#177 Building Bridges to the Future with Cat Tully of the School of International Futures
If you’ve listened to the podcast at all over the past few years, you’ll know that the search for routes to total systemic change has always been the driver of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Even so, it’s not often we talk to someone who is singlemindedly exploring the routes to that systemic change and who has the tools to help everyone explore the potential for what might come next.
And so this week, we are delighted to talk to Cat Tully, a remarkable woman who spends her life helping people to bridge the space between where we are and where we need to get to, in ways that drag as little of the past with us as possible, while opening the widest gates we can to the systems, structures and practices that stand the best chance of a generative future.
Cat leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a not-for-profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK that use futures thinking to inspire change at the local, national and global levels. SOIF has worked with organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments across the planet – all with the explicit intention of making the world fairer for current and future generations. SOIF also supports a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners – young people under the age of 35, who can advocate for and engage with change in their communities and the wider world.
There is so much that the SOIF is doing – so many people it’s bringing together – we could have spent our time together talking about specific instances, and Cat does use specific examples of projects she’s involved in to highlight specific areas, but in general, we wanted to explore the ideas, the systems, the ways we might think differently so that you can pick them up and run with them. Because one thing is becoming increasingly clear as our future unfolds – which is that none of us knows what it is, and it’s going to take all of us, using the best tools we have, to make it clear. Cat is bringing us those tools, honed and ready for use.
Episode #177
SOIF Projects
If you are interested in learning strategic foresight to shape the future of your community or your organisation, SOIF offers an annual in-person Summer Retreat in Strategic Foresight, happening from 24 to 28 July 2023 in the UK and virtual courses throughout the year. The next virtual courses in 2023 are starting in May and September.
Futures toolkit for leaders: SOIF and California 100 published “Beyond Strategic Planning: Foresight Toolkit for Decision Makers“—a primer for leaders looking for straightforward, pragmatic ways to apply foresight to their work.
The National Strategy for the Next Generation programme engaged 16-30-year-olds, Next Generation Champions, to imagine futures of the UK’s international development role in 2045.
SOIF developed the Framework for Assessing Intergenerational Fairness with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The tool has been used by All Parliamentary Party Groups for Future Generations (APPG) in their initiative Futures Check, and we have developed a policy brief on Building a Coalition for Intergenerational Fairness in the European Green Deal.
Next Generation Foresight Practitioners, an initiative by SOIF, is the largest global network of next-generation future-alert changemakers democratising the futures and foresight field. With 100 fellows and 500 members of a global network, the initiative supports young change agents that use foresight to shape better futures for their community and the world, e.g. NGFP members in Africa imagining Digital Futures of the continent, seeding collaboration with an Impact fund and creating opportunities for members to be visible, BBC Futures article, Youth Climate and Energy Futures Lab at COP26 and contributing to United Nations General Assembly on the SDG Moment Closing Panel.
OTHER Links
In Conversation
Manda: This week I am enormously happy to be talking to Cat Tully, a remarkable human being who spends her life helping people to bridge that space between where we are and where we need to get to, in ways that drag as little of the past with us as possible, while opening the widest gates we can to the systems and structures and practices that stand the best chance of creating a generative future. Which is what we’re here for, right? Cat leads the School of International Futures, which is a not for profit international collective of practitioners based in the UK, that uses futures thinking to inspire change at local, national and global levels. The school has worked with organisations like the UN, Omidyar, NATO, the Royal Society and national governments across the planet, all with the explicit intention of making the world fairer for current and future generations.
Manda: The school also has an entire program which supports a growing network of next generation foresight practitioners. Which is to say, young people under the age of 35, across the world, who can advocate for and engage with their communities and the wider world in pursuit of the systemic change that we’re talking about. There is so much that the school is doing, so many people it’s bringing together. And we could have spent our hour talking, Cat and me, just going through those instances. And we did, in some cases, use specific instances to highlight answers to the questions that I’d asked. But we wanted to talk a little bit more widely than that. We wanted to explore the ideas, the systems, the ways of thinking differently, so that you as a listener could pick them up and run with them. Because if one thing is becoming increasingly clear as our future unfolds, it’s that none of us knows what it is or can know. It’s going to take all of us working together using the best tools we have to make it clear. And Cat is bringing us those tools. Ready, polished, shined up, lined up, ready to use. So people of the podcast, please do welcome Cat Tully of the School of International Futures.
Manda: Cat, welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast and thank you for finding time in what I imagine must be an extremely busy schedule. How are things with you?
Cat: Fantastic Manda. I haven’t slept much because I’ve just arrived back from a trip to Tierra del Fuego over the weekend, which was amazing. But I am very excited about talking to you. Since Beth introduced us, I’ve been really getting into the podcast and feel as if you’re definitely a kindred spirit, let’s put it that way.
Manda: That’s really kind. Thank you. And yeah, I think it was October when Beth introduced us. Thank you, Beth. But schedules and timescales, we’re here in April. So you’ve just been to Tierra del Fuego, which sounds quite exciting. So this is one of the ways in that we could go. What is most alive for you in the moment?
Cat: Goodness. Now, um, at the moment, what I’m really wrestling with is writing a book. It’s quite exciting and very intimidating and scary. And the working title is activating the Superpower of foresight for societal transformation, which obviously is going to be changed, but that’s basically what it’s trying to do. It’s about putting down in practice the insights from working with our communities for change, in using strategic foresight to create social transformation around the world. That’s basically after 13 years, we want to put some of this down in writing in order to be able to share it. And it feels like a very weighty task but a very exciting one. So that’s what I’m wrestling with at the moment. And as someone who’s a creative writer, I’m also really looking forward to hearing a lot of tips from you on how to do such a daunting task. But it’s an inspirational one and exciting. Yeah.
Manda: Because I was reading your blog thinking, my gosh, there’s a book in this. By the time you pull everything together that’s on your website, there is so much information. That feels grand. How far through are you? Are you just starting?
Cat: I’m currently I think I’ve done the outline. The privilege of being in the situation that I’m in is that I have no original thoughts, but..
Manda: I doubt that.
