This particular stream of the Future Prairie Theatre research work utilizes Strategic Foresight to gather, understand and leverage learnings about our sector in this highly volatile period of time in order to make better decisions about our shared future.  It is a structured and systematic way of using ideas about the future to anticipate and better prepare for change. It is about exploring different plausible futures that could arise, and the opportunities and challenges they could present.

The Future Prairie Theatre Research team engaged in a Strategic Foresight process from September to March last year (2021-2022) where we gathered signals and trends, not just in the theatre sector but more broadly. Through community discussion and rigorous analysis of these trends and signals, the research team created four plausible futures for the theatre sector for an imagined future in the year 2040.

In the Fall of 2022, we will gather artists and leaders from the prairie theatre ecosystem to interrogate, investigate and test these potential scenarios. Are they ones we want to happen?  Ones that are inevitable? Ones we can together strive towards? Or ones that we must take action against immediately?

Strategic Foresight is not a crystal ball. It is not an attempt to predict the future, but it is a method of building foresight capacity in all of us so we can be adaptable and prepared. It will allow us to articulate and build the pathways towards our collective preferred future.  Through the building of bridges, the sharing and exchange of knowledge and skills across the prairie theatre community, we can inform, affect, and action our preferred future – together.