Drugs in Scotland: Seminar
Seminar in May 2018 on drugs policy in Scotland now and in the future. With NHS Health Scotland, Scottish Drugs Forum and Step Together.
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Summer 2018: Events Programme
Scotland’s Futures Forum is delighted to announce our Summer Programme of Events. In the Scottish Parliament, we’ll be hosting a panel discussion including author Christopher Brookmyre and robotics expert Professor Sethu Vijayakumar on our aspirations for 2030 and #OurFutureScotland, along with a challenge on the future world of work: what would Scotland in 2030 look…
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Drugs in Scotland: MSPs Request Review
NEWS: Following a request from a cross-party group of MSPs, the Futures Forum will consider the landscape for drug use in Scotland.
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Education | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Education and Learning | Session 5
Scotland 2030: the Early Years
Future Schooling, Education and Learning: Goodison Group in Scotland Forum Debate On 14 March 2018, the Goodison Group in association with Scotland’s Futures Form held the first debate of the year as part of its future schooling, education and learning project. The debate focused on early years education, with presentations from Juliet Hancock, Director of…
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Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Life in Future Scotland | Scotland 2030: Society | Session 5 | Society
Scotland 2030: Growing Up In Future Scotland
In 2018, Scotland’s Futures Forum’s Scotland 2030 Programme is looking at different stages of life in future Scotland. The first event in the series considered what growing up in Scotland in 2030 could and should be like. Read the full event report here: “Life in Future Scotland: Growing Up” Event Report The Futures Forum heard from…
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An Action Plan for Homelessness
Reception in January 2018 to showcase Heriot-Watt University’s academic research behind Social Bite’s ambitious plan to tackle homelessness.
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Education | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Education and Learning | Scotland 2030: Life in Future Scotland | Session 5 | Society
Future Schooling, Learning and Education: Future Skills and Qualifications
Scotland 2030: Goodison Group in Scotland Forum Debate The Goodison Group in Scotland continued its on-going investigation into education and learning in the future with a debate in the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday 14 November 2017. Bringing together representatives from education, academia and business, GGiS considered how Scotland will change by 2030 and what that…
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Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Society | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Society | Technology
Scotland 2030: Technology and Society
On Friday 10 November, in conjunction with the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Futures Forum held a Scotland 2030 Programme discussion on technology and society in Inverness. Chaired by the Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh MSP, the panel for this event comprised Dr Chris Van Der Kuyl FRSE, owner of 4G, the Minecraft game developers; Futures…
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Events and Resources | Health | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Health | Session 5
Scotland 2030: Fitter or Fatter?
Seminar in October 2017 exploring policy responses to obesity and their potential effect on people’s health and lives.
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Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Society | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Society | Technology
Scotland 2030: Young People and Technology
On 27 October 2017, the Futures Forum held a joint consultation event with the Scottish Youth Parliament on the question of technology. Chaired by Maree Todd MSP as a Futures Forum director, the debate covered young people’s hopes and fears about the role of technology in their lives, and their thoughts about how to make…
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The Drugs Don’t Work: Reducing Drugs Damage in Scotland 10 Years On
Ten years after the Futures Forum report on reducing harm from drugs in Scotland, this 2017 Festival of Politics explored how much has changed.
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Economy | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Economy | Session 5
Scotland 2030: Our Economy
Having explored the challenges provided by the technological revolution and climate change in its first two events in 2017, the Futures Forum heard from Dr Jamie Coleman, chair and co-founder of Codebase, and Dr Katherine Trebeck, senior researcher at Oxfam, on how we could and should make our living in 2030, as individuals and as…
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Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: A Civilised Nation? | Session 5 | Society
A Civilised Nation? Project Overview
The French philosopher Voltaire is quoted as saying in the 1760s that “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation”. What did that mean then, and what might it mean today and in the future? What makes up a civilised nation and is Scotland one? And, looking forward, what words or descriptions might we…
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Creative reflection | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Creative Reflections | Scotland 2030: Life in Future Scotland | Session 5 | Society
The Future and Me: Living in Tomorrow’s World
What does the future hold for young people? What do they think will happen? This video from 2017 explores what inventions we might see by 2030.