Cat: I’m able to pick up and hear lots of interesting ideas from all the people that I connect with on travels and adventures. And you hear and you see what the different communities around us are doing in different parts of the world and different levels, whether it’s in their families or in their communities or in their governments. And you start connecting the dots. And one of my deep mentors who has really has profoundly changed me. She’s called Betty Sue Flowers, which who, apart from having the best name in the whole world, is an amazing writer and deep thinker and, and someone who does scenarios. And we met up in September last year and she said you are pregnant with a book, in quite a kind of matriarchal way. So I was like, Right, that is a sign from the universe to say that I need to get this stuff down. Because the practice that we’ve all learned together is, I think, particularly important to share. We’re at a moment in time where shining a light on that practice and making some of the invisible visible, is really important.
Manda: Okay, so let’s see if we can make some of the invisible visible on the podcast, then. Tell us about the practice. I’m assuming you mean the practice of foresight, which is a superpower.
Cat: Which is a superpower! When applied to design and for the purpose of of social transformation. So I, you know, I’ve had a bit of a random walk in my career. I never quite understood why I flitted from one thing to another. It kind of started making sense looking backwards. But that’s something for another story, perhaps. I ended up working in government and I’ve always been really in the area of kind of strategy and policy and decision making. And I realised about 20 years ago that there was this whole field called futures studies or strategic foresight. Which is, actually we feel overwhelmed when we think about the future. We tend to think that either the future is going to be like today or that it’s going to be so different that we can’t systematically think of it. Or even worse, we use used futures. We take the futures that other people have already developed for us. Which is a very powerful concept. But the coming together to talk about the future in a systematic way is actually a deeply empowering act. It’s an act of community building, and it’s actually, at its heart, it’s an act of of political empowerment. It’s saying as together, you know, we’re going to look at what might be shaping our world and be clear eyed about that. We’re going to try and prepare for the things that are coming up, but at the same time, we’re going to try and and shape them.
Cat: And in doing so, we are building the capability in the here and now to actually build our agency and embrace uncertainty, with all sorts of positive side benefits from that. From kind of a sense of mental agency in a world which can feel so kind of overwhelmingly changed and disruptive. So I came across this field and it was like, well, this is fantastic. So I was in government, I was in the Prime Minister’s strategy unit and then moved to the Foreign Office in the policy planning staff, and thought, wow, you know, if we’re thinking about like, you know, what’s going to happen to the Arctic, like if the Arctic channels become open, that’s got profound geopolitical and economic consequences for our future. Are we preparing for it? Or, you know, what about what might be happening in West Africa as we think that the drivers of change are building democracy, but in fact, there are wider drivers around climate change, perhaps pressures around counter-terrorism, issues around drugs running, moving from Central Asia through to West Africa that are kind of setting the, you know, five to 10 to 15 year contexts that we need to really kind of be aware of. And so how can we really use a structured way of thinking about the future, to help us be a little bit less now focussed and a little bit more future focussed?
Manda: If you’re doing this in the context of government, and that seems really wise, I’ve been listening to Americans for decades saying when the Arctic opens up, it’s going to give us all this great bounty. And you think, Yes, but it will also mean that we’re over the tipping points of climate change, and that’s not going to be grand, people, I’m really sorry. But that’s a relatively simple, and I use the word very, very loosely, compared to geopolitics of Africa, say, where the levels of complexity are so huge and the levers of change not necessarily obvious. How did you, if we’re taking ourselves back and obviously we’re going to move forward and talk about the creation of the School of International Futures. But when you’re in government, in a department which is presumably to a degree constrained by being part of business as usual, how do you manage to free up your bandwidth and kind of mental and emotional space enough, to begin to wrestle with the extraordinary complexity of something like the geopolitics of Africa? It seems I’m standing from the outside and frankly know nothing about this, but it feels like that’s a potentially mind breaking project. And then bringing that back and translating it into language that, I don’t have a hugely high opinion of politicians; they seem to have slightly linear thought patterns. That’s being really kind. How do you translate that back into the linearity of people who think in five year terms?
Cat: Well, I think that you’ve you’ve put your finger exactly on the challenge. I think that what we’re trying to do is make decisions a little bit better, right? So if you try to go from the position of like, I’m trying to fix things or this is the totality that I’m setting myself, your mind is going to break. So are we able to make current decisions a little bit better? So it’s being more modest, I think, or humble about what what the intention is. It’s like, can we support people and be in service of people as they’re doing two things. First of all is engaging with the world around them and what they understand is going on. And there, I think the practice is about holding space, building a vocabulary to help people understand the uncertainty and being okay with not having the answers. And then holding the space and knowing the people and the contacts to be able to bring other people who have very different views of what that issue that you’re looking at looks like. And so what you’re often using is, as I said, holding a space. So an example is we’re working for a separate ministry of Foreign Affairs, looking at Mozambique and talking about how do you rebuild after Cyclone Idai. That was about 4 or 5 years ago, destroyed a whole lot of infrastructure, left a lot of people worse off. Now the obvious go to solution is to rebuild what was there before, Right? Rebuild the schools, rebuild the bridges.
Cat: However, those infrastructure and those structures were actually designed 40 or 50 years ago. So when you’re rebuilding, this is actually an opportunity for you to open up the question and say, actually half of the population in Mozambique are under 20. What do they want their future Mozambique to look like? What do they think is important? How do you actually bring people in to talk about that kind of inspired vision, whether it’s because of connections of like green energy to Cahora Bassa Dam or what kind of jobs or health or education do they want? So that that kind of conversation can then really be powerful and helpful. That’s one point, that’s one answer to your question. The second answer to your question is it’s not just important to detect the signal from the noise, to help people kind of understand and explore what might be shaping what they’re doing. There’s really, especially with the big kinds of legacy based institutions that you are talking about, then there is a very, very important focus which is rarely looked at sufficiently. Which is then how do you act on that noise, in an institution which is designed for the past and whose incentives are almost about not engaging and identifying and responding to the weak signals of the future. And that is worth a lot of conversation and we can pick that up later as well.
