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Exploring Emergent Futures; From Ideas to Reality

Bespoke educational program designed for the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Taking into consideration the interests of European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) and Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Fab Lab Barcelona designed and deployed the program “From Ideas to Reality” as a part of a strategic collaboration to actively participate in the creation of future educational courses to be facilitated as a complement of their current EIT InnoEnergy Master’s in Energy for Smart Cities

Overview

The “From Ideas to Reality” program was facilitated as a part of the ground-breaking pilot course,”Moonshot Project”, created by a UPC team formed by Professor Andreas Sumper, EIT InnoEnergy Master School graduate Marc Jené, Maria Marín and Paula Gonzálezed.

The goal for this program was to provide the tools, skills,  attitude and competences for bringing the student’s ideas into the future of digital fabrication and distributed manufacturing. 

This program worked to engage participants in new creative methodologies in critical design and technology. These methodologies were to be used as  tools for exploring emergent future scenarios with the aim of assisting them to find new opportunities in an effort to prototype emergent solutions. 

The program empowered participants with digital literacy tools to foster their understanding of advanced technologies. It provided knowledge for the possibilities these methods offer from design to manufacturing, including associated times, risks and costs.

Main Goals

Fab Lab Barcelona’s “From Ideas to Reality” program included two main educational goals: 

1) Train students how to ‘explore emergent futures’

The ‘Atlas of the Weak Signals’ methodology offers teachers and students a way to get introduced into the concept and practice of identifying “weak signals.” These ‘weak signals’ are a  tool for finding possible emergent futures scenarios, scenarios which can assist in the exercise of finding opportunities, threats, challenges and shared visions for innovation, policy making, intervention, research and business opportunities in the future. 

The ‘Atlas of the Weak Signals’ methodology uses a card game developed by Fab Lab Barcelona which is  focused on five different global issues. EIT-UPC chose to focus their work on the weak signal category,  ‘Designing for the Post-Anthropocene’

The goal for this capsule was for participants to gain a newly expanded view and understanding of the multiple possibilities for emergent futures design strategies. It also showed students how to use innovation as a tool for expanding skills and capacities at the personal and professional levels.  

2) Train how to ‘prototype and iterate’

Fab Lab Barcelona is the perfect setting for allowing students to bring their ideas into reality. This capsule was a practical and intensive training program and a broad reaching introduction to the Fab Lab environment. Students were introduced to the machines of the fab lab, learned how to operate them, and were introduced to the knowledge to improve their projects by allowing them ‘Make (almost) anything’.

Project Team