A bottom-up movement of citizens promoting long-term perspectives and intergenerational justice.
The Ministry of the Future is a bottom-up social design project. This brandnew nationwide movement unites an emerging group of positive citizens who, each in their own environment and sphere of influence, put the future on the agenda, beyond polarization and haste. They do so based on the shared conviction that the focus in politics, culture, economy and society must be shifted towards long-termism, in order to make decisions that benefit the people and planet of tomorrow.
Local
Netherlands
Because every single one of us should take responsibility for the future of their own LOCAL environment, everyone participating in the Ministry of the Future is a Minister, pushing action in their own sphere of influence. Following rapid growth of the movement in the past 1.5 years, it now unites hundreds of Ministers (artists, citizens, scientists, policymakers etc) throughout The Netherlands, from Leeuwarden to Limburg. Because of the rapid growth of the movement, we are now also drawing attention from abroad (Belgium, Poland, UK, ao). Therefore, the Ministry of the Future is a networked movement, uniting both local, national and international citizens.
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Horizon2020 / Horizon Europe
As European City of Science 2022, Leiden (NL) was the first European city to present a 365 days festival for all curious minds, covering science, knowledge, art and crafts by means of an innovatie Public Engagement with Science programme. We rapidly became a partner of New European Bauhaus, and within our public engagement programme artists, scientists and citizens joined forces to help shape the living environment of the future (https://leiden2022.nl/en/highlights/new-european-bauhaus1). Following our aim to establish new Social Design solutions, employees of Leiden European City of Science 2022 co-founded the Ministry of the Future, together with artists, scientists and citizens throughout The Netherlands, supported by organisations such as The Turn Club, Arcadia, Bureau Burgerberaad (Citizens' Assemblies), the Embassy of the North Sea, the LAB Future Generations and Atelier Rijksbouwmeester. Although we got funded through the HorizonEurope programme, neither the New European Bauhaus program nor the Ministry of the Future was part of the Work Packages. Therefore, there was no direct EU-funding involved.
No
Yes
As a representative of an organization, in partnership with other organisations
Name of the organisation(s): Leiden European City of Science 2022 Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Meta Last name of representative: Knol Gender: Female Nationality: Netherlands Function: Director Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Zijldijk 8 Town: Warmond Postal code: 2362AE Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 31629545 E-mail:meta@leiden2022.nl Website:https://www.modelleiden2022.nl/
Name of the organisation(s): Ministerie van de Toekomst Type of organisation: civic movement First name of representative: Klaas Sietse Last name of representative: Spoelstra Gender: Male Nationality: Netherlands Function: Minister of the Future Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Aengwirderweg 78 Town: Terband Postal code: 8449BD Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 22259464 E-mail:klaassietse@nij-sicht.nl Website:https://www.ministerievandetoekomst.nl/
URL:https://www.facebook.com/MinisterievandeToekomst Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #timerebels #tijdrebellen #ministerievandetoekomst #intergenerationaljustice #kathedraaldenken #toekomstdenken #futuredesign
URL:https://www.instagram.com/ministerievandetoekomst/ Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #timerebels #tijdrebellen #ministerievandetoekomst #intergenerationaljustice #kathedraaldenken #toekomstdenken #futuredesign
URL:https://www.linkedin.com/company/ministerievdtoekomst Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #timerebels #tijdrebellen #ministerievandetoekomst #intergenerationaljustice #kathedraaldenken #toekomstdenken #futuredesign
URL:https://twitter.com/mvdtoekomst Social media handle and associated hashtag(s): #timerebels #tijdrebellen #ministerievandetoekomst #intergenerationaljustice #kathedraaldenken #toekomstdenken #futuredesign
The Ministry of the Future is a bottom-up movement of citizens and professionals who put the long-term perspective and intergenerational justice on the agenda. This emerging nationwide movement unites a fast growing group of positive citizens who, each in their own environment and sphere of influence, encourage future-forward thinking, beyond polarization and haste. They do so based on the shared conviction that the focus in politics, culture, economy and society must be shifted towards long-termism, in order to make decisions that benefit the people and planet of tomorrow. Working in synergy, participants pave the way forward aimed at quality of life and Broad Welfare for all local (and future) citizens. Since 2021 the movement had grown fast, and it now unites hundreds of Ministers of the Future throughout The Netherlands. Together they form a time-rebel community, taking responsibility for their own environment and driving long-term change.
