The Future Focused Society initiative

Future Focused Society (FFS!) is focused on addressing societal challenges through creativity, innovation, design, action, and research that integrates exploratory and artistic approaches.

Central to our work is the KISMIC (Keep it Slow, Make it Complex) philosophy. We deliberately move slowly, embracing complexity and exploring domains through curiosity and interest. This approach actively opposes reductionistic tendencies and simplistic, purely outcome-driven ideals, valuing the process and the nuanced realities of lived experience.

We operate across multiple interconnected scales:

• Macro: Facing and addressing global systems and societal challenges, including sustainability, technological advancements, and cultural transformations, by identifying barriers and exploring scalable solutions rooted in ethical praxis.
• Meso: Facilitating collaboration across organizations, communities, and interdisciplinary teams. We actively partner with regional organizations such as Svensk Form Västmanland (svenskform.se/vastmanland/) and Konstfrämjandet Västmanland (vastmanland.konstframjandet.se/) to co-create meaningful initiatives, addressing shared challenges and implementing actionable solutions through dialogue and shared agency.
• Micro: Empowering individuals and small groups to identify obstacles, take action, build agency, and foster critical consciousness, driving practical problem-solving and innovation in practice and research.

FFS! explores and creates futures through Aesthetic Action, artistic inquiry, and praxis – learning through doing, often allowing ideas to evolve organically into initiatives that influence both academia and society. We emphasize research in action, sometimes starting without knowing the final destination, embracing the journey of discovery. Through seminars, collaborative projects, mentorship, and publications, FFS! builds agency and promotes democratic action, challenging conventional boundaries and expectations.

Our collaborative projects are often exploratory, practice-based, and involve artistic research. They frequently emerge organically from member interests and partnerships, sometimes starting as "unofficial, unfounded, but fun!" explorations. Examples include:

• Keep it Slow, Make it Complex: A series of interventions and publications exploring complexity and minority resistance through participatory design and zine-making with youth.
• Risk of Collapse: An arts education project using decolonial praxis and printmaking to engage with industrial legacies and social fragility in Bergslagen, in partnership with Konstfrämjandet Västmanland.
• Digital Futures explorations: Research and workshops examining societal desires and ethical considerations surrounding AI and digital technologies, often leading to conference presentations and publications.

Our consistent focus is finding win-win collaborations where all actors benefit and value the outcomes.

We investigate the dynamic interplay between humans, systems, and technology, integrating elements of action, creation, philosophy, art, design, culture, and artistic research to understand how these forces collectively shape innovation and societal transformation.

Committed to creativity, sustainability and responsibility, FFS! exemplifies how research can be driven by curiosity and genuine interest ("fun"), and how working with society, rather than on it, leads to valuable and impactful change.

Projects

These projects are unofficial, unfounded, but fun!

• Keep it Simple Make it Complex
• Enegry Futures and Foresight
  
• Das Neue Kabarett
• Laboratorium (Konstfrämjandet)