ABSTRACT. You are invited to join in a collaborative songwriting workshop. During this highly practical session participants will be guided by songwriting practitioner Shane Beales to work together to create a brand new original song. This will be a great way to to cap off the week and to explore new possibilities! All levels of experience welcome whether you are seasoned writer, or this is your first time!

ABSTRACT. In times of relentless change and rapidly accelerating technologies, we must invent learning experiences that help students anticipate needs & opportunities and learn to adapt to an era of constant surprise.

To this end, we have developed a platform that immerses students in custom-generated futuristic worlds that they can explore by engaging with fictional characters, aiming to understand the potential needs of diverse stakeholders (from people to wildlife). As participants develop and propose design solutions to address those needs, the storyline evolves, challenging their assumptions and pushing them to adapt. It is a safe space to practice inquiry, anticipation, & flexibility, and where they can, in Jerome Bruner’s words, develop their own “heuristics of discovery” and knack for adapting—critical mindsets needed to face today’s ever-evolving challenges. Our design leans into LLM quirks like hallucinations, turning them into strengths that can support learning.

Note: Please bring your laptop if you can. We will work in pairs or trios, and each group will need one laptop to engage with the scenarios.

ABSTRACT. Noticing is often cited as a critical skill for spotting opportunities for change. However, when we are only able to notice big, threatening, problems, our view of the world narrows and our ability to sit with ambiguity and be curious diminishes. This impacts our understanding of ourselves as actors with agency and impedes our ability to imagine new possibilities.

A robust practice of noticing is one that counteracts this tendency by inviting us to look beyond ourselves, connect with the present moment, and seek multiple perspectives; aiding the development of a more nuanced understanding of the world around us and our roles within it. Such a practice is unique to an individual, but can be built on a foundation of skills that can be learned and strengthened.

In this workshop, participants will engage in noticing as an intentional practice, through a series of exercises and reflections. Each exercise will invite participants to flex a different noticing “muscle,” engaging them in an embodied approach to noticing and helping them build - or strengthen - their personal noticing practices. Participants will leave with new techniques, a deeper understanding of their own practice of noticing, and resources with more to continue exploring.

ABSTRACT. This interactive session invites participants to explore the principles and practices behind designing interventions in Possibility Studies. Drawing on diverse disciplinary approaches, we will reflect together on how to construct meaningful toolkits that support individuals and communities in engaging with possibility, whether through imagination, futures thinking, creativity, or transformative action. Participants will be encouraged to share and examine their own experiences with interventions: What worked? What didn’t? Why? Through guided discussion, we will identify common strategies, pitfalls, and values underpinning effective possibility-enhancing practices. The session aims to foster a shared vocabulary and critical awareness around intervention design, with space to consider ethical, contextual, and methodological challenges. Whether you are developing educational tools, policy frameworks, or community-based projects, this session offers an opportunity to co-create insights into how Possibility Studies can inform practical, impactful change in the world.

ABSTRACT. This session examines what the range of empirical research in Possibility Studies looks like in practice and explores how the Possibility Studies Network (PSN) can support rigorous investigation in this emerging field. We will begin by introducing participants to the range of publishing opportunities associated with the network and also launch the PSN microgrants scheme designed to provide for seed funding for your own projects. Alongside this, we invite you to be part of the conversation about the unique methodological challenges and opportunities that arise when researching possibility: How do we measure imagination, serendipity, curiosity or other key possibility variables? What constitutes evidence of expanded possibility horizons? How do we balance subjective experience with objective assessment? We will invite participants to share their own empirical research experiences, examining both successful approaches and methodological limitations they've encountered. This discussion will act as the foundation of collaborative work to build actionable recommendations