Cultivating the Futures Imaginary:
Imaginative Methods and Futures Literacies
Session 1 of 4

Futures Literacies

In this 60-minute session, participants will be introduced to the interdisciplinary concept of futures literacies along with different philosophical approaches to thinking and modeling complex futures in and for troubled times. We will explore the ways that futures imaginaries continue to be colonized by contemporary narratives of impossibility, and explore pathways for critical resistant to status quo futures through imaginative practice. In this session, we will engage with a selection of Indigenous narratives that model futures in radically different ways. Via hands-on and participatory creative imagining prompts, participants will explore their own sensing of the future and how this kind of reflective practice can help increase resilience in the face of uncertainty. Participants will leave this session with a strong understanding of futures literacies as a concept along with methods for critique and analysis of contemporary narratives of the future.

Presenter:

Rachel Horst is literacy scholar and educator who recently completed her doctoral degree from the Department of Language and Literacy Education at The University of British Columbia. Her research focusses upon creative and arts-based digital literacies and future literacies pedagogies as conceptualized through a posthuman ontology of difference. Her work investigates the generative confluence of digital creation, writing-as-becoming, and creative futures for cultivating the imaginary. Informed by decolonial discourse, Rachel’s research praxis takes up creative methods that seek to map theoretically enriched pathways between literacies scholarship, systems thinking, and future literacies pedagogy. Rachel currently lives with her family in xwilkway (Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia). Before pursuing her doctoral degree she was a secondary school teacher, working in the remote Indigenous community of Bella Bella, BC, and at the alternative school on the traditional territory of the Shishalh peoples on the Sunshine Coast, BC. Her teaching practice continues to be informed by her work with youth outside of mainstream contexts, exploring creative technologies for sharing alternative stories of selves and futures in and for troubled times.

Cost: Free

Registration Link: https://forms.gle/Gd9YLwckZypxaJdj8

This is part of the Maskwacis Cultural College Microlearning Series and is open to the public.
Contact Manisha Khetarpal by email  mkhetarpal@mccedu.ca or call toll free: 1 866 585 3925