Future lab in Dresden

Two weeks ago hub Bonn of THE CIVICS organized the first future lab in cooperation with Wirtschaft für ein weltoffenes Sachsen in the city of Dresden. As part of the CIVIC SCOUTS AT WORK programme (CS), the future labs are crucial components next to the strategic workshops taking place in each of the four countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary & Germany). For each country, one future lab is planned, which is meant to bring together representatives of different disciplines to discuss new methods on how to establish the workplace as a place of lifelong learning, how to combine vocational and civic education as well as discuss the implications of the CS programme.

During our two-day-long future lab, we invited academic and entrepreneurial representatives and multipliers from the field of civic education to join our discussion rounds. The first round of impulses was geared towards the challenges Europe is facing and identifying the dominating future trends. The main threats named by our representatives were populism, labour shortage and climate change. The second round was dealing with how the workplace can become a space to address and tackle these challenges and which agents are needed for this. According to our participants, opportunity structures are fundamental here, which enable and empower employees to take up responsibility and further develop their competencies. The last round of impulses was about the synergies between vocational and civic education and the importance of future literacy. Aside from pointing out the dilemma that these two have to be brought together and are not thought as one, participants also mentioned the importance of being able to ‘imagine that tomorrow will be better than today’ (utopian studies), which is crucial as an enabling and motivating competence.