In the bustling town of Mala, nestled under the watchful eye of Lima's skyline, a transformative journey unfolded at our recent workshop, "Futuros del Parto" (or: Birth Futures) in April 2024. As one of the pillars of the Birth Futures project, our goal for this workshop was clear: to revolutionize healthcare innovation in birth care through social dreaming.

Hey there, fellow future enthusiasts! Buckle up because we're about to take you on a wild ride through the captivating journey of speculative storytelling at our Fluid Worlds workshop, a part of the groundbreaking Women Who Future(s) event.

When we cut ourselves loose from natural cycles, we traded connection for comfort. Our disconnect from the natural cycles and seasonal woes has enabled us to grow and consume far beyond the carrying capacity of our planet’s ecosystem. To restore the connection with our biological cycles and ecosystems, join me on a trip to the island of Pongso no Tao, before travelling back in time to the pre-Christian, Dutch delta.

Join me on a trip to Pongso no Tao island, before embarking on a journey to the future of a floating city in the south of the Netherlands. This was the starting point of my lecture at the "Re-patterning our Seasonal Cultures" symposium in September ‘23 at the University of Bergen.

I believe that children are crucial in shaping our future. Not only because they are the future, but mainly because children have the ability to think outside the box and dream, and as a society, we need this.

The past twelve months I've been deeply engrossed in the development of something I like to call 'Futures Ecologies'—future scenarios envisioned through the lens of ecology. This approach amalgamates ecological methodologies, speculative design, and storytelling to craft vibrant and tangible depictions of what the future might hold.

In a world increasingly shaped by technology, our relationship with artificial intelligence (AI) is a topic of ongoing debate. With growing concerns about bias and discrimination perpetuated by AI systems, the need to reevaluate our approach is more critical than ever. Still, Archer Pechawis, co-author of "Making Kin with the Machines," suggests that we should imagine our relationship with AI based on love rather than fear.

What influence do seasonal cultures exert on contemporary societies across diverse regions worldwide? How are these cultures adapting to shifting seasonal patterns and impacting our daily routines and behaviors?

Can we move beyond the crises and envision more hopeful futures?

Final episode of A Pluriverse of Stories on 'Sculpting Time'. We talk about the nature of time (or time as nature), about amcestral practices, jellyfish that move through timw ans ecological calendars as an alternarive practice to timekeeping in the modern world.

On May 11 the first workshop Birth Futures took place in Utrecht (the Netherlands).

Although not a complete monolith, the future of birth is distinctly western-oriented, and firmly rooted in the juxtoposition of humans against nature, and nature against tech. That’s my experience using the GPT-4 based future scenario maker of the Board of Innovation.

What happens if you prompt AI to dream up images of birth futures? Will they be utopic, dystopic? Familiar or unrecognizable? A short experiment.

In a series of lectures on futures storytelling at Radboudumc I explored the future of biomedical science with a group of Master students. Their stories are bundled in Biomedifuturism.

Much of today’s AI art debate revolves around answering the question: is AI art, art, or soulless regurgitation of actual art? Honestly, this discussion bores me to death, and leads away from AI’s real dark issue.

In these dark and slow days my mind has been full of thoughts about roots and entanglements. Specifically my own roots.

Where are the pop songs about birth? (serious question). It's such a life-changing, emotional, epic event, why doesn't it take up a central space in our social and cultural lives?

Can you feel a connection to living cells that once belonged to someone you are related to or loved? A relational enquiry into the human HeLa cell line.

When adult jellyfish, or medusas, are under stress, a complex cascade of dormant gene activations ensures they transform back into their youthful selves. Making them, effectively, immortal.

Humans are deeply networked beings, not just because of our digital connections, but because of our biological ones. Can you feel you are part of an ecosystem? Episode 3 of A Pluriverse of Stories up now.