Manda: We could pick that up now, actually, I think. Unless you have a different strategy, as in strategic art, because it seems to me we’ve got a number of things. We’ve got the capacity within government to make incremental decisions that are endeavouring to possibly create less harm or perhaps to do things a little bit better. But there’s not the capacity in current governance systems, certainly not in the UK or the US. So the kind of Western educated, industrial, rich democratic nations that have political systems of governance that are designed to minimise change. And then we have weak signals from the future, which seem to me to be getting quite a lot stronger. And the urgency of listening to them is greater. And yet when I dip my toe in the sewage filled waters of Twitter or wherever, I ended up in a flame war last week with somebody. They said something and I said, Really? We’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction. Is this the hill you want to die on? And she said we’re not in the middle of the sixth mass extinction, don’t be ridiculous. So, Oh, there are people out there who just have no idea. So. Okay. I haven’t got the bandwidth for this. It seems to me, from what I’ve understood of the School of International Futures, that you’re providing a bridge between the increasingly strong signals of the future and the generations who get it, and the old, white, broadly men, who inhabit the hierarchy of our structural system and don’t have the emotional resilience to change. I don’t think it’s that they’re deliberately wanting to destroy the world for their grandchildren. It’s that they can only see the world as they’ve known it and project that into the future. And that’s actually not going to work. So tell us a little bit about the School of International Futures, how it is and how it came about. And then how are you finding the process of bridging between the future and the present and the past? Is that so huge?
Cat: So much of what you’ve just said is just like ping, ping, ping, in terms of like the hairs on my arm are standing up a little bit. I’m glad that you’ve got that from our brief, you know, seven minutes conversation so far and then our previous interactions beforehand. Because that’s absolutely right. So, Manda you say something really powerful, I think it’s the Schumacher quote, which is, you know, how do you midwife the new, but also hospice care the old. And that that is what we’re all doing, right? And I think strategic foresight and in particular the Three Horizons model, basically gives you a structured and analytical and kind and loving framework and vocabulary with which to talk about how change happens. And in particular how to talk to Horizon one actors in a way that is kind and loving, and support them through this journey of change where they effectively have to be the leaders into a future that they will not be leading. You’re probably going to ask me what Horizon one actors are.
Manda: I think we need to. I did this at Schumacher and it’s lovely and I use it a lot in my own life. But I think it’s worth, for people who haven’t necessarily listened to every single episode of the podcast. We have discussed it before, but let’s just give a little frame of what Three Horizons is. And then because I actually don’t know what is strategic foresight as a system and how does it build on three horizons? And then we’ll come back to this.
Cat: So strategic foresight, as Marie Conway from Australia calls it, is very simply at its heart a structured and systematic way to explore alternative futures. At its heart, there are three building blocks, I think. You have a building block which is the drivers of change; words like megatrends, things that you are scanning for, drivers trends, shocks, risks. These are the component constituent parts that you use to start going, okay, how is the world around me changing over different periods of time? And there are all sorts of different forms of theories about how change happens, like the S-curve in technological innovation, but also human cyclical changes like conflicts, often are generational. And so that’s the first building block. The second one is then how do those drivers intersect? Answer is, we obviously don’t know, but we have good guesses and we have assumptions. So let us be really clear about the systems that are going, where the the drivers are intersecting. For example, if you are looking at how, let’s say, Angola is going to be affected in the future, you might say that there are two very important drivers that we know very well. How quickly do we move away from a carbon economy and how quickly do the impacts of climate change hit us? Those are two fairly uncontroversial drivers. The question is how quickly do they happen? And then secondly, it’s how do they intersect. Because that is the conversation that you can get different types of experts, and when I say experts, I also mean community leaders. Because indigenous and personal knowledge is absolutely a critical, if not the most important part of a lot of thinking through. Not what the first order implications of technological change are, but what are the second, third and fourth economic, social and political consequences.
Cat: Actually, it’s often not the policymakers or the people, as you said, the leaders, who are best at thinking through that. And then you kind of pull that into kind of different scenarios that you can engage and and apply. So I see this whole field as a way of bridging the kind of very, as you pointed out, incremental policy ‘evidence-based’ language of the current world, the current paradigm, which is very much based on economic analysis. And helping them start understanding how do you start thinking about distributional issues over time as well as over space. And so that is, I think that bridge role that we play. Back to your question about transformation and change. It’s not enough about detecting the signal, you then need to act on it and can talk about that in a second.
Manda: Brilliant. Thank you. Yes. I think in terms of my understanding or ability to understand strategic foresight, we had drivers of change as one category and then how they intersect as Category two. Was there a Category three? Did I understand that there was?
Cat: Yes. And then you bring that into scenarios or pictures of the future, which are evidence based, because you can actually understand where they’ve come from. You can connect it to the evidence and you can use them as early warning indicators and identify Actually, are things happening or not? Is your assessment of what might happen. Now that is not the Three Horizons model that is just thinking about the future in a structured way using strategic foresight. Now, I think the really powerful model in strategic foresight that helps us do a lot of this, is the Three Horizons model. Which basically tells you that there are three things going on at any one time. There’s Horizon One, which is the dominant world that we’re in. So we live in a world driven by hydrocarbon economy, the current paradigm, as you call it. And it means that it shapes how we interact with each other, where we live, the businesses, the garages that we get our cars fuelled up in with. But then we have this desired vision of a post-carbon future, right? Where we’re not extracting and causing harms on this earth, that we are actually living in harmony with the rest of our ecological family. And that has a lot of implications. For example, legal ones. Like the insurance on cars will look very different if you have driverless vehicles. Actually our energy needs are going to be radically different. We may not have suburbs in the future, the way that our cities are designed are going to be very different. So that’s Horizon three and the kind of people that help you imagine that, are the kind of people that you often have on this podcast. They are the visionaries who help us really understand and explore, make that real, because we really need to do that. And then, by the way, you have weak signals of that already in the present. But what you also have is the horizon two, the translation, the bridge space in between. Which is that there are people in the here and the now, entrepreneurs, often business and social entrepreneurs, who are making the new happen. They might be the people in, you know those new barristers who in the UK have basically said we are not going to support corporate clients on hydrocarbon energies. That is, for example, a Horizon two actor. They are the next generation of barristers who are saying No. And so foresight helps you think about the world in that way and be very kind and help people understand where they are. And connect to the fact that often the conflicts and the differences of opinion are because we’re sitting in different horizons, if you like. And actually introducing that framework and that language can help people connect and understand what’s going on.
Cat: Because, for example, Jim Dator’s second law of the future, and Jim Dator is a wonderful professor of futures, who has been in the University of Hawaii running the futures program for the past 45 years. And by the way, talking about this is a media space to kind of talk about foresight in 2023, he already was doing the introductions to Doctor Who in Canada BBC in the late 70s. Kind of going, Hi kids. So this is the future’s thinking behind this episode. Isn’t that brilliant? So it’s amazing how much some things change and some things don’t change, which I think is very much something that’s in my work that I’ve come across.
Cat: So if I may just continue and just say one final thing. The practice that I’m trying to write in the book, was a bit of a kind of like shoe dropping moment, when I got introduced to network weaving about six years ago. Especially from Converge and Liz Wilson from the Small Foundation. And as I say, my whole life and work is a patchwork quilt. Amazing snippets from from people who just inspire. And that just came at the right moment, because what network weaving does gives you a way of thinking about how do you weave a community and a coalition for change in the here and the now.
Cat: So if you care about women’s rights, reproductive rights or winning peace and security, or nuclear counterproliferation and nuclear zero world, or you know that we adopt new technology in a way that is fair and radically inclusive. All these things. You’re no longer doing that within an organisational structure. You basically have all sorts of different actors coming together. You can’t have a command and control approach. You need to have a network weaving, and at heart it’s not a hub and spoke but a system orchestrator approach, where you’ve got influencers, you’ve got ministries, you’ve got start ups, you’ve got civil society organisations, you’ve got the community groups. All coming together. Academics, thinkers, coming together around a common purpose. And so what we look at and a lot of the work that we’re leaning into, is how do you overlay that three horizons way of thinking about the future, with acknowledging that what we’re trying to do is weave coalitions for social change and transformation, by understanding that the world in which we’re building these coalitions for change is not static. There are drivers around that. And actually the coming together of these different communities around different visions for the future can be deeply transformative.
Manda: When you’re doing that, because this sounds so exciting, the network weaving and you’re being the systems orchestrator, I’m guessing, how do you identify the common purpose about which you can then weave your networks? Because presumably that has to arise from the networks themselves. So you have to,I’m guessing here, bring together enough people from enough networks that they are trusted by the network to be able to give voice to their network, speak from its heart and bring them together in order to establish what it is that the networks have as a common purpose, that they can then work on. Can you, just for my interest, talk me through how that works.
Cat: So let me take an example of the nuclear counterproliferation space. So there’s a community of people who have been coming together to try and create a nuclear weapons free world. Scilla Elworthy, Elise Boulding.
Manda: She’s coming on the podcast in the summer.
Cat: You know, amazing woman who are not always brought forward in the future’s legacy and history, but who are very, very powerful. And I think Elise Boulding, I have to thank my wonderful director of futures, Andrew Curry, for introducing us. She talks about the 200 Year Presence, which, by the way, I think connects a lot to, I think in your blog, your partner Faith mentions the inspiration that she got from looking at her grandchildren and wanting to leave something better. And I think the 200 year presence taps into that. It says that we’re connected in living memory, through our grandparents, 100 years in the past and 100 years in the future. As we live for longer, that’s actually going to extend more and more. We are not the systems orchestrators. What we’re trying to do, within different systems and sectors, is find the people who are wanting to lead their sector to a transformational journey. And so what you often find is that a sector will go through a process of crisis and change, recognising that the old paradigm and the way of doing things is no longer working for them in the world that we’re in at the moment. Often that comes aligned with a generational change. A lot of older people retiring and the old frames and margins changing.
Cat: But very often it’s also because new technology comes along and says, Oh my God, all the trip wires that we had to make sure that these nuclear accidents don’t happen, are no longer really going to be valid in a world of cyber and all sorts of different new technological innovations. So what does it mean that we do for our sector? We need to transform. We need to be relevant. The last time that people knew about us was in the 1980s, and now it’s become a very technocratic, very kind of closed community. Let’s open ourselves up. Let’s learn what we can from Afrofuturism. Let’s understand what we can learn from indigenous communities. Let’s think about how does the climate emergency funding law, actually what has their journey got to do with ours? What can we learn from the people who are seeing health and global health as a global emergency? And so there’s this real appetite between a couple of key people in the sector. And by the way, they are all led by women, who I think are demonstrating amazing service leadership.
Cat: They’re like, our sector needs to change. It’s going to require change from within. We’re looking for different ways and practices to help us do that. And we think strategic foresight can help us build coalitions for change, understand the world around us, connect to different sources of information, and really transform how we work together and connect and change our field. So, you know, we are therefore in service of that. We have also, for example, been working with an organisation called California 100, which is a coalition of different institutions in California, who are trying to imagine what California of the future might look like. Obviously this is always in order to create change today, because as the famous Betty Sue Flowers said, the future is a story that you tell yourself in the present. And it is, as the famous French futurist said, I think Gaston Berger, it is about reframing what is possible in the here and the now. So these are the journeys that we’re on. But with California 100, they’re kind of engaging with a whole series of people across the state, which is very, very exciting. But we are also working with them, and this is a little bit of a side project, and it’s led by an academic network, they’ve realised that actually, you know, strategic foresight should be taught in schools of government.
Cat: How about that? So I did a master’s in public administration in the US and that certainly wasn’t taught as a skill. But how about that? Like the next generation of public service officials and politicians get taught this at school. So we have been working with them, again in service of them, to kind of think how do they work with their own community of academics, practitioners, curriculum designers; to think about how they might incorporate and integrate strategic foresight into their work. So this is the kind of thing that we do, to kind of scale up and build a field, because this is probably the last thing I’ll say before stopping. One of the reasons why I really wanted to do this podcast was to talk to you because the opening sentence that you say, which is like it was no longer enough to create change, nine people over 15 years at a time. And that is exactly where we’ve come to in the past year, is a realisation that we need to lean into field and movement building in a more explicit way and to support change in that way. So it just felt really resonant with your experience as well.
Manda: Thank you. On so many levels. Yeah, on every level. Thank you for that. And the California 100, I will put this in the show notes people. It’s really interesting to see what is being explored. So you’ve got to the concept that we need to be building more fields and more movements, which sounds really good because it seems to me we haven’t got much time left. However much time we think we have, and I am very wary of creating futures that are kind of closed off. And the energy that we put out is the energy we get. And I don’t want to do that. And I still connect to the web of life and think there’s an extraordinary amount of zing and energy and hope out there. But nonetheless, we seem to be in a world where we are run by old white men who are becoming increasingly antagonistic each to the other. And when I play with the three horizon models: there’s H one which is where we are. H three, which is the future we would be proud to leave behind. Within H two there are the things that are moving us towards H three and the things that are dragging us back towards the first horizon.
Manda: And I look at our media particularly and think that it’s a very deliberate tool designed to drag us back, if not to H one, possibly to H minus five. They seem to think the 1850s was a jolly good time. It’s kind of scary. So finding the ways that we can rebuild governance in a way that works is seeming to me increasingly urgent. So I would like to talk about that in a second, but let’s just give people that sense of framing. You were in government, you’d been to I didn’t even know governance schools existed, but you went to one in the States, which sounds amazing. You were then working within the structures of the UK government, and then at some point you decided to start the School of International Futures. Which seems to me one of those things that now you’ve got it, it’s really obvious that the world needs it, and it probably was a lot less obvious when you started it. Can you give us a tiny little bit of how you got to that and how you did it? And then let’s have a look at building fields and movements.
Cat: Yes. I’ve got like so many things fizzing around in my head, I’m just trying to kind of structure it properly. Oh, now. I should probably say that before going into government and doing my masters, I was working in West Africa and then for Christian Aid. So I was saying earlier that my career path has been a totally random walk and so I imagine that this may also be the case for lots of people listening. And leaning into that, it’s just like that is the the joy of being able to follow your values and instinct around. You know, moving from job to job and not quite understanding why you’re making that choice. You know, working in a bar on the edge of the Sahara in Senegal, or ending up smuggling $10,000 into a Central Asian country in my bra, in order to give to the NGOs that we were working with 21 years ago. Or being in the middle of Congo, working with a community. I mean, I found out that I got into policy school and I was in Gaza for four weeks working with Christian Aid. And that was a pretty profoundly affecting experience. I say that to make sure that people get a sense that, you know, I wasn’t a civil servant. I happened to work in government for five years and it was an amazing experience, but it was part of a kind of journey to actively explore how the different sectors connect. And if the intersection requires civil society, business and government to come together to create transformation, how do we understand and learn and love, warts and all, the sectors that need to come together to change? Quite frankly, I’ve had amazing bosses all the way through. And then my last boss was David Frost.
Manda: Mr. Brexit.
Cat: I left government in 2010 because the conservative coalition won. But I loved the work that I was doing, which was like, how do you introduce to senior policy makers? There’s no lack of supply or insights about the future out there. And this is back to your kind of bridge analogy or translator analogy. The big gap is how do you design processes and enable and understand the systems that we’re in to enable those insights to actually Land and be used by Horizon one actors in the here and the now. And it’s that kind of translator role which requires, you know, I think someone called us subversively conservative. Because you need to be able to talk about the language of evidence and help policy makers understand that this is evidence. You know, engaging with intergenerational dialogues, helping indigenous communities come together and landing their insights into the policy making process, this is evidence that effective policy can actually be built on. So I think that’s a little bit of the journey that we’ve been on. And this is the really interesting thing about working in the field that we’re in.
Cat: Now everybody’s like, oh, strategic foresight, we need to kind of manage uncertainty etc. Let’s build the infrastructure and the capabilities. But don’t forget, people said exactly that after the global financial crisis, right? They were like, oh, there is no official future, we need to build back better. But the revealed behaviour was actually very different, right? So I’m fairly uh, not sceptical, but I reserve judgement, put it that way. And I look at how are organisations and leaders who say that this stuff is important actually demonstrating that. And are they putting time and money and organisational resources to do that? To be fair, I think that, you know, we are now where I thought we were going to be in 2011, when I set up the organisation. Which is that governments and leaders are genuinely interested. And the big change of course is that we have a generation Z, Unlike the millennials 13 years ago, who have got nothing to lose, right. Who have been brought up in most of their life under times of austerity and difficulty. Who are thankfully more willing to hold us to account on language, when we say like hand-wringing, that we need to change. So I think that’s what makes me optimistic.
Cat: And so we set up the organisation in 2011. We started off by doing a series of retreats. Now that’s Beth Barany, who is amazing, by the way, and I have to do a shout out to her. Because I think as a writer, her passion and her mission to connect futures to writers so they can help write structured and inspirational futures, but also introducing writing skills to foresight, is incredibly important. So we started off doing the retreats, but then very quickly moved into other work that can talk to you about. One of the things that I’m most proud of is that we have a community of about 700 young next generation foresight practitioners. Because although we are increasingly learning about the practice of applying foresight to create transformation in complex organisations and systems, who often just want to stay in the here and the now. We also need to recognise that actually it’s the ideas and the energies and the projects that these young foresight practitioners are doing in their communities, that really need to be listened to. And that community is just going from strength to strength. And the people in it, whether it’s Iman, Pupal, Shakil, Perica, Rodrigo are just incredibly inspiring.
Manda: And I will put a link in the show notes. Because they’re all on your website, or at least they’re probably not all on your website, but there’s a lot of people on your website and just reading through what they’re doing gives me such hope for the future. Would you count these people as Gen Z? Are they for you? Because they look to me like they were millennial age, but I probably don’t know the distinction and I’m too old to be near it.
Cat: So I think Gen Z is 27 and under. So some of them are, some of them aren’t. In terms of next generation foresight practitioners we have, it was set up six years ago now, to recognise the work, especially in global South communities, of under 35 year olds. But then we very quickly created a prize for like 18 to 25. And then with Teach the Future, who by the way, again, another shout out, are a fabulous institution. They are like, Well, we teach the past in history. Why don’t we teach the future in secondary school? And so with them we run a Young Voices award for 12 to 17 year olds. So there’s all different types.
Manda: Oh, I probably need to run a parallel podcast, just talking to these people.
Cat: I mean, you would be astounded and inspired and your sense of hope would go through the roof.
Manda: Yes, Yes. Just reading on your website, some of the things that are being done to help create change, is so inspiring. So let’s bring us back towards that, because what we have is you in 2010, starting school of international futures and quickly moving to next generation foresight and now in 2023 (How did time pass that fast?) You’re writing the book of the Superpower that is the foresight system. And we have people teaching the future in schools. How exciting is that? How are you seeing through to the future in order to teach it? So it seems to me that one of the things that I’m trying to do with Accidental Gods is getting people into a point where they let go of old paradigms, because the only way to imagine futures is to acknowledge that the systems of the past are not going to work in the future. Partly because a lot of the systems that you and I know that we grew up with and our grandparents and great grandparents, at least that far back, grew up with fossil fuels, with readily available energy, that was becoming increasingly available. And now it’s not only becoming less available, we can’t actually afford to use it. And yet, whenever I sit down with a group of people and we imagine the future, it seems to be an iteration of the present that is just a little bit less damaging. And that isn’t what it’s going to look like. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I know it’s not going to be that. So how do you as a group help people to gain the emotional and intellectual freedom to see forward to futures that feel real?
Cat: I think this is a really powerful question about the potential for citizens assemblies, actually. Because we are moving heavily into a world; and this is connecting to your question around the future of governance that you came up with earlier; we’re moving into a world where we think that deliberation or conversation and dialogue is going to solve the democratic deficit. And I don’t think I’m allowed to use bad words on this podcast, but…
Manda: We can bleep you out. It’s okay.
Cat: Cluster F*** situation that we’re in, basically. So again, this is why strategic foresight is very helpful, because what it does is it takes you into the future and then looks back, rather than gets you in the present and just looking forward. Because then you go to the used futures. Like if you have a kind of ‘what do you think the future’s going to look like?’ Kind of experience, or even worse, have conversations about issues like mental health, the future of poverty, food security in your in your community. Things like future of jobs or, for example, how do we actually start, you know, building that transition to a post-carbon economy, when people are going to lose their jobs, the ability to go on holiday. You know, these are real things that we have to engage with. And we need structured ways of thinking systematically about the future, with the drivers of change really understanding what’s happening, and then having a common shared vocabulary of the systems dynamics and possible alternative futures. And once you’ve actually gone through that quite rigorous process, and it’s a structured one, and it needs to be held and designed very well. Because it has to connect to people’s lived experience and understanding of why are we doing this? For it to be salient and not an annoying kind of like, you know, exploration that isn’t really going to change your life.
Cat: And it needs to be designed well, because otherwise all sorts of biases can be built into it without realising; voice, representation, etcetera. And then we think that we’ve done a really great process which actually has just reinforced the bias. So the responsibility of design is really good and also the responsibility for safe conversation is also really great. Now all the stuff that I’m trying to say, is like making the invisible visible. The futures framework and the Strategic Foresight toolkit or approach, it’s transformational when someone has done that design and actually built quality relationships. Listened, understood, empathised, mapped out and connected with the people that are going on that journey together, because they are going to be very different. And these issues raise conflict, as they should do, because it’s about change and it’s about questioning power and it’s about choices in a resource constrained world. But having the vocabulary to understand why you’re going to react to someone.
Cat: So I was about to say Jim Dator’s, I mentioned Jim Dator earlier, and his second law of the future is that any useful idea about the future must at first sight appear ridiculous. Now, at first sight, that statement itself appears ridiculous. But I love looking at people’s eyes when suddenly the penny drops. It’s like, Oh, I get it! Actually, what you’re trying to say is that anything that’s really particularly useful and challenging, I’m going to have an emotional reaction which basically leans into kind of discounting it, because that’s the most effective defensive mechanism. People get there, you know, they do get there. And once you’ve introduced that concept to them, they will very often engage with challenge in a different way. You have sometimes, not always, reframed how someone will see new and challenges in information forever, regardless of what conversation they’re in. So I think it’s that kind of stuff that’s really, really, really powerful and gives you a common language, with which despite difference, and you can say we all want to, you know, create a better world for our children’s children. How do we come together and do that? So I think that’s a little bit the journey that we’re on.
Manda: That’s brilliant. And I love Jim Dator’s second law. What’s his first law? Do we happen to know what his first law is?
Cat: I know it but can never remember it, It’s like there’s lots of little ditties. Like Paul Saffo always says, these things are just really useful. You should always look back twice as far as you look forward. So we were doing something on the future of terrorism, which was really interesting because that is not an area where people look long term or collectively. So we were looking out to 2040, 2050. So we wanted to look back to 1950, 1900s even, to really see the patterns. And that’s when you get historical analogies, which are sometimes really powerful ways of understanding what might happen.
Manda: I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole too far because there’s so many other things I want to do, but partly because I wrote the Boudica books, I think, and partly because I spend my life in kind of the shamanic world space. It seems to me that whenever we look at Western culture, which is the one that is imploding the planet, so we need to look at it quite a lot. It would be helpful either to look at other cultures or to look back more than 2000 years. Because we’re still, I contend, we’re still in the dying days of the Roman Empire, and our capacity to see the world differently has been constrained for 2000 years. Where ownership of a woman passed from her father to her husband, and the value of a fiat currency was imposed by violence. Basically turn up in Britain with with a bunch of silver in a bag, and you say to somebody who’s never seen money before, this bit of silver with Nero’s face on it, is worth three of your kids. And they go, Really? I’ve got lots of silver in the back, with nobody’s face on it. How many kids is that worth? And you go, nothing at all. And if you try and pretend it is, I’m going to kill you and take your kids. And I’m going to give you this, and next year I’m coming back and you have to give me more. And you’re not allowed to just put Nero’s face on other bits of silver, or I’ll kill you and take your kids. And the guy is left holding, or the woman is left holding this little fragment of silver with someone’s face on, going, Okay, this is worth three of my kids, when it isn’t worth three of my kids to anybody else. And you want more of it in a year, How am I going to get more of it? And the answer to that is, well, you could sell us your children.
Manda: And this is how money arises. And until we can escape the constraint of that, it’s going to be quite hard to imagine different ways of doing things. And so I would absolutely go with however far you look forward, you have to look back beyond the start of that kind of thinking wherever you are in the world. So in the Americas, you look back to before Columbus. In Europe, you’re looking back to probably before Byzantium. Because it wasn’t the Romans that thought this up, it’s just they were very, very good at spreading it. In the Australia’s, in Australia itself you only need to look back before Cook. And I’m wondering in all of this, this is a rabbit hole of my own making; but I sat in in a group of Accidental Gods people last night, a lot of whom were also in the Utopia Collective, trying to work out ways that we can write novels that will do exactly what you’re saying. Step forward into a future, look back, see how we got there. And I spend all my life doing nothing else but this. And it’s still incredibly hard to imagine how the future looks, in a world where if Simon Michaux is right, we’ve gone from 19 rolling terawatts power to five because that’s the only way to survive.
Manda: And how did we dismantle the whole of economics? And the whole of manufacture? And change a governance system in which the old white men rule, to one in which they don’t. We’re having council elections around here just now. Not exactly where I am, but I’ve got friends and they’re going, Who can I vote for? And we look at who they can possibly vote for. And the Tories are standing unopposed, because the entire council is owned by old white people and nobody bothers to stand against them because they don’t feel they get elected. And I don’t think we’ve got another cycle of that to go before the entire system falls apart. So this brings me to you building movements, which sounds so exciting. How can we as a collective, led by you and the people that you’re working with, build movements that have the vision that the greater majority, or sufficient percentage of the population, will follow us to where we need to go. And then we can ignore the old white people. They can do whatever the heck they like, because they’ve got an old economy, they’ve got an old currency, they’ve got an old way of doing things that nobody is buying into anymore. How do we do this Cat? This would solve my novel for me. I might not have solved your book, but it would definitely solve mine.
Cat: Oh, wow. There’s so much in what you’ve just said there, that I wanted to kind of also briefly touch on the Long Now Foundation, set up by Stewart Brand in the 1960s and 70’s. Obviously kind of encourages us to look back 10,000 years and look forward 10,000 years in order to really connect to our impact on this planet, and perhaps put ourselves into a little bit of perspective, which I think is really important. And I think connecting to Indigenous… Well, first of all, recognising that Indigenous communities have stewarded and governed the world very effectively up until now, including our global commons and forests and jungles, is incredibly important. And being able to kind of connect into and build a way of talking about the future and a method, and the way that it connects to me and our work, is that foresight has got quite a Western legacy and quite an elitist one. So this is part of what the next generation of foresight practitioners, communities, part of them do. Is really lean into what are the tools and methods that connect to the full range of people in our global community of 9 billion people. And have ways that connect to the metaphors of time, how they think about how change happens.
Cat: You know, the Maori and Eru who leads an amazing Maori futures endeavour, they talk about walking back into the future. Pupul Bischt leads a Decolonising futures initiative and she very much works with people in Rajasthan and different communities across India, using ways of thinking about the future that connect into the Kaavad method, which is a kind of spiritual journey pilgrimage that makes sense to people. So that is all extremely important. But the story that you just told me, Manda, is your systems view of how you see the world. And I guess you can break it down in terms of the drivers for change, your diagnosis of what’s happened, the systemic intersections between it and the causality links, which led us to where we are. And there’s an implicit ‘and we need to do something different’. So I’m always reminded about the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which is like, you know, you had such an amazing set of different cultures coming together to sign up to human rights, even though they come from it from a very, very different perspective. And I think that you could find common cause, we all can find common cause, with people who have probably got quite different systemic stories in their heads of why we’re here and why we need to change.
Cat: And I think the important thing is, what we need to do, is build that coalition between people who might not have the same kind of system story in your head, but that there’s enough common cause that we can do that. And I think that’s where foresight can really, really help in terms of building around that common purpose. And common purpose is that we want to leave a world in which our children and our grandchildren’s children can thrive and survive. Right. And it’s actually very likely, if you look over the next 50 to 60 years, that that will not happen, right? You know, because there is actually quite a narrow window through which we can navigate all sorts of different challenges around planetary boundaries. And so there are certain things that need to happen. As you know, we feel overwhelmed by uncertainty. But, you know, a lot of the thinking behind Indy Johar’s excellent work, is just to kind of say, well, you know, some things are volatile and disruptive and some things actually just need to happen, if we want to kind of get to that future. So how do we do that? So that’s, I think essentially the common purpose that we’re often trying to kind of connect to.
Cat: And then the conversations in different sectors, whether it’s the humanitarian sector, it’s the human rights sector or whether it’s the democracy sector, is helping them often overcome the sense of overwhelm and depression that comes from actually fighting an old war and saying that’s not how you use your energies in the world that we’re in. So let me bring that to life with the democracy field, if I may. Is that ok?
Manda: Yes, please do. Yes.
Cat: So we’ve been working with, you know, on the periphery of the these amazing communities in the US who have been battered by the past 6 to 7 years of what democracy in the US has looked like. They can feel incredibly concerned. It’s about growing voter polarisation. It’s about capture of the Supreme Court. It’s about the fact that, you know, it’s stopping voting, redistricting and stopping people voting. It’s all sorts of problems. It’s media polarisation and active lies. It’s like, how do we actually function in a world like this? And it’s like we need to, you know, address all these fires that are happening. And believe me, it’s not that I say that we shouldn’t be continuing to put out the fires, because that is absolutely right. But at the same time, we have lost the battle, if that’s all we do. We need to actually spend at least part of our time, even if it’s 10% of our resources, and our head space and our hearts, quite frankly, because this is where we get a sense of hope from. To actually realise that actually we go through it not with a defensive game, but like actually imagining a future democratic system that looks quite radically different, in terms of political party representation, in terms of what does it really mean to actually have civic action? Is it just voting once every four years, etcetera? What does that mean for the citizen? What actually capabilities do you need in the civil service to actually be that kind of government? And what does public administration and perhaps system stewardship of the future look like? And then if you have those two dualities, that kind of like looking from the future back, as well as addressing things in the here and the now, that I think really kind of starts providing people with a structure for change. And then you start having networks of actors who are like, okay, so this is our role in the journey. And it is a journey of like 5 to 6 years, right? But it is I think, a lot more hopeful than just what happens at the moment.
Manda: Yeah. And in that particular context, we’re going to have to wrap up soon. But it does seem to me and has for a while, Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 101 guy, interviewed Steve Bannon once. He was going to bring him on to the movie but in the end, Bannon said no. But the interview exists. And Michael Moore asked Bannon, how is it that the right is so resurgent? And he said, because we all got together and we agreed we were not putting our heads above the parapet until we knew what we wanted and we knew how to get there. And, you know, their heads came above the parapet with the Tea Party. And it has always seemed to me that the progressive side has been firefighting since then, exactly as you said, putting out those fires. And that we need a collective vision. But what we need is not a collective vision of how do we return to the old structures of what we thought our democracy was. It’s got to be completely different. So are you finding, with the work in California, with the work in the States, with the work in the global South, that you’re able to bring together a network of networks of people who get it and can support each other? Because that seems to me, that if there was an umbrella connecting or a unified way of bringing the people of good heart and good will together, with a vision. And all we need is we would really like our future generations, exactly as you said, to be able to survive and thrive. That. That’s the movement. And is that what School of International Futures is doing now and your book is heading for?
Cat: Well, that sounds really ambitious. We would like to be in service to the networks and the networks of networks who want to drive change. So yes. And foresight can be deeply transformative if applied in the right way, with very careful design. Awareness of the fact that at the at the heart of what it is, it’s about, you know, bringing up the voices in the periphery. Because they’re the ones who are very often best at understanding that transformational impact of how the future can be. So that’s what we hope to do. We have so many different conversations and narratives. We have wellbeing economics. We have Mariana Mazzucato’s mission led change. We have complex adaptive systems. We’ve got Cassie Robinson’s Imaginaries, we’ve got the Sustainable Development Goals, we’ve got anticipatory governance, we’ve got strategic foresight. And effectively, I think at the heart of it is just a set of communities sitting using slightly different practices, but absolutely with the same goal of trying to think long term, systemically, holistically, beyond an anthropomorphic focus. To look at the wellbeing of the whole planet in its full richness of its ecosystems and trying to respect that over time. And the thing that makes me very optimistic is that I see people, you know, including the old white men, who are actually really leaning into that. And, you know, Ursula von der Leyen has said in her September address to the European Parliament, that she thinks that treaty change next time should reflect the rights of of children; next generations. We work with the President’s office in Portugal because of some really powerful work that we’ve been doing on intergenerational fairness assessment, which I haven’t got into, but I think is a really important step. To hold to account many decision makers in the here and the now, who want to do the right thing, but very often find it difficult. And the whole incentive structure leads them to just affect the here and the now.
Cat: So how do we support them? And there are these leaders who are leaning into this role of stewardship and leadership and representing future, not just current generations. As the Portuguese president, Marcelo REBELO de Sousa said. And I think a way of supporting and acknowledging that that’s the right way to do it, by something like, you know, every single time a piece of legislation or policy is developed. Or that a board comes up with a big investment or something. That you actually stop to ask the question and shine a light; like which are the generations paying for it and which are the generations that are benefiting? Because people tend to have a sense of justice, right? I mean, or most of the people or sufficient ones, that transformation can happen, right? Just put the rest in a little box somewhere. And it’s like, how do you bring their energy to the fore? And very often it’s about the power of asking that question, when the decisions are being made. And I think that’s one of the key things that we want to contribute in this broader community building and network of networks, weaving endeavour that we’re all on. Including yourself, through the amazing audience that you’ve brought together Manda.
Manda: Thank you. That’s very kind. Because we are very near the end of our time. I was just thinking that in Wales they’ve got the Future Generations Act and they’ve got a very empowered woman whose job it is to sit in the meetings and go, Yeah, but four generations down the line, that road is going to be more of a problem than a gain. And therefore you’re not building that road. And because she speaks with that voice and she’s not got an ideological framework that is one side or the other of a political spectrum, she is listened to. And that has given me great hope. But that could spread around the world. If there’s places like Portugal and the UN that are taking on and giving people roles, where they can speak for the future generations, that would be so powerful.
Cat: Well then I have good news for you. Because they are talking about a declaration for future generations. A special envoy for future generations with the power.
Manda: I Want to be that!
Cat: I know. Isn’t that a fun job? I love that job description, yes. And a space for all countries to come together as they’re on that journey. Sophie is now working with us. She’s left the role, the first future generations Commissioner of Wales. Yeah, she is a powerhouse. But I think the important thing to underline is you know, it’s because she she’s a very, very capable politician and she makes it real to politicians and to people in the here and the now. And that, I think, is her superpower and that is the superpower that we always need to kind of connect to in the future generations conversation. Is that this is a conversation about what we do now, for our children and our children’s children. So it’s a very important and urgent conversation today.
Manda: Isn’t it? And we are running out of time. And you’re right, we haven’t really moved into the intergenerational space, except to say that Generation Z are the ones that have the absolute understanding that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by total systemic change. And those of us who can facilitate that, need to be giving them all the help and support that they can get. As we’re heading to a close, is there anything else that you would like to say?
Cat: Just invite people to reach out. As you can probably hear, we’re very excited and open to working and being in service to communities and organisations and sectors who are looking to experiment, and try out introducing the frames and the approaches and the mindset of strategic foresight, to drive societal transformation. So if you think that that’s something that might speak to you, just get in touch directly. And you know, regardless of where you are in the world.
Manda: Brilliant. And then maybe when your books published, you could come back again. Do you have a publication date yet? Or is it just way too far in the future?
Cat: No.
Manda: Okay. Well, let me know when you do.
Cat: I will do.
Manda: Well, go for it and that’ll be wonderful. And in the meantime, I will put everything in the show notes that we can to connect people to you.
Cat: Yeah, and of course, actually, one final message. If you’re under 35 or are in the foresight field for less than five years, do also consider applying for the next generation Foresight Practitioner Fellowship, because I think it closes at the beginning of June and we’re actively seeking people globally to join this fellowship.
Manda: Yay, right. I will put the links to that in the show notes too. Definitely. And if you know of anybody who might want to apply then then please share the link. Fantastic. That sounds really inspired and inspiring. Cat, Thank you so much for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast.
Cat: Well, thank you so much. It’s been an absolute joy and pleasure and thank you.
Manda: And that’s it for another week. Enormous thanks to Cat for the breadth and depth of her vision in setting up the school and for all that it’s doing. Genuinely, there is a huge amount of stuff there. I will put links in the show notes to everything that I possibly can. And as she said, if you have ideas, please get in touch. I will also put a link to Beth Barany’s website. She’s the novelist that connected us after the Thrutopia Masterclass at the end of October last year. And yes, it is the 3rd of April when we recorded, but that’s the nature of the podcast. I seem to be booked up to next October now. There are so many people out there, so many exciting and inspiring people. And if we can get to a point where this exploration of ideas, this connecting of tools, is how we all are in the world. If we can let go of the old ways of the legacy media and the things that hold us in ways of thinking about the past, then I think we have a good chance of stepping forward to the future. So that’s what we’re doing for this week people. Let go of the past. Think of the future. Build your own Three Horizons model.
Manda: I will put a link to that in the show notes too. See what’s in your H one. What’s in your H three and in the H two, the second horizon that links them, see what might drag you back towards the old. And what else in your life and your world and your ideas and your thinking might lift you forward into the future. There are few things more exciting, but there are also few things more challenging. So make sure you’re well resourced when you do this. And that’s it for this week. Huge thanks to Caro for the production and thank you also for the music at the head and foot. Thanks to Faith for the website and the tech and the new search facility. You can now look up ideas and concepts and names. Please use it. And thanks to Anne Thomas for wrestling with the transcripts. Always greatly appreciated. And finally, as ever, enormous thanks to you for listening. We absolutely would not be here without you. And if you know of anybody else who wants to get to grips with the tools that are here, for shaping the future that we want to step into, then please do send them this link. And that’s it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.
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