Join us in Berlin, Germany on November 1-3, 2018 for a 2.5-day course on the Transformative Scenario Process.
This workshop includes an introduction to the concepts, sharing of cases where TSP has been applied to complex social and environmental challenges, the opportunity to apply scenario exercises to your own set of challenges, and time to reflect on your learnings. Click here to register.
WHAT IS TRANSFORMATIVE SCENARIO PROCESS?
Transformative scenarios are about creating futures. While most scenario planning methodologies focus on adaptation, transformative scenarios seek to not only understand or adapt to a possible future but also to shape and impact it. The structured creative process helps diverse actors to see the different futures that are possible and discover what they can and must do. Transformative scenarios help both participants and a broader audience to better understand what might happen through narratives of how the future can unfold – and how these unfolding future can be influenced.
For those involved in their creation, transformative scenarios offer a way to unblock situations that are polarized or stuck. The facilitated process combines imagination and rigor. It can become a game changer when a diverse set of people faces a complex challenge that is vital to them but that they have not been willing or able to work on together, perhaps because they disagree on the very nature of the problem. The process enables them to construct shared understandings, stronger relationships, and clearer intentions, thereby creating the potential for action that will shape a better future.
The approach, described in the book Transformative Scenario Planning written by Adam Kahane of Reos Partners, was born 25 years ago and has been applied and adapted many times since then, from post-apartheid South-Africa to confict-ridden Colombia. Reos Partners has in recent years conducted a wide variety of such processes, including in the fields of drug policy, democracy, the environment, development, justice, education, land reform, and food security, at national, regional, and hemispheric levels.
* We strongly recommend Adam Kahane’s book as a course pre-reading.
COURSE CONTENT
This 2.5-day course on the Transformative Scenario Process includes an introduction to the concepts, sharing of cases where TSP has been applied to complex social and environmental challenges, the opportunity to apply scenario exercises to your own
set of challenges, and time to reflect on your learnings. We invite participants to join us on the afternoon of the first day to participate in the first workshop exercises and later for a welcome dinner. On the second day, we will establish a shared understanding of what scenarios are, the difference between adaptive and transformative approaches, and when and how to apply them. We will also embark on a mini-TSP exercise around a theme of common interest to the participants, starting with mapping core concerns, driving forces, certainties and uncertainties. On the third and final day, we will turn the scenario ingredients mapped into simple scenario stories that could have a transformative impact, and we will reflect on the implications of these stories as well as on the experience overall.
THE FACILITATORS
Colleen Magner
A director of Reos Partners based in South Africa. In this capacity she has led multi-stakeholder initiatives in the areas of violence against women, climate change adaptation, food security, land reform, healthcare, education, mining safety, insurance, and support for orphans and vulnerable children. She is also a writer and is co-author of Mapping Dialogue: Essential Tools for Social Change, which outlines a variety of transformative dialogue tools and change processes. As a faculty member at the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science, Colleen teaches courses in systems thinking for organisations, Transformative Scenarios, participative practices for social change, and dialogue for solving tough problems.
Anne Weber Carlsen
Is a senior associate of Reos Partners based in Denmark. Her current work focuses on the future of work and on creating cooperatives of solo-preneurs. As a consultant and leader she holds experience from a wide range of sectors and fields: education, food safety, local democracy, integration, gender and culture from working in Europe and Africa. She facilitates teams, stakeholder groups and communities in working together to co-create innovative solutions to societal problems. She finds Transformative Scenario work a creative, playful, and hugely valuable way of addressing the increasing number of challenges the world is facing.