Urban Heat Studio

Policy makers dealing with climate resilience have the difficult task of aligning diverse stakeholders to understand problems 20 years from now. Experiential futures allow us to step into radically different “worlds”, and critique today’s situations in the light of desired future states. In the design research project HeatCon, we seek to explore how an ethnographic experiential future can gather policy makers, climate practitioners and creatives to expand collective imagination of what is considered possible in becoming more climate resilient in Europe. We stage a half-real, half-fictional conference set in a future, hotter and more resilient world to help people work through uncomfortable emotions, change perspectives about barriers and opportunities, and build new stories together that spark radical action towards climate resilience. The results will go into a toolkit for policy makers to help bridge the temporal gap, engage and align diverse stakeholders, and advance a collective imagination practice.

Members

Juli Sikorska, she/her

Co-Founder and member

Francesca Desmarais, she/her

Co-Founder and member

Jelka Wickham, she/her

Collaborator

Dr. Stuart Candy, he/him

Advisor