Time Rebels
Intergenerational Justice
Cathedral Thinking
Social Design
Future Design Method
We live now. In doing so, we determine all sorts of things for the people and life after us. So the question is: are we good ancestors? With the Ministry of the Future, we are putting this question on the agenda in various places in society. This way, we aim to secure long term solutions and encourage intergenerational solidarity, for the sake of a sustainable future for all.
The Ministry of the Future started as a bottom-up initiative in times of complex societal change. It unites a growing group of positive-oriented citizens who, each in their own environment and sphere of influence, put the future on the agenda, beyond polarization and haste. They share their belief that in politics, culture, economy and society the focus should be shifted from the short term towards long-term, cathedral thinking. The Ministry of the Future designed the method of local citizen assemblies. It is a bottom-up, co-created meeting about the future of your place. The key question is always the same: what will it look like, 15, 30 or 45 years from now? What should we do now to make that possible? The Ministry also developed thematic assemblies about a specific, future-oriented themes, such as food production, light pollution, healthcare systems or the energy transition. Every Minister is encouraged to organize assemblies on future-oriented topics that transcend their own place or region.
The Ministry of the Future strongly supports the Broad Welfare Model, as an alternative to the economic model of the GDP. Measuring Broad Welfare does not focus on quantity, but on the quality of life for all, beyond material prosperity. It includes health, education, environment and living environment, social cohesion, personal development and (in)security. Measuring Broad Welfare raises the question what the impact of our quality of life is towards future generations, towards people elsewhere in the world, and towards nature and life in general.
The British philosopher Roman Krznaric, author of the book The Good Ancestor (2021), inspired people worldwide to become ‘time rebels’. In the Netherlands, a nationwide movement of time rebels arose that united in the Ministry of the Future. Right from the start, artists, designers and other creative minds joined the Ministry. To us, creativity, art and culture have proven to be powerful drivers of change. In order to enable people to envision and experience possible future scenarios, we need empathy, creativity and imagination.
We believe (and have experienced) that all of us, be it scientists, artists or citizens, need to embrace the artists’ mindset, in order to unleash the power of imagination, to experience transformative artistic interventions, and start creating, inventing and re-inventing. Within the Ministry of the Future, artists, scientists and citizens join forces to help shape the living environment of the future. Together, we invent new Social Design solutions. The artists and other creative minds help us to unleash our imagination about future scenarios, they enable us to enter into eye-opening time-travelling experiences and they create artistic interventions to support our case.
For example, within the Ministry of the Future, artistic interventions are creative actions and rituals that enable us to time travel: by making the past, present and future tangible, people develop a sense of deep time. One of our Ministers, the artist Merlijn Twaalfhoven, designed a Deep Time Tour, a musical-poetic story that starts with the big bang and ends in the year 2121. Along the way you discover how much we are heirs to an immensely long history, and how our actions have consequences for what is currently going on, and what still lies before us. Participants of the artistic intervention meet a child from the year 2121. They are challenged to make her a promise. This Deep Time Tour has proven to be a very impactful tool for the Ministry of the Future, and beyond.
Anyone can join the Ministry of the Future: any time, any place, for free. There is no hierarchy. It’s just a free swarm of active, future-oriented humans. Thus, the Ministry of the Future already unites hundreds of highly diverse citizens and professionals throughout the country. They are all pushing things forward within their own, local communities. The Ministry is the overarching network that honours, feeds and connects them.
Our conviction is: the future is left-wing nor right-wing. We assume that all people wish their (imaginary) children and grandchildren a happy, healthy future. Therefore, no one is excluded from our Ministry of the Future. At the same time, by calling it a Ministry, we are turning the very principle of ministries itself upside down, playing games with the formal, traditional structures of representative democracy. In our Ministry of the Future, everyone is a Minister!
In doing so, we are inspired by the international movement of Citizens Assemblies. While regular Citizen Assemblies always need the support of top-down local, provincial or state governments, councils and parliaments, our Ministry of the Future works the reverse way: we deliver a distributed network of bottom-up, local citizens assemblies that are truly independent. We also advise anyone who wants to organize a local citizen assembly to make sure participants are as diverse as possible with regard to age, gender, cultural and societal backgrounds, neighborhood, education, political preference and interests.
Within the Ministry, a special focus is on youth. We aim to empower young citizens, here and now, to step up and speak out loud. For example, in the five local citizens assemblies that were organized during Leiden European City of Science 2022, over 55% of the participants was below 35 years old.
The Ministry of the Future is a bottom-up social design project. It is an emerging movement of local changemakers committed to long-term solutions and intergenerational justice. We developed the Ministry as a group of active citizens, because we believe that in our current democracy, it’s not enough to transfer responsibility to the politicians we elect every four years. The state of our world is really also our piece of cake too – we’re in this together!
For politicians, sadly enough, it often proves to be difficult to look beyond the dynamics of four years. As Ministers of the Future, this is exactly what we are doing: we are looking further into the future, aiming at long-term perspectives. We address how our current actions and decisions will impact the lives of others in 10, 50 or maybe even 100 years. In our experience, this eye-opening insight enables people to jump across the shadow of their own, personal interest more easily and start engaging with the collective interests and benefits. The Ministry of the Future is a brand-new community of time rebels: it’s civil society in optima forma!
All Ministers maintain their own, local networks of future-oriented changemakers. Every month they are invited to the Council of Ministers. During this online meeting all sorts of topics pass by: introducing new ministers, looking back at local citizens assemblies, thematic assemblies, creative interventions, sharing toolboxes and plans for the future. Every once in a while the Council of Ministers organizes live meetings, and all Ministers communicate via joint WhatsApp groups. This way, they are connected locally, regionally and nationally. Thanks to the rapid growth of the Ministry of the Future, we are now uniting hundreds of Ministers throughout The Netherlands, from Leeuwarden to Maastricht. This also includes active collaborations with other future-oriented organizations such as the Future Generations Lab, The Turn Club, the Citizens Assemblies Desk (Bureau Burgerberaad) and the Young Climate Movement (Jonge Klimaatbeweging). Interestingly enough, the Ministry of the Future also draws the attention of politicians, policy-makers, and scientists. For example, Ministers of the Future have been invited to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Netherlands and to the Socio-Economical Board (SER), and they have already been collaborating with the Board of Government Advisors (Atelier Rijksbouwmeester). Also, Ministers of the Future have been interviewed by The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR). Think of the Ministry of the Future as a house full of rooms, full of passionate residents and guests who bring the future closer to today. Rooms in which time rebels roll up their sleeves. Rooms where citizens and professionals reflect on major challenges of our time, for example through new forms of democratic decision making. Rooms where artistic interventions are developed by, for and with artists. Rooms where scientists share information and knowledge to provide deeper insights. It's a house of collaboration for all forward-looking citizens.
One could say that the Ministry of the Future is a bottom-up community of time rebels, operating at the crossroads of science, culture, and society. Within our network, citizens unite and set the example for all of us, how to design and define a future-proof life; artists and designers invent social design solutions, and unleash our imagination about future scenarios; and scientists substantiate these future scenarios with facts and innovations. But in reality, we are merely uniting a highly interdisciplinary, diverse and dynamic network of changemakers.
With this dynamic crowd, we are experimenting with scalable formats, with new public engagement strategies, with co-creation methods sparking playful interactions, with anything that helps to shape the living environment of the future. We actively link all kinds of forward-looking initiatives, disciplines and knowledge-fields within our local, regional and national networks. We are certainly not an institution, and we even don’t want to represent specific disciplines or knowledge fields. Moreover, we are a learning community and a self-organizing movement.
The Ministry of the Future creates a scalable and repeatable model for place-based long-term citizen engagement.
We empower citizens to improve the lives of young people and future generations in their own city, region or village. We encourage intergenerational solidarity by giving future generations a voice. We foster intersectoral, interdisciplinary, open-minded, empathic collaborations, fuelled by active citizens and local changemakers. In doing so, we encourage and enable local politicians to co-design solutions together with end-users.
Our overall goal is to establish a situation in which securing Broad Welfare for Future Generations is the self-evident basis for all individual, social and political decisions, taken in the here and now.
We are imaginators: we love art, culture, creativity and imagination.
We are understanders: we’re good at analyzing and interpretating situations.
We are doers: we’re rolling up our sleeves and jump into the action.
We are a swarm of future-oriented time-rebels.
Because every single one of us is able to take responsibility for the future of their own environment, everyone is a potential Minister of the Future. Through our website, social media, email and other communication channels, we share results and experiences, and offer practical toolboxes and creative options. These resources, tips and tools are allowed unlimited use by everyone. Sharing is caring! Thus, we create conditions for others to flourish, to carry out their own projects locally, in their own way, tapping directly into their own circles of influence.
