> Millennia2015 - Conférence internationale 2008 - Palais des Congrès de Liège

Vers une société de la connaissance : créativité, cultures et médias 

11-W6 - Atelier 6 - Workshop 6

 

Introduction et présidence : Jan Lee Martin
Intervenant-e-s :   Aroha Crowchild - Shihong Han - Starhawk - Serge Weber

v Introduction et présidence

Jan Lee Martin

Vice-présidente du Noeud AustralAsie, du Projet Millennium de la Fédération mondiale des Associations pour les Nations Unies (WFUNA);

Fondatrice et première présidente de la Futures Foundation;

 

Jan Lee Martin has always lived in the future. As public relations manager for IBM in New Zealand in the 1960s, she participated in the early excitement of the computer revolution. She was a manager at a time when young people, and especially young women, were not expected to be managers.  And she began a career in public relations when very few people knew what that meant.  (She says many still don't.)

For nearly 20 years she ran her own public relations consultancy in Sydney, working with senior executives of government, private and not-for-profit organizations to improve their internal and external communication with stakeholders.  It was when she sold that consultancy, and began to explore the boundaries of change, that she met the field of future studies.  In the mid-90s she and some of Australia's leading futurists established the Futures Foundation as an independent centre for learning about the future.

Seven years later, the Foundation merged with the Future of Work Foundation, and Jan was able to hand over the chair and concentrate on other activities. For some years she continued to edit Future News and contribute to the website, and she still works on special projects with colleagues in the futuring community.  

She is a regular speaker at conferences in Australia and elsewhere; has worked as a senior executive coach for a major bank; occasionally writes for media; and maintains her family and community interests in Sydney and at Pearl Beach on the Central Coast of New South Wales.  She has a special interest in changing ideas of what we mean by success; in changes in the way we measure performance (and success);  and in the changing relationships between organizations and others in their host communities.

Jan Lee Martin is co-chair of the Millennium Project in Australia (a WFUNA organization), a professional member of the World Future Society and a member of the World Futures Studies Federation.  She has contributed to many publications including the Australia and New Zealand Public Relations Manual, the standard text in communication degree courses; and The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, the  standard text in futures studies degree courses.  She is a member of the editorial board of the international Journal of Futures Studies and is listed in the World Future Society's Directory of people who write and speak about the future.

Jan Lee Martin is co-chair of the Millennium Project in Australia, a professional member of the World Future Society and a member of the World Futures Studies Federation.

Sydney, Australia

 

> Short CV [pdf] 

 

v Abstract :  

Imagining new futures: the simple power of story 

We are immersed in a world of complex and accelerating change.  Every day it becomes harder to deal with that complexity, and more important that we do. Indeed it is essential – not just to anticipate and avoid risks, but also to anticipate and create opportunities.  How can a tool as simple as a story be of any use?

This paper discusses the fundamental role of story in living systems, including people, organizations and communities. Examples show how stories can strengthen, heal, teach and inspire at each of these levels.  One of the stories dates back 20,000 years, others tell of children and young people already changing the future.

Stories help us to share knowledge, to work together to meet the uncertainties of change.  They give us strength and coherence.  But stories also create change.  They fire the imagination.  We create the future through the stories we imagine.  How can we create the future – how can we create anything? -- if we can't imagine it first?

And we really, seriously, need to create new stories for the future.

At a workshop at the Millennia 2015 conference in Liege, Belgium in March this year,  I am inviting participants to help me seek the simplicity beyond complexity in stories with power to inspire. And I invite people everywhere to do that: to imagine, and to share, the stories that can create new futures for our emerging planetary civilization.

The Futures Foundation exists to explore the future.  Its mission is “inspiring ways to create the future”.  Working with senior futurist colleagues in Australia, I started it in 1996, after a career in corporate communication. So this article combines my experience from those two fields –professional communication and futures studies -- in discussing the power of story, and the way it can help us to create new and better futures. 

If we want to change the future, it's a lot easier to do before it happens. Stories make powerful magic to help us do that.   We need to imagine and share new stories –

- for people

- for organizations

- for communities, and

- for our emerging planetary civilization.

In this article we shall see how story works at each of those levels, and also how stories teach, stories heal, stories inspire.

