“The future will always be more messy than we imagine.” – Jamais Cascio

Future Preparedness explores how to prototype a range of possible futures and experience them as real, physical situations. By immersing ourselves in these future “prehearsals” or “pre-enactments” we cultivate mindsets and behaviours that can help us adapt to diverse and unpredictable futures. This case study builds on futurist scenario planning and ancient meditation practices, as well as age-old sideshows, anachronistic re-enactments and contemporary disaster drills. We sketch our future lives as improvised, participatory experiences and test them in a number of near future scenarios.

• Experiments for Home Futurists: FoAM's fieldwork on scenario planning and future prehearsals
• Transiency of a Contemporary Journeyman: Dougald Hine's quest for resilience as “artist in transience”
• Family in Residence: The Simpsons (Mark, Leah, Scarlet and Delilah) transform FoAM Brussels from a cultural laboratory into a 21st century clan – and also celebrate the first Rocket Boat Day
• Collective Introspection in the Naikan retreat: Helga Hartl assisted by Christina Stadlbauer conducts a silent retreat at the FoAM studio, investigating the effect of Naikan practice on collaboration and communication in a working environment
• Science, crafts and emerging technologies in the Mathematickal Arts workshop: Carole Collet and Tim Boykett bring together disparate disciplines - mathematics, textile design and tangible programming - to explore how borrowing from one another's fields can increase their resilience
• Resilients Salons: a series of conversations about topics related to cultural resilience, hosted by notable speakers and thinkers from a variety of backgrounds
• Anthropologist Coralie Stalberg's Débrouillardise et Coquetterie: investigating DIY textile practices and associated recycling strategies during World War II
• Composing a Scenario Symphony with Anna Maria Orru and David Relan: exploring future scenario building through the temporal model and panarchy
• Maja Kuzmanovic and Nik Gaffney reflect on FoAM's own future preparedness experiments in Prehearsing the Future, and summarises the recipe they devised in the Prehearsal Pocket Guide