Experiential Futures | IAEA

Megan Valanidas

December 2022

This Fall Altimeter had the pleasure of witnessing our efforts come to life in another unexpected environment, this time in Vienna at the International Atomic Energy Agency headquarters. This work, in partnership with the School of International Futures and NSquare and a group of other non-governmental organizations working on nuclear matters , was exhibited in November at the 2022 Symposium on International Safeguards. The Symposium coincided with historic IAEA anniversaries, marking 60 years of IAEA inspections, 50 years of comprehensive safeguards agreements (CSAs) concluded with the IAEA in connection with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , as well as 25 years of additional protocols (AP). The IAEA themed the event as “Reflecting on the Past and Anticipating the Future” to consider not only past accomplishments, but also what lies ahead—the future.

We often collaborate with our clients. It's not uncommon for newcomers to a creative process to initially feel a bit of skepticism. This project was no different. The creative process can be uncomfortable - the uncertainty of open-ended outcomes. The ‘trust the process’ refrain can feel thin when the majority of our collaborators depend on a successful end product. Even as trained, creative professionals, we’re not immune to the challenges of open-ended, highly collaborative work. So, we understand when our partners, who come to us with deep expertise, may not immediately see the value in an engagement predicated on the year 2057, which was the target of our task for this IAEA Symposium. It's in these diverse viewpoints that the rigor of the work is borne out. The combination of perspectives both moves the work in new directions and helps tether us to the present. In this instance, the level of trust by our contributors and the IAEA in hosting this work allowed us to examine topics in new ways.  

For the IAEA Symposium, our team was invited to transform three standard conference rooms into unique, immersive, interactive environments based on scenarios written by experts from the contributing NGOs across the safeguards community. These teams were composed of a range of experts from the nuclear energy and nonproliferation sectors, including research institutions, think tanks, professional associations as well as environmental groups. Young futurists also participated in the process as key content took shape. Some participants were invited based on previous work on IAEA matters while others emerged through contact with new organizations across the aforementioned sectors. These expert teams crafted narratives in the year 2057 (looking ahead to the next 25 years of safeguards and when the IAEA will turn 100 years old) based on current trends ranging from emerging technologies to shifts in law, governance, climate, economy as well as social, cultural and lifestyle implications among others. By the time our team received these drafts, there were nearly 20 drivers of change to synthesize into three ‘Futures Rooms,’ entitled, ‘Greenolution’, ‘Information Storm’ and ‘The Great Game’.  

Each room featured curated and custom artifacts built and chosen to draw out details from the expert narratives. We made use of soundscapes, custom lighting and scents to immerse visitors and create a memorable experience. Our hope was that the thinking initiated at the Symposium could percolate and spur conversations well after the event itself. 

This project, in combination with recent works, again revealed to us the value of speculation and physical interactions as we continue to take artifacts and environments to new audiences, creating space for conversations, combined thinking, collaborative musings and re-imagining. 

We’ve seen in practice the generative role unstructured space can have on a conversation. That elusive space that we know as a key ingredient to original thought and novel connections can be accessed and lightly directed towards relevant topics. We like to think of this as focused or intentional unstructured space. This is how we thought of the Futures Rooms as we were designing the experiences. A place to explore a narrative, at one’s own pace. A place for conversations, casual or otherwise.

Our futurist partners speak about the strategic roles that scenarios play. There are many. One of our favorites is creating space to explore new topics. While intended for a near future, these topics are often just as relevant in the present. We’ve seen that when these scenarios are posed as futures, they allow conversations to unfold unencumbered by the implications and weight of the present day. This allows for our (or my) favorite thing; open-ended exploration. The opportunity to peek around the edges of an issue; to investigate unknowns with some support; to actively invite novel thinking into a new, or sometimes all too well-known, subject area. This is our aim, to create space for new thinking, to imagine, to build or build upon a vision.

When designing these spaces, we look for ways to engage with and collect or record these reactions. Ways to make our spaces and engagements more interactive. Each future room included a variety of ways for a visitor to engage with and respond to content. Visitors were invited to leave thoughts at a reflection station or to tell us how certain elements of these environments might work in various new settings. Since we often use artifacts as provocations for new ideas and concepts, we want to collect that thinking and learn from it.

Once we settled on the install designs and interactives, the missing piece was accessibility.  One of the qualities of objects, as opposed to text, is that objects are open to interpretation. In crafting our artifacts, we aim for clarity, much in the same way that a text does. In an object though, this clarity can act more as a guide instead of an authority. In an effort to demystify some of this intent and under the guidance of the IAEA as the event organizer, our team dedicated one full plenary session to discussing how futures and ‘futuring’ can be employed and the types of outcomes one might expect. Next, we invited our collaborator-experts to share their intent and reflect on the outcomes, implications and the creative journey itself.  Maybe our favorite comments were hearing from our writers, that while they did trust the process there were times they questioned its value. Could that time have been spent doing more important work? However, once they saw the finished product, they understood why we all put in the effort. 

For as much as it's difficult to imagine the future of safeguards in 2057, imagine this Symposium without creativity and imagination. We would venture it wouldn't have been half as thoughtful, relevant or generative without the experience of immersing oneself in a carefully designed environment. We hope our contribution brought new dimensions to conversations and the experience overall. The role of design is to open these new spaces, offer up new dialogues or make space to hash out very old ones. It’s a joy to create this space with all of our partners and we look forward to more. 

Thank you to all who went on this journey with us. Special thanks to the IAEA Symposium organizing team for taking the risk with us and showing us again that creativity lies within all of us. We hope we could reflect for you just some of the imagination that we saw in you.  Thank you.

Note: For those interested in hearing more about this process, our team will be speaking on this project with the European Commission’s JRC this February. Many thanks to contributing expert, Willem Janssens for the opportunity to carry this conversation forward.