What is the Futures Stories Lab?

Heli and the Futures Stories Lab – meet our tortoise!

Hello, I’m Heli!  

How do YOU picture the future? A ray of hope – or a black hole? Specific hopes – or vague dreams? Perhaps full of worry and uncertainty?

The FUTURES STORIES LAB is a method – not for gazing into a crystal ball to see THE ONE future for everyone. But rather for imagining many different possibilities: futures, in the plural. After all, our imagination is a great treasure chest. And what we can imagine can also become reality.

In the FUTURES STORIES LAB, we bring our ideas to life – in stories full of the future.  

I invite you to join me in the futures workshop. Five chapters lie ahead of us, which we want to explore, investigate, imagine, create and share.

Let’s head into the futures! 

First Futures Stories Lab: The Future of the Soil

The ‘Future of the Soil’ workshop marked the first implementation of the Futures Stories Lab in a school setting. In a multi-phase teaching programme, pupils explored the future of the soil through creative, investigative and reflective activities.

Starting with the question of what the future means, the pupils first explored their own ideas about the future and, as part of the ‘Explore & Research’ phase, worked on the scientific fundamentals of soil as a habitat. Building on this, in the Imagine, Craft and Share phases they developed their own visions of the future for sustainable soil use, designed future scenarios for their school environment, created professions of the future and jointly developed future stories and dramatic performances.

This lesson unit serves as an example of how the Futures Stories Lab combines futures literacy-oriented educational processes with education for sustainable development, creative storytelling and subject-specific learning.

A detailed description of the Futures Stories Lab on the future of the soil can be found in the article: Sippl, Carmen, Tengler, Karin, Capatu, Ioana, Krebs, Rita Elisabeth & Wittmann, Astrid (2025). Die Zukunft des Bodens: Eine Pilotstudie zur Förderung von Zukünftedenken in der Primarstufe im methodischen Format der Zukünftewerkstatt. (2025). R&E-SOURCE, 12(4), 93–116. https://doi.org/10.53349/re-source.2025.i4.a1486

Futures Stories Lab Workbook

The Futures Stories Lab Workbook is a practical guide for implementing educational processes in schools, universities and adult education that promote futures literacy. It guides users through the application of the Futures Stories Lab method and supports both learners and teachers in the structured development, reflection and creation of visions of the future.

The workbook combines the theoretical foundations of futures literacy with concrete methodological guidance and practical work prompts. It is designed as an interactive workbook and invites users to work directly within the material, record their thoughts, make sketches and further develop ideas about the future.

A central design element of the workbook is the character Heli, a tortoise who acts as a narrative guide through the individual phases of the Futures Stories Lab and provides orientation throughout the working process.

The workbook includes:

• an introduction to the concept and methodology of the Futures Stories Lab,
• theoretical foundations of futures literacy and futures-oriented pedagogy,
• 20 varied prompts for developing future stories,
• thematic and level-specific guidance through icons and colour schemes, and
• a print version as well as an open-access edition for easy use in educational contexts.

The Futures Stories Lab Workbook thus provides a structured framework for fostering the ability to imagine the future, reflective thinking and participatory future-shaping in educational contexts.

Postcards depicting the Futures Stories Lab phases can be downloaded here.

Futures Stories Lab MOOC

The Futures Stories Lab MOOC offers an introduction to the Futures Stories Lab as a pedagogical approach to fostering futures literacy in educational processes.

The focus is on questions such as: How can thinking about the future be encouraged in children and young people? Which creative, cultural, artistic and media-based practices support the development of environmental awareness and transformative learning experiences? And which teaching concepts help teachers to implement futures literacy in the classroom?

The MOOC adapts the concept of futures literacy, as defined by UNESCO, into the didactic format of the Futures Stories Lab for teacher training, making its principles accessible to schools, higher education institutions and further education providers. Participants will gain theoretical foundations, methodological approaches and practical insights into futures literacy-oriented lesson planning.

More information about the MOOC is currently being developed here!