 

 

> Document : Imagining new futures: the simple power of story [pdf]

> Presentation : Imagining new futures: the simple power of story [pdf]

> Podcast : Imagining new futures: the simple power of story [vidéo] 

 

The Paper Bag Princess

Adapted from the story by Robert N. Munsch

Once upon a time there was a young prince called Roland, who lived in the same castle as the Princess Elizabeth.  The children had different parents but they always played together and learned together.  They both wore rich clothes and had the same toys and the same teachers, and everyone knew that when they grew up they would marry each other.  ...

 

> Document : The Paper Bag Princess [pdf]  

 

Raindrop Theory

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there was a little girl who lived with her family in a hot, dry land, a very long way from here.

Megan was a bright and happy child but she had one bad fault.  She asked too many questions.  She asked question after question, until everybody -- her parents and her aunts and uncles and grandparents and all her teachers – finally had to say..... Megan!  Megan!  Please stop!

 

> Document : Raindrop Theory [pdf]  

 ^

v Intervenant-e-s

Aroha Crowchild

Bachelors Degree in Maori Performing Arts from Te Wamauga Whare Tapere o Takitimu Performing Arts School;

Co-founder and artistic director of the Red Thunder Native Dance Theatre of Canada, and worked with the Kahurangi Maori Dance Company of New Zealand;

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

 

> Podcast : Towards a knowledge society: creativity, cultures and media + beautiful song [vidéo] 

^

Shihong Han 

President, Meridian SUN Company Ltd; Présidente du Conseil, Beijing Ronghao Culture Development;

Vice-présidente de la Beijing Academy of Soft Technology

Beijing, China

 

> Short CV [pdf] 

 

> Document : Women entrepreneurs in the knowledge society [pdf]

> Presentation : Women entrepreneurs in the knowledge society [pdf]

> Podcast : Women entrepreneurs in the knowledge society [vidéo] 

^

Starhawk

Ecrivaine américaine, théoricienne du paganisme et de l'écoféminisme;  

Activiste dans le mouvement pacifiste, le mouvement féministe, le mouvement écologiste, et le mouvement altermondialiste;

Starhawk, committed global justice activist and organizer, is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and the award-winning Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising. Her latest is Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature.

She is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, is a highly influential voice in the revival of earth-based spirituality and Goddess religion, and has brought many innovative techniques of spirituality and magic to her political work. Her web site is www.starhawk.org .

San Francisco, CA, USA

 

> Short CV [pdf]  

 

> Podcast : Towards a knowledge society: creativity, cultures and media [vidéo] 

^

Serge Weber

Géographe

- Maître de Conférences Université Paris-Est (Marne-la-Vallée), Laboratoire Villes Mobilités Transports (LVMT);

- Ancien élève de l'Ecole normale supérieure Fontenay-Saint-Cloud;

- Agrégé de Géographie, Université Paris 1;

- Docteur en Géographie, Université Paris 1, Laboratoire Géophile, UMR CNRS 8504

Géographie-Cité, sous la direction de Violette Rey;

- Thèse : « Des chemins qui mènent à Rome. Trajectoires et espaces migratoires roumains, ukrainiens et polonais à Rome, 2000-2004 »;

- Ancien membre de l'Ecole française de Rome.

Paris, France

 

Publications :

- Nouvelle Europe, nouvelles migrations. Mondialisation, frontières, intégration, Paris, Le Félin éditions, 128 p. 2007.

- Avec Nicole Fouché, coordination du numéro thématique Migrations et construction des sexualités, revue Migrance, premier semestre 2006.

 

> Short CV [pdf]   

 

v Abstract :   

Femmes migrantes en Europe: mobilité, développement et capital social

- La féminisation des migrations en Europe. Les migrantes, acteurs du développement ici et là-bas;

- Un marché du travail ultra-flexibilisé et précaire;

- L'entre-soi et ses ambivalences dans un marché du logement sous tension;

- Les migrantes au cœur du débat citoyen (transfert d'épargne, migration ‘choisie' comme politique familiale de substitution);

- Quelles opportunités pour de meilleures conditions de vie transnationale? Pour des carrières alternatives à la niche subalterne ethnicisée et sexuée?

- La créativité et les ressources d'information et communication:
un nouveau terrain de recherches pour valoriser et promouvoir l'image des migrant-e-s;

- Conclusions.

 

> Podcast : Femmes migrantes en Europe: mobilité, développement et capital social [vidéo] 

^