Nicole Rijkens-Klomp’s research while affiliated with Maastricht University and other places

The meaning of participatory explorations of the future for strategic policy: lessons from local practice Exploration of the future is about systematically exploring future developments and the possible consequences for an organization or issue. The demand for future explorations at local policy level has increased in recent years. This article focuses on the relationship between participatory future exportations and local strategic policy processes. On the basis of four case studies, the meaning of participatory foresight studies for local policy processes was investigated. The research, which was carried out as action research, shows that future explorations in local strategic policy processes can be significant in different ways: they provide new knowledge, they promote learning in an integral and future-oriented manner and they encourage social learning processes that are independent of the content, which is valuable for group dynamics. In addition, future explorations can be useful in different phases of the policy cycle. Despite the fact that participatory explorations of the future can be meaningful in local strategic policy processes, there is still a bridge between the method of future exploration on the one hand and policy processes and organizations on the other. The research shows that a demand-driven approach starting from the needs of the participants in the policy process and responding to the culture, structure and working method of the organization is a promising approach. At the same time, the research shows that there are several factors that need to be considered in order to achieve a stronger interrelatedness of future exploration and policy. The policy practice and the exploratory practice seem to be gradually evolving towards each other. On the one hand, policy practice is becoming more rational, transparent and analytical in nature through the use of future explorations, at least in policy preparation. The explorations promote substantive discussions on policy agendas and policy intentions. On the other hand, they are becoming more policy oriented through more reasoning from the policy practice in terms of process design and knowledge needs of the policy process.

Among the various reasons to engage in foresight activities, one encountered often is to stimulate dialogue on imminent issues and inspire innovations aimed at the challenges they bring along. The authors’ studio, Pantopicon, was asked to carry out a (near future) foresight desk study investigating the changing role between people and their home/office interiors. Furthermore they were asked to render tangible the challenges brought forward by this study and create a thought-provoking experience for an audience of professionals and general visitors within the context of a trade fair (i.e. the Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk, Belgium). The article will zoom in on the particular way in which this challenge was taken up, i.e. by creating an immersive experience embodying imminent future changes by means of five fair booths. Each represented a fictitious company with products or services aimed at new needs, opportunities and abilities emerging from changes in the relationship between people and their home interiors. This article describes the follow-up approach, the results obtained and reflects upon a series of key learnings following from the experience in particular and the role and value of conceptual design in enhancing the experience factor in foresight in general. Hence, we aim to illustrate how an immersive conceptual design approach can be used in an applied foresight context and how it raises new questions and opportunities for both research and applied contexts. Through physical evidencing¹ and open-ended storytelling, futures rendered tangible through design contribute to instilling a sense of wonder in people, in shifting their mindset to render them more susceptible to anticipating some of tomorrow's changes.

In this paper the first findings of a retrospective scan of the use of future exploration methods in strategic policy-making processes in the public domain in the Netherlands and Belgium will be addressed. The barriers and leverage points as experienced by the policy-makers involved will be assessed from their perspective as end-users who have applied foresight methods in their policy-making activities. By means of four case studies, the success factors and barriers that policy-makers encounter as they apply future exploration methods will be elaborated on. Attention will be paid to the different motives and intentions employed when opting for future exploration methods. The case studies are based on policy document analyses and in-depth interviews with users in the policy domain, all conducted in view of building empirical evidence.

Climate adaptation is a complex task surrounded by uncertainty. To support climate adaptation policies, a new scenario approach is pursued to explore possible discontinuous future developments of societal perspectives on climate adaptation issues. The scenario approach was tested for a case study on Dutch river management. In a series of scenario development workshops, a select group of stakeholders explored the perspectives on the management of the River Meuse in the past, present, and future. The process was supported by an analytical perspectives mapping tool to illustrate and analyze the development of perspectives over time. The process and analytical tools contributed to insight into the drivers of perspective change for the case study at hand. Moreover, the stakeholders highlighted the potential of the approach for water management policy for creating awareness about the plurality of perspectives and the dynamics of perspective change, monitoring perspectives and perspective change as part of a flexible policy approach, and anticipating on the occurrence of shock events. Further work is required to better represent the social dynamics of perspectives change, to better empirically ground the perspective change model, and to apply integrated water models in the scenario development process to assess water–society interactions. KeywordsScenario analysis–River management–Perspectives mapping tool–Stakeholder participation–Climate adaptation

Participatory methods are increasingly used in Integrated Assessment (IA). The aim of an interdisciplinary working group at the International Centre for Integrative Studies (ICIS) was to list participatory methods from the scholarly literature scattered over various disciplines. In this paper, we summarise our findings. Recent experiences with participation in IA are discussed from a methodological perspective. It is argued that it is of crucial importance that principles, considerations, arguments, design choices, the process itself and lessons learned are reported to provide a basis for the IA community to reflect on experiences and to stimulate theory development.