
Spain
Jean Paul
Pinto Morales
Ecuador
Luke
Tay
Singapore
Nicole
Husain
Canada
Romanus
Immanuel
Namibia
Tim
Balko
United States
2023 IF AWARDs task force
John A. Sweeney
Türkiye & USA
Co-Convener
Dr. John A. Sweeney is an award-winning author, designer, and futurist. As a practitioner, consultant, and educator, John has organized, managed, and facilitated workshops and seminars, multi-stakeholder projects, and foresight gaming systems in-person within 45 countries on five continents and online with participants from around the world. At present, John is a Senior Research Fellow at Westminster International University in Tashkent, Uzbekistan where he is a Candidate Co-Chair in “Futures Studies for Anticipatory Governance and Sustainable Policymaking.” He also currently serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of World Futures Review: A Journal of Strategic Foresight and faculty within the University of Houston’s Master’s of Strategic Foresight. In 2021, John joined SOIF as the Transformative Foresight Lead.
Maggie Greyson
Canada
Co-Convener
Maggie Greyson is recognized be the Association of Professional Futurists for the Most Significant Futures Work. She is also a Fellow of the School of International Futures. Her mandate is to help people use ambiguous nature of our times to play a meaningful part in the future. Robust research and creative risk-taking define her career as a designer, futurist and writer. Maggie has a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Her work garners international attention for strategic communication and innovative storytelling methods. She has designed interactive online experiences for Fortune 100 companies such as Nissan, GE and Shell. She also has a ten year career as a designer for the stage with companies such as the International Shakespeare’s Globe, in the London and the Stratford Theatre Festival.
Lisa Giuliani
Italy & USA
Project Manager
Lisa Giuliani is a seasoned project manager and educator committed to empowering youth and organizations through foresight. With over a decade of experience across higher education, K-12 schools, private sector and nonprofits, she currently serves as Director of Youth Foresight Projects for Teach the Future and Awards Coordinator for the Association of Professional Futurists. She strives for intergenerational equity, making futures thinking accessible and activating youth leaders; Lisa believes cross cultural-collaboration strengthens organizations and communities. She received a Bachelor of Arts focused in Psychology from University of California, Berkeley and a Master of Arts in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Golden Gate University, San Francisco.
PJ DEMDAM
Philippines
ART DESIGNER
PJ is the current Social Media Manager and graphic Designer of the Association of Professional Futurists. As a Public Administration graduate from the University of the Philippines - Diliman, he seamlessly blends administrative expertise with a deep passion for art and design. In the digital design realm for four years, he thrives in an organization that not only leverages his degree but fosters continuous refinement of his creative talents. Eager to contribute meaningfully, PJ is on a perpetual quest for growth, ready to lend his creative design prowess to organizations that value innovation.