Finn Strivens is a designer, futurist, and co-founder of Futurall, a studio exploring hope, agency, and action.
Finn’s work focuses on making complex systems tangible, creating real participation, and helping communities imagine the futures they want. Alongside their work at Futurall, Finn is also a foresight researcher at the School of International Futures and lectures in design futures at the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London.
From climate projects like Earthlin.gs to research into queer spaces and alternative futures, Finn is at the intersection of science, imagination, and social change.
Finn and I delve into the art of imagining diverse futures to create more equitable and resilient systems. The conversation explores a variety of topics including the intersection of design, futurism, and performance, the importance of storytelling in engaging communities, and the role of marginalised spaces in offering new perspectives on identity and social change.
Here are some of the questions Finn and I explored in this conversation:
What does it actually mean to be a futurist and why isn’t it about predicting the future?
How do you help communities imagine hopeful futures when the future feels pretty bleak?
What does “real participation” look like, beyond box-ticking workshops and consultation theatre?
How do you make complex systems like labour rights or climate transitions tangible and human?
Can design and futures work actually reduce polarization and help people sit with nuance?
How do you balance hope and realism when working on climate futures, like in the Earthlings project?
What can queer spaces teach us about imagining alternative ways of living and relating to each other?
How do you know which issue to commit yourself to in a world where everything feels urgent?
You can watch the video of this episode here:
