We are delighted to share that Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Utopia Lab team has received an honourable mention in the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) IF Awards 2023.
The APF IF Awards is a longstanding programme that recognises excellence in futures and foresight work around the world, with the view that “If” (What if? If X, then Y?) questions are central to the work of curators, facilitators, and researchers in supporting communities, organisations, and institutions to explore futures. The awards convey possibility, exploration, and openness to new perspectives through works that address key themes such as the imaginative, indigenous, and interdependent.
The Edinburgh Futures Institute’s Utopia Lab team led by Jennifer Williams, Matjaz Vidmar, and Gintare Kylute were chosen as one of 13 Honourable Mentions in the APF IF awards, out of a ‘record-breaking’ 106 submissions from futurists and foresights practitioners globally.
Our Utopia Labs provide open, collaborative spaces to imagine and feel potential futures without prescriptive frameworks or solutions. First held in 2017 led by Jennifer Williams, Creative Projects Manager at Edinburgh Futures Institute, the interdisciplinary labs question, learn, and create together through events integrating yoga, meditation, poetry, embodied creativity and more. The sessions curate interactions between academics, artists, entrepreneurs, students, and audiences in person and online globally.
To date, Utopia Labs have taken place in 2019, 2022, and 2023. The last two sessions were part of the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s co-created and collaborative event seasons, which were open and free to the public.
Jennifer Williams said:
“We are so delighted to have received an Honourable Mention in the APF IF Awards as we are at the beginning of our explorations. The feedback that we have received and connections that we are making are a huge boon to us in our work. We want to create new experiments, grow with the Futures Institute, and expand our community, helping more people to dream about the future together and bring those dreams back to reverberate in the present. This is a step on that journey.”
Further information
Utopia Lab at Edinburgh Futures Institute
