Using Futures Literacy as a Peace Education Tool

By Griffin Henry

Futures Literacy, as defined by Miller (2018), is “the capability of imagining diverse and multiple futures, and using futures as lenses through which we look at the present anew.” The future itself only exists in our imagination. As the world continues to rapidly restructure, particularly around multipolarity, declining multilateralism, and rapid technological leaps, the future, in mine and many others’ minds, feels radically uncertain.  

 “When we use the future, we anticipate, and how we anticipate matters, since it changes the present.”

(Damhof, 2022)

Imagining and anticipating the future can give individuals a sense of agency in the present. 

The FLL is best suited for formal higher-education settings and beyond, but could be highly adaptable for advanced high school students. I would undoubtedly have benefited from this work in my high school experience. It could also be adaptable for informal community or workplace settings.

The lab is explicitly designed to work regardless of context. UNESCO has run over 115 of these labs globally with youth, policymakers, professionals, and community members. A notable peace-relevant example was a 2019 lab in Libreville, Gabon, where youth imagined “a peaceful and sustainable city by 2050,” generating over 30 new ideas that were shared with municipal policymakers.

The FLL is structured around four phases, each building on the last. I added a pre-phase to give participants more context on futures learning and prime them for moving into the activity sections. Below is a suggested adaptation for an advanced high school/college-level course over two to three class sessions (90–120 minutes each).

■ Pre-activity:

Watching the introduction video.

The video, Futures Literacy: shaping your present by reimagining futures | Loes Damhof | TEDxYouth@Groningen, will give participants an overview of Futures Literacy and provide context and norming for the activities following. 

■ Reveal:

Students surface their existing assumptions about the future through short writing prompts and pair discussions. Prompt: “What do you think the world will look like in 20 years?” The goal is not to answer correctly, but to make students’ implicit assumptions visible.

■ Reframing task:

Groups are given an unfamiliar, neither probable nor desirable future scenario (e.g., “a world where nation-states no longer exist”) and asked to make sense of it. This disrupts default thinking and opens space for new possibilities.

■ Rethink:

Students return to the original question with new perspectives. What assumptions shifted? What do they now see in the present that they didn’t before? This is where peace-relevant insights typically emerge.

■ Reflection/Debrief:

 A facilitated whole-class debrief connects the experience to the broader course concept, if applicable. Students could write a short reflection connecting their futures to a real-world issue.

Time: 2–3 sessions of 90 minutes each  

Materials: Playbook (free PDF), large paper or digital whiteboard (Miro), writing prompts, scenario cards  

Group size: Works best with 10–30 participants in small groups of 4–6.

Pedagogical approaches that strengthen this resource

■ Experiential learning:

The lab is explicitly designed to be a “learning by doing/action-research workshop.” 

■ Dialogue-based learning:

Small group discussions expose students to radically different assumptions, modeling the kind of perspective-taking central to conflict resolution.

■ Critical reflection:

Structured debriefs push students beyond the exercise itself to examine what their assumptions reveal about present-day systems and structures.

The Futures Literacy Lab supports several overlapping types of peace education. By asking “whose future is this?” the lab pushes students to reflect on who gets to imagine the future, which visions are prioritized, and which aren’t.  This activity, at its core, is a reflection on peace, power, justice, and individual agency in the presence.

In my view, these activities align most with:

• Global awareness
• Social justice
• Dialogue
• Conflict prevention

Participants will gain knowledge of how anticipation and reflection shape present-day decisions, including political, economic, and social ones. Also, they gain skills in perspective-taking, systems thinking, and sense-making in a community of learning. Students may also develop attitudes of openness, individual/collective agency, and that their imagination is a tool for change. 

As part of this assignment, I was tasked with sharing this blog post with two stakeholders and inviting them to read and comment.

■ My mentor and friend, Jewels.

In our many sessions focused on cognitive transformation, you have reiterated the need to “build a future worth creating.” This activity is using our moral imagination to reflect on that very task. Hopefully, this source provides additional language and structure to supplement the amazing work you already do. 

■ The best teacher I’ve had, my Father

Hey Dad, so much of your class (he is a middle school social studies teacher) focuses on global issues and contemporary world affairs.  I know how important it is to you to give students a sense of global awareness and agency. Hopefully, this resource could provide you with context, language, and structure to bring into your legendary classroom. While the resource language and the activity itself may be slightly too advanced, an iterated version in simpler language could be suitable for your classroom. 

Here is a full list of resources: