How fair is fair: A way through the gloom?
Following our public panel discussion in October 2023 on inequality in Scotland, event attendee Neil Gilmour shared his thoughts on the event and the question.
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Alternative approaches to economic development in Scotland
This blog by David Waite, Richard Crisp and Anne Green reflects on different ideas of economic change and where they’ve come from.
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AI and Education: A free-market future?
With AI growing in importance throughout our lives, this blog explores a free-market future for education and schools. It accompanies our event report: “AI and Education with the Goodison Group”
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Artificial Intelligence and Skills
Blog in May 2023 by Robbie Scarff on Artificial Intelligence and Skills: what impact will AI have on what it means to be a worker?
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Artificial Intelligence and Education
Blog in May 2023 by Robbie Scarff on Artificial Intelligence and Education: what tools are available and what issues do they raise?
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AI and Education: Reflection 3
This blog offers ideas for how AI can help unlock education for millions of people worldwide. It is reproduced to accompany our event report: “AI and Education with the Goodison Group”
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AI and Education: Reflection 2
This blog offers a scenario of the future in which students use AI to learn about the past. It is reproduced to accompany our event report: “AI and Education with the Goodison Group”
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AI and Education: Reflection 1
This blog offers thoughts on how AI could be used within education to benefit both students and teachers. It is reproduced to accompany our event report: “AI and Education with the Goodison Group”
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Why Scotland needs radical tax reform
Blog by Alison Payne of Reform Scotland on Scotland’s tax system and the report “Taxing Times: Why Scotland needs new, more and better taxes”.
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Highland Visual Arts in the 2040s: A Look Back
A blog by artist and teacher Críostóir de Piondargás on Gaelic visual arts. Written originally in Gaelic for Seachdain na Gàidhlig in 2022, this blog imagines a successful sector in 2045.
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Rewilding
In this blog, Tòmas MacAilpein looks at rewilding – in the Highlands, in the Lowlands for nature and people. I remember walking through a bright wood and into a dark spruce forest. Following the winding path, I come out into the great expanse of upland, my feet feeling their way on the wooden path. I’m…
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2035
A story by Iain Finlay MacLeod about Scotland in 2035 and beyond. Written originally in Gaelic for Seachdain na Gàidhlig in 2022, “2035” is a darkly comic tale of our future.
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The Lights on in the Islands
A blog by Rhoda Meek, a crofter and businesswoman, on Scotland in 2045. Written originally in Gaelic for Seachdain na Gàidhlig in 2022, the blog explores how housing is central to islands communities.
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There’s power in the community
In this blog, Green Instagrammer Iona Whyte tells us how community power and environmental initiatives can come together for the good of Scotland in 2045. Scotland and our public are capable of change in many ways in the next two decades, but we are losing control of how our planet and the environment will change…
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Green and brown
In this blog, broadcaster and ‘gardener of sorts’ John McDiarmid looks at how allotments contribute to community, wellbeing and the environment in the city, and the benefits of growing our own food. My hands are full of mud as I bend down on the allotment, the noise of the M8 running like a stream. But…
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The 2045 legacy of the Queen of Gaelic Song
In this blog, musician and broadcaster Mary Ann Kennedy looks back at the life of renowned Gaelic singer Jessie MacLachlan and asks what we can learn from her for the future. In 2045 I shall be 77, if I’m not already just an inscription on some obscure prize at the Mòd or the occasional trawl…
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Windows on the world
In this blog, writer and publisher Màiri Kidd looks at how the translation of literature between languages – large and small – can give us other windows on the world. I was once told, I’m pretty sure – and if it’s not true, I don’t care, because it would be great if it were true…
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History, literature, language and a sustainable Scotland
After taking part in a 2021 Festival of Politics event on Scotland as a sustainable society in 2045, writer James Robertson shares his reflections on our future
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Blog to the Future | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Scotland 2030: Empathetic, Equitable and Joyful
After her participation in a 2020 Festival of Politics event on Scotland in 2030, chaired by Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh MSP, writer and presenter Tomiwa Folorunso shares her reflections on the next 10 years. Open the Scotland 2030: A Positive View of Our Future report Scotland’s Futures Forum has been investigating the kind of Scotland we…
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Scotland 2030: Children’s rights must be at the heart of all that we do
Ahead of his participation in a Festival of Politics panel discussion on Scotland in 2030, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland Bruce Adamson shares his reflections on the next 10 years. Planning ahead would be easy if we had a crystal ball, but the Futures Forum’s Scotland 2030 Programme is perhaps the next best…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Economy | Scotland 2030: Life in Future Scotland | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Scotland’s cities: retrofitting or new urban developments?
A blog by Felix Esche, a work experience student in June 2019, on the future of our cities.
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Blog to the Future | Economy | Health | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Economy | Scotland 2030: Health | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Can Scotland be a world leader in wellbeing?
Jennifer Wallace, Carnegie UK Trust, @Jen_CarnegieUK Earlier this month I attended a Scotland’s Futures Forum seminar on a wellbeing economy at the Scottish Parliament. The event, a collaboration between the Futures Forum, the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee and the newly formed Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll), heard from a range of thinkers and doers…
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Blog to the Future | Environment | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
Bananas, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and Scotland’s Environment
By Dr Steph Smith, Scotland’s Rural College and @ScienceSeaweed Humans are curious creatures. Not in the sense that we are random assemblages of cells which share about 50% of our DNA with a banana; but curious in our desire to learn. The Scottish’s Parliament’s own future ‘think tank’, Scotland’s Futures Forum, and the Scottish Environment, Food…
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Blog to the Future | Economy | Environment | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5 | Society
Economy, ecology, aesthetics: competing interests in the land
By Eleanore Widger, University of Dundee and @Nell Widger Earlier this year the Scottish Gamekeepers Association (SGA) and Mountaineering Scotland made an unlikely alliance in opposition to government plans to plant thousands of new trees. According to the Guardian, the Scottish Government intends to increase woodland cover from 17% to 25% by 2050 as part of its Draft…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Enlightenment Scotland: a “civilised nation”?
By Nicola Martin, @NicolaMartin14 “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.” This summary of a quotation from French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire is commonly used by commentators who wish to present Scotland as a beacon of civilisation and enlightenment in both the past and the present. [1] However, such a phrase and interpretation…
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Blog to the Future | Environment | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
Rugged, remote, rocky: Scotland and the Romantic imagination
By Eleanore Widger, University of Dundee and @NellWidger A curious thing happened in Scotland during the Romantic period: vast numbers of tourists from Britain, Europe and elsewhere used new road networks and steam packet routes to access the landscapes they valued as wild and remote. According to John and Margaret Gold, those tourists had two main objectives when…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Society | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Society | Technology
Technology: the driving force of human civilisation?
The first line of an article I read this morning proclaimed that: “Technology has driven human civilisation for thousands of years.” [1] Businessman Mukesh Ambani was discussing the opportunities for India to become a world leader in technology as humanity sits on the cusp of a fourth Industrial Revolution that looks set to blur the…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Civilisation: a question of terminology
By Nicola Martin, University of Stirling and @NicolaMartin14 5 April 2017 Before we consider what various stakeholders understand by the notion of a civilised nation or civilisation in the present, and even before we consider the various past perspectives of these notions, it is useful to understand the definitions of the words themselves, where the…
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Blog to the Future | Environment | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
Scotland’s landscapes: natural or naturalised
By Eleanore Widger, University of Dundee and @NellWidger 13 April 2017 Something has troubled me as I’ve progressed through my internship thinking about Scotland’s relationship to landscape. My research background in the Environmental Humanities has taught me to be sceptical of the term ‘nature’ – what can it really mean, and does it really exist, in the context of millennia…
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Blog to the Future | Environment | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
Glaciation and imagination
By Eleanore Widger, University of Dundee and @NellWidger I began my last post by describing the view from my Futures Forum desk. Looking past my computer towards Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags, I received what Neal Ascherson describes in his beautiful and illuminating book, Stone Voices, as ‘a lesson in the unimaginable forces and lapses of time which…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Scotland 2030: Greetings from another Futures Fellow
By Nicola Martin, University of Stirling and @NicolaMartin14 Whilst the current view from my window is not as symbolic as Eleanore’s (I’m currently working from home rather than the Parliament), I too found my thinking for this opening post directed by one of Scotland’s many evocative landscapes. I started my day as I often do: an…
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Blog to the Future | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Scotland 2030: Greetings from a Futures Fellow
By Eleanore Widger, University of Dundee and @NellWidger As I write this I can see, to the right of my computer screen, the gorse-covered north-west side of an extinct volcano, a huge slab of rock which juts diagonally out of a 640 acre landscaped royal park in a city centre. Where else could I be…
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New Kid on the Block
By Rob Littlejohn, Head of Business at Scotland’s Futures Forum Although I’ve titled this blogpost “New kid on the block”, I can’t pretend that I’m that new, having been in the privileged position of Head of Business for Scotland’s Futures Forum since October last year. Since being appointed, I’ve spent a lot of the time getting…
