The video introduces the initiative and shows its kick-off at the International Civic Forum 2022.
About the initiative
To create an enabling environment for civil society, the civil society sector needs to develop more anticipatory and proactive mechanisms to complement its reactive responses to civic space restrictions and changing operating conditions. The initiative “Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space” aims to increase awareness and readiness of (international) civil society organisations, (I)CSOs, address challenges in civic space, develop future scenarios for policy development; and build concrete strategies for the future. The initiative creates synergies between the Solidarity Action Network’s (SANE) community of civic space-focused sector professionals and the Scanning the Horizon’s community of civil society’s futures thinkers and strategists.
The “Anticipating futures” initiative increases the signal-scanning and future-facing capacities of (I)CSOs, following these main objectives:
- Raise awareness about futures thinking and ways of anticipating future challenges and opportunities;
- Offer a convening and collaborative space for civil society professionals to develop future scenarios for civic space;
- Translate developed scenarios into concrete strategies and practices to strengthen capacities at the individual, organisational, and sector levels;
- Equip (I)CSOs with practical foresight tools that allow them to critically assess and adapt their current strategies in light of potential future scenarios.
It consists of several phases:
1. Preparing the ground and kicking off the initiative: June-December 2022
To prepare the ground, a landscape mapping was conducted to better understand crises and trends impacting civic space as well as the strengths and weaknesses of (I)CSOs’ responses. The mapping analyses what (I)CSOs have learnt from past and present crises that can inform future scenarios for civil society operating space and identified gaps that require collective sector approaches.
The “Anticipating futures” initiative was kicked off at the International Civic Forum (ICF), the Centre’s annual civic space conference, which brought together 60 civil society representatives to London (UK) on 2-3 November 2022. The ICF 2022 raised awareness of why (I)CSOs need to move beyond reactive responses to shrinking space for civil society and become more anticipatory; showed examples of how futures thinking and foresight can be useful; and generated ideas on building collective cross-sector anticipatory capacity and actions.
The initiative was introduced to a broader audience at the Centre’s Global Perspectives virtual conference on 30 November 2022, where a panel discussion was held on the value of anticipation and what is holding the civil society sector back from being more anticipatory.
2. Developing and engaging on future scenarios: January-December 2023
A collaborative scenario writing exercise “A history of civic space, 2024-2034” was conducted to provide space for civil society professionals to craft civic space futures. A method called ParEvo was chosen for this exercise which is a collaborative and innovative method to explore alternative futures (or histories), using a participatory evolutionary process (hence ParEvo). ParEvo is a narrative–based method that encourages participants to be imaginative and creative through story writing. It supports with an online platform that allows for a collective but self-paced collaboration across time zones.
15 organisations were brought together in this exercise – participants from ICSOs, local CSOs, civil society networks and philanthropy who contributed to the exercise as individuals or teams. The exercise was guided by a team of facilitators and monitored by external commentators. Between April and June of 2023, eight iterations of storytelling took participants from 2024 to the year 2034, crafting 109 stories about civic space futures along the way.
The outcomes and lessons from this ParEvo exercise are summarised in the report “A history of civic space, 2024-2034: Outcomes of ParEvo scenario writing collaboration”. The report outlines key themes that the stories highlight and presents actionable strategies to enable futures–thinking. It proposes practical ways to build on the outcomes of this exercise, offering activities for teams within organisations or as cross-sector groups to build on the storylines and prepare for futures scenarios.
Read “A history of civic space, 2024-2034”
The ParEvo report and insights collected by the facilitators’ team further informed the preparations of the International Civic Forum (ICF) 2023 on “Anticipating futures: Moving from scenarios to actions” convened on 29-30 November 2023 in Brussels (Belgium). The ICF 2023 focused on operationalising insights from assessing future scenarios for civil society’s operating space and examining ways of translating them into strategies and practices. The ICF took place in as a workshop and its methodology was developed by the Centre in collaboration with Forum for the Future. 40 civil society expertsfrom ICSOs, CSOs, networks and philanthropy) came together at the ICF 2023, to engage with future scenarios, and explore how to build anticipatory capacity at the sectoral, organisational, and individual level.
3. Moving from scenarios to building concrete readiness: January 2024-December 2025
Phase 3 aimed at operationalising future scenarios for civic and civil society operating space, translating them into strategies, and turning those strategies into concrete organisational practices. We focused on the following activities:
- Developing a toolkit on how future scenarios can be turned into strategies and practices tailored for (I)CSOs. The toolkit is a step-by-step guide to run different futures crafting activities in (I)CSOs.
- Accompanying a few selected organisations (ICSOs and local CSOs) in engaging on and applying the toolkit elements in their organisations. This includes bringing future scenarios elements into organisational strategies as well as testing ways of acting on those strategies in actual practice.
- Collecting lessons learned (in a form of case studies) of piloting (I)CSOs to document concrete experiences with foresight experimentation and inspire other organisations to undergo a similar journey.
4. Stress-testing and future-proofing strategies: July 2025-December 2026
We are developing a guide to support (I)CSOs in stress-testing and future-proofing their organisational strategies. The guide responds to a gap in how foresight can be used to critically assess existing strategies. This enables organisations to test strategies against different future scenarios to identify which elements remain resilient, require adjustment, or may no longer be fit for purpose.
The guide will set out a step-by-step process of workshops supported by practical foresight tools that (I)CSOs can run independently. The tools will include wind-tunnelling to assess whether strategic elements are robust, fragile, or obsolete, and back casting to translate long-term ambition into actionable pathways. In all, the guide aims to help organisations adapt strategies under uncertainty, strengthen resilience and adaptability, align teams around a shared long-term vision, and embed continuous foresight practice.