I’ve been thinking about how I am often involved in creating multi-sensory, place-based futures with groups, and I’m reminded again of Miti Desai’s essay about her experience with the gurukul system of training. There is one moment from her writing that has stayed with me: a teacher peeling an apple slowly, carefully, attentively, and offering it as part of a conversation.
No instruction. No explanation. Just a lived demonstration of skill, care, patience, and respect.
Futures work often forgets the body. We ask people to imagine profound change while keeping them seated, abstracted, and disconnected from place. Usually with a deck of a few hundred PowerPoint slides to hand.
But some futures can only be accessed through movement, sensation, rhythm, and attention. Through walking. Through silence. Through feeling what stability or fragility actually feels like.
That’s why I created my Walk the Futures formats, and my senstoryscapes approach. It’s also why I am such a fan of “walkshops”. Learning, exploring, sharing, deciding: on the move.
Embodied futures aren’t an aesthetic choice. They’re a way of bypassing inherited futures and letting new ones surface.