Time Machine

Goal

The goal is to engage a group to dream the vision for their work in the future, and in a funny way, find the participants dream and tray to get a common vision for the groups.

Method

You need to prepared the rom. You need a free space where the participant can move from one point to other in the room (approx. 6-7 meter long and 4 m wide, depending of the size of the group).
You put 5 marking tapes every 1,5 m . Write a sheet of paper with number of this year (e.g. 2014) and put in the first marking tape. Write another sheet of paper with 5 years from now (e.g. 2019) and put in the second one and continue so until 20 years in the future (e.g. 2014, 2029, 2034).

The “Time machine Workshop” is led by one facilitator;
You start we all the participant in now time, in the marking tape with the e.g.2014.
You make a history of the past of the place where the group is working. You can start from before the industrial revolution, all people living mostly from agriculture and locally production, after come the industrialization, many people move to cities, life expectancy was very low 45 years. After come wars, the first one and the second one, many people death. We went true the cold war and the nuclear weapon. Many generation and many people before us has make possible for us to be here.
We are today at e.g. 2014 in out place, worry about the climate change, the end of the oil age, and many other global problems. We are her together to try to do something.

We advance 5 years in time, we walk to the second marking tape years is e.g. 2019, the situation is getting worth, the weather is getting more extremes with period of very hot temperature to intense and heavy rain, the oil is increasing the price. Our group is doing well, we have been working 5 years and doing several concreted local project.

We advance 10 years in time, we walk to the third marking tape, and the year is e.g. 2024. 10 years has passed from our first meeting. The weather is crazy, the oil is really expensive, we get one economic crises after the other, we feel shortage of resource and the most of the people don’t believe that the national and international institution are going to solve the problem.  We have growing like organization and many people join us, they want to a different. We begin to see many ingenious solutions to our urgent problem. The local authorities approached and want to joint effort in some field we us.

We advance 15 years in time, we walk to the forth marking tape, the year is e.g.2029, the world economic almost don’t work, we have civil revolts in several countries, many environmental refugees everywhere, many island have disappear, cost side cities have being taken by the raising sea  and millions of people have to move. The government only tries to manage the crisis. Our group has managed to do a partial transition to a more sustainable way of living. We get visit from different part of Norway to see what we here.

We advance 20 years in time, we walk to the fifth marking tape, the year is e.g.2034, the world economic it have still big problem. People from the all world come here to learn how we have managed to solve many problems. We have managed to do that.
What do you see around you? Where the people work, how the transport, what our place look like?

Left the people dream and talk. If the participant runs out of ideas, help with other question like: How you produce food?  What do you eat, What the youth do?, How the street look like? How the schools look like?

When the people run out of ideas, you walk with the all group to the year e.g.2014.
You ask the participant: What prevents us to come from here to our dream e.g. 2034? What stopped us?
After, the all group walk again to the future e.g. 2034 and you ask: We make it, we manage to do almost all we wanted. How we managed to do that? How we past from 2014 to 2034?

To finish, give the opportunity to the participant to comment what the feel with this workshop

[Source: This method is create by Mauricio Deliz and Claudio Madaune fromChange the World (www.world-changers.org)]