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Fit Home: the Future of Housing and Health
This informal reception introduced guests to the main concepts behind Fit Home, a unique partnership between housing, NHS Highland and social enterprise, which, supported by academic research, showcases a collaborative solution to wellness in the digital age. Developed through co-design with partners, potential tenants and health and care professionals, this ground-breaking approach combines modular home…
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Economy | Education | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Economy | Scotland 2030: Education and Learning | Session 5
Future Schooling, Education and Learning: The Economic Context
Scotland 2030: Goodison Group in Scotland Forum Debate On 5 September 2017, the Goodison Group in Scotland and the Futures Forum continued their on-going investigation into education and learning in the future with a debate in the Scottish Parliament on how the economy might influence, enhance or disrupt schooling, education and learning in 2030 and beyond….
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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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Environment | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
Our Environment in 2030
A healthy society and culture depends on a healthy environment. This project explores how Scotland’s environment might change over the coming years and how our relationship with it will and should change at the same time. It also asks what our societal and cultural relationship with our surroundings should be in 2030 to ensure a…
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Data and Politics: Comparative Agendas Project 10th Anniversary Conference
This reception marked the 10th anniversary of the Comparative Agendas Project, a worldwide network of political and data scientists working to investigate trends in government, parliamentary and legal activity over time.
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Education | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Education and Learning | Session 5
Future Schooling, Education and Learning: Our Aspirations [2]
Scotland 2030: Goodison Group in Scotland Forum Debate Read the Education in 2030 – Our Aspirations Event Report The Goodison Group in Scotland continued its on-going investigation into education and learning in the future with a debate in the Scottish Parliament on 13 June 2017. Building on the thoughts and aspirations identified at the debate…
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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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Environment | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Environment | Session 5
How resilient and well-functioning will Scotland’s environment be?
As part of the Scotland 2030 Programme, and on the basis that a strong society and economy can exist in the long term only if the environment – land, air and water – are functioning well, the Futures Forum supported an investigation into what Scotland’s environment might look like in 2030. Asking the question “How…
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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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Scotland 2030 Programme: Launch
Scotland’s Futures Forum – the Scottish Parliament’s in-house think tank – launched its Scotland 2030 programme on Wednesday 29 March 2017. Billed as an exploration of Scotland’s culture and society, the programme will ask what kind of country do we want Scotland to be in 2030? The launch event examined developments in technology as its…
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Arts&Culture | Creative reflection | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Creative Reflections | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Technology
News from 2030 by Karine Polwart
As part of the launch of our Scotland 2030 Programme in March 2017, we asked award-winning folk singer, songwriter and essayist Karine Polwart (@IAMKP) to reflect on the cultural implications for our society from technological change. In response, Karine brought three imagined news stories from 2030. Karine read the stories and reflected on why she wrote them….
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Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Technology
Scotland 2030: The Technological Context
This debate with Karine Polwart and Chris van der Kuyl in March 2017 explored the effect technological innovation would have on life in Scotland.
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Arts&Culture | Creative reflection | Economy | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Creative Reflections | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Technology
Betty Bags a Booker by Karine Polwart
An imagined news story from 2030 by Karine Polwart. Written in 2017, “Betty Bags a Booker” reflects on the effect of automation on our society and culture.
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Arts&Culture | Creative reflection | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Creative Reflections | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Technology
A Digital Haven by Karine Polwart
An imagined news story from 2030 by Karine Polwart. Written in 2017, “A Digital Haven” reflects on the mixed effect of technology on Scotland’s rural areas.
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Arts&Culture | Creative reflection | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Creative Reflections | Scotland 2030: Technology | Session 5 | Technology
Karmic Payback by Karine Polwart
An imagined news story from 2030 by Karine Polwart. Written in 2017, “Karmic Payback” reflects on the role of apps and personal data in our health and wellbeing.
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Education | Events and Resources | Major Projects | Scotland 2030 Programme | Scotland 2030: Education and Learning | Session 5
Future Schooling, Education and Learning: Our Aspirations [1]
Scotland 2030: Goodison Group in Scotland Forum Debate Read the Education in 2030: Our Aspirations – Event Report To kick off its investigation into education and learning in the future, the Goodison Group in Scotland held a debate on 21 March 2017 on our aspirations for education in 2030 in conjunction with Scotland’s Futures Forum….
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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…
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Digital Democracy: Opportunities and Challenges for Scotland
Seminar with Nesta Scotland in February 2017 on what Scotland can learn from digital democracy pioneers throughout Europe.
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Automation in the Scottish Economy
The growing level of automation in Scotland’s economy and the implications for our workforce was the subject of a Scotland’s Futures Forum’s Breakfast Seminar in 2017. Hosted by Richard Leonard MSP on behalf of the Parliament’s Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee, the seminar heard from Ewan Mearns of Scottish Enterprise’s strategy and sectors team…
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Fostering Cultures of Innovation
Workshop in November 2016 to support the SUII programme on Fostering Cultures of Innovation, featuring video presentations of each project.
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Intergenerational Learning
With Baby Boomers, Generation X and Millennials all sharing the workplace, this forum debate in September 2016 focused on intergenerational learning.
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Equity and Scottish Education
If we look over the horizon to 2020, what would an equitable education look like? This GGiS forum in September 2015 focused on equity in education and improving attainment.
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Technology as a learning environment
This forum debate with the Goodison Group in Scotland in March 2015 explored learning environments, with a focus on technology.
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IRISS – Imagining the Future Scenarios
What will community, support and social services mean and look like in 2025? Imagining the Future Scenarios There is absolutely no reason to expect that by 2025 social services in Scotland will look the same as they do today. What does the future hold for social services in 2025? Nobody knows for sure. It is…
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Business Succession: the sustainability of family businesses and SMEs
New research reveals up to £1.23 billion tax gain by increasing the number of successfully transferred SMEs and Family Businesses in Scotland Research demonstrates how SMEs and Family Businesses can significantly grow the Scottish economy. It also suggests that governments across Europe need to recognise the importance of providing support for business transfers to help…
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By 2025, Scotland will be regarded as a world-leading learning nation
As part of Scotland’s Futures Forum strategic link with the Goodison Group in Scotland in the area of learning and skills, our organisations undertook a project on Scotland as a world-leading learning nation. This ambitious project took a futures look at the learning environment in 2025 and beyond. It aims to help to change attitudes…
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Realising the Potential of Engaged Universities
The Edinburgh Beltane Beacon for Public Engagement held an event on 15 June 2011, focusing on ‘Realising the Potential of Engaged Universities’.
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The Oxfam Humankind Index for Scotland
Report from a conversation café in June 2011 held as part of the development of the Oxfam Humankind Index.
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Facing up to Climate Change
In early March 2011, Scotland’s Futures Forum along with Edinburgh Beltane hosted two seminars to consider the findings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s report ‘Facing up to climate change: breaking the barriers to a low-carbon Scotland’. These events were attended by MSPs, policymakers, academics and others with an interest in the subject.
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Women in Prison
Increasing numbers of women are being imprisoned in Scotland (and other comparable jurisdictions), and this cannot be explained by rates of offending or changes in the nature of offences. The Scottish Universities Insight Institute recently held a series of workshops to consider the criminal justice system’s response to women’s offending and its findings were presented…
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Social Impact Bonds
Seminar in November 2010 with public, private and voluntary sectors on an innovative way of funding solutions to social problems.
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The Future of British Sign Language in an Inclusive Scotland
As part of the 2010-11 seminar series, in partnership with Edinburgh Beltane, a Futures Forum was held on 15 November 2010 bringing together around 70 delegates to explore what is understood by ‘an inclusive Scotland in 2020’ in relation to minority languages. In particular, participants considered what the future might be for British Sign Language….
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Scotland: Sustainable Communities in 2030
A scenario project from 2010 examining what sustainable communities might look like in Scotland in 2030. Features report and scenarios video.
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The Future of Edinburgh’s Cultural Sector
In 2010, Scotland’s Futures Forum and the City of Edinburgh Council’s Culture and Sport Division engaged in a short-term project to explore the future of the city’s arts and culture sector. The purpose of the project was for those in the arts and culture sector to share their aspirations for the future, and to consider how they…
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Scotland’s Public Finances
Project in 2010 looking at challenges to Scotland’s public finances from budget constraints, technological change and shifting relationships.
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Low Carbon Scotland Report
Futures Forum seminar in March 2010 on realising a low carbon economy. Key messages include a lack of systemic policy making and Scotland’s unique opportunities
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National Trust for Scotland: a Sustainable Future
A futures discussion paper on the National Trust for Scotland produced in 2010 for the Reid Review.
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What might a Scottish welfare system look like in 2020?
Seminar in September 2009 on what might a Scottish welfare system look like in 2020? With Swedish expert Prof Joakim Palme
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Poverty and Inequalities in Scotland
Conference in May 2009 on poverty and inequalities in Scotland. A decade after devolution, what has improved and what are the priorities for the future?