Following our local citizens assemblies, thematic assemblies and artistic interventions, we are continuously looking for ways to share and disseminate our findings. For example, the local Ministry of the Future in the northern province of Friesland inspired the City Council of Leeuwarden. Inspired by the BOSK-project of artist Bruno Doedens, they decided to plant a tree as a reminder of intergenerational interests, geared up youth participation, and promised to devote a yearly debate to the future thinking. In Leiden, following the local Ministry of the Future, on 22 December, 2022, the City Council accepted a motion for intergenerational justice and decided to apply generation tests to all subsequent major political decisions. Another example is the symbolic act of using children's shoes to convey our message. For example, after the last general elections, a group of Ministers delivered pairs of children’s shoes to all new members of the Dutch parliament, State Secretaries and Ministers, to remind them of the interests of future generations.
But it can also be really simple. For example, Ministers of the Future have organized future dinners in their own house, putting conversations about future thinking on the menu. Whatever the shape, the code is always the same: with creative interventions, everyone can put the long-term perspective and intergenerational interests on the agenda. Everywhere.
With the community of the Ministry of the Future, we co-created a brand-new social design method called the plekberaad. In Dutch, a ‘plek’ is a place with a specific meaning, like a hometown or a home base. Thus, the plekberaad is a bottom-up, local citizen assembly dedicated to the future of a specific place. It can be organized by, for and with, for example, sports clubs, streets, neighborhood associations, local schools, church communities, groups of friends, families, company, organization, village, district or region.
Together participants create a vision on the complex, pressing and sometimes polarizing issues at play in their local society. With the help of artists and scientists, they envision the desired future of their place in a specific year (for example, in 2060). The very first plekberaad ever took place in Leiden, in June 2021. Young citizens got together with local politicians, creative minds, scientists, sustainable entrepreneurs, and community-builders to deliberate on Leiden’s future. During a collaborative and intergenerational dialogue, participants mapped challenges and co-designed solutions. These were focused on, for example, social segregation, achieving green environments in urban areas, dealing with future flooding or realising comfortable, sustainable and affordable housing.
To facilitate the process, we adopted the Future Design Method, which is rapidly gaining interest across the globe. This intergenerational method splits a citizens assembly into two groups: one representing the current generation and the other representing a future generation. It is inspired by Japanese civil policy making traditions. The Future Design Method is often combined with the principle of backcasting: the image of a desired future serves as the point of departure to discuss which steps, actions and decisions should be taken from now on to get as close to that desired image as possible. That way, it provides a pathway for sustainable change.
Through bottom-up action, The Ministry of the Future helps to support top-down goals, such as the Monitor Brede Welvaart (Broad Welfare Monitor NL), the Climate Agreement (2030), the Sustainable Development Goals (2030), the Paris Climate Agreement (2050) and the European Green Deal (2050). Within these global frameworks, the Ministry of the Future offers its own kind of space: a soft-space in which local residents collaborate informally, where social cohesion is reinforced and democratic confidence is being fuelled. The central question is always: what will our living environment look like in the future? How can we inspire as many people as possible to actively collaborate on a good future for everyone?
In 2022, our network was growing rapidly. Much quicker actually, than we had expected or envisioned. All kinds of experiments took place and we already built up a lot of experience. Which is great!
By now, it is important to anchor these findings in a long-term strategy, in order to enable and push further development of the Ministry of the Future. Because we also need to transcend the traditional rhythm of four-years-policy-making, we drafted a strategic plan for the next ten years (2023-2033). The goal is to raise our impact dramatically by putting future thinking and the accompanying actions on the agenda of as many places and communities as possible: locally, regionally, nationally, European and globally. In order to do so, we need to get some funding (so far, we have relied on donations and collaborations). To be able to accept funding, we will adopt a new formal, legal form: the zoöp. It is a new, organisational model for cooperation between human and nonhuman life that safeguards the interests of all zoë (Greek for 'life'). The zoöp model makes the interests of nonhuman life part of organisational decision making. That’s right up our alley.
We got a wonderful endorsement from Roman Krznaric, the one who inspired us in the first place: “The Ministry for the Future is a visionary movement that sends an urgent message to humanity: that we must become Time Rebels, challenging the tyranny of short-term thinking and making decisions that benefit the people and planet of tomorrow. Join the movement now. Time Rebels of the World Unite!”.
What we set in motion:
• Allowing society to escape short-termism;
• Offering actionable perspectives for everyone who aims to secure Broad Welfare for future generations;
• Making new connections, regardless of existing social structures and divisions;
• Stimulate new forms of active citizenship towards a renewed, participatory democracy.
What we radiate
• We are open, generous, and personal;
• We show guts and encourage activism in positive ways;
• We are excited to take action and discover the future;
• We cherish humanity: everyone can participate;
• We know: taking 1000 small steps together creates more change than taking 1 big step alone.
