Reimagining one-size-fits-all futures, one story at a time.
The Decolonizing Futures Initiative utilizes storytelling as a tool for inclusion of marginalized voices and cultural knowledge in futures work.
The Decolonizing Futures Initiative is an award-winning global social impact initiative founded by Pupul Bisht to address the lack of participation of marginalized communities from non-western cultures in the global futures discourse. The participatory workshops used in this project are specifically designed to engage communities in an inclusive dialogue and empower them to envision culturally relevant visions of their preferred futures. The method used in these workshops is a novel storytelling-based foresight tool, inspired by the Kaavad folk-storytelling tradition from Rajasthan, India. Through a seed funding received as part of the prestigious Joseph Jaworski Next Generation Foresight Practitioner’s Award, Pupul launched this initiative in 2018.
Thought Leadership
As a globally recognized thought leader advocating for the power of storytelling in shaping inclusive futures, Pupul Bisht has been invited as a keynote speaker at prestigious global platforms such as the 76th United Nations General Assembly, Bavarian Film Centre (Munich), ESPAS Conference (Brussels), Publicis Groupe (New York), SDNow Conference (Australia). She has also spoken at UNESCO Global Futures Literacy Design Forum (Paris), PRIMER Conference (NYC), and the Global Foresight Summit among many other.
Communities & Impact
-
Futures of the Girl Child
Girl children in Delhi’s government schools, and daughters of mothers who work as waste pickers in Mumbai, are now the first generation of school-goers in their families. They refuse to let pessimism, and fear cloud their imagination when thinking about desirable futures. They ask What if women, like their mothers, are no longer victims of systemic, social discrimination and have access to self-actualization in the future.
-
Sustainable Futures
Women from rural Botswana, on a 6 month training to become solar engineers at Barefoot college in Rajasthan. At the end of this training period, these Solar Mamas will head back to their own villages in rural Southern-Africa to light the first street lights completely running on solar-energy. What if women in all rural communities, can re-interpret their traditional role as caretakers of nature by localizing technologies that could continue to benefit their future generations?
-
Inclusive Futures
BIPOC- Black, Indigenous, Activists of Colour who work to support grassroots youth organizing in Canada as What if there was a way for us to heal from colonial trauma over the next 30 years? What would those healed futures and journey towards them look like?
Supporters & Collaborators
