Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
Setting the Scene for 2050 - #RKEFest23
In an ever-changing world it is important to look beyond the immediate future. A team of researchers within the UK Centre for Event Management are working on a long-term project aimed at exploring how future thinking is positioned in Events, Tourism and Hospitality sectors and facilitating creative thinking about uncertain futures. In this post, as part of our Festival of Research and Knowledge Exchange blog series, Professor Emma Wood shares insights from the FuturETHinking project.
It is important to think about the unknown. The explosion of generative AI technology, and limited adaptation of metaverse trends, as well as the COVID pandemic and war in Ukraine have shown just how unpredictable change can be, how fast situations evolve, and how quickly adjustments may need to be made.
Our FuturETHinking project is exploring emotional barriers to future thinking to identify and test techniques which support future thinking. It also diverges from previous studies which have predominantly focused on operational aspects of future planning.
I am leading the project alongside Dr James Musgrave and Dr Julia Calver, supported by other colleagues within the School, Dr Davide Sterchele, Dr Sam Isaac and Glenn Bowdin, with Dr Neil Ormerod from the University of the Algarve, Portugal.
Dr Sam Isaac and Dr Neil Ormerod began the project by reviewing future thinking methodologies. The wider team then decided on a scenario approach and drew upon over 100 reports by a variety of futurists. These show how far future scenarios help navigate patterns of plausible change, confront potential disruptors, go beyond operational constraints, and push the boundaries of cultural acceptances.
Drawing on this research we created a number of potential short descriptors for the world in 2050. A focus group review narrowed these down to four scenarios that are deliberately provocative in nature, are broad in scope (not sector specific), and include positive and negative possibilities.
Our aim was for event professionals to respond to these snapshots of potential 2050 worlds, learn from each other and stretch their strategic views beyond what is readily predicted.
Our four scenarios are summarised as
- Ruling robots
- Awesome energy
- Immense movement
- Retirement reworked
Myself and Dr Julia Calver undertook our first large-scale study with 120 event and business tourism professionals at the 2023 International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA) UK and Ireland conference in Glasgow. We also sought out the reactions of future industry professionals using the same scenario technique with final year students in our Event Futures module.
Our findings reveal that initial individual pessimism and fear of the unknown closes down productive thinking about the future, but that group conversation can mediate this effect. These group conversations were facilitated by structured workshops and reflected a range of ages and industry experience.
We describe these kinds of group conversations between diverse cross-sections of people as ‘polylogue discussions’ and we find that these appear to help stimulate creativity and innovative thinking. This in turn leads to more meaningful consideration of the future, and a potential pathway by which the industry can better prepare for the unknown by incorporating similar techniques within their planning cycles.
Our findings will be presented at the 7th World Research Summit for Hospitality and Tourism at the University of Central Florida in December 2023, and we are in the process of developing a series of future thinking workshops for local event organisations.
Professor Emma Wood
Emma Wood is Professor in Events and Experiential Marketing. Her current research is in emotions, shared memory and wellbeing. Her specialist areas are event tourism, event marketing and the impact of events and festivals on social change within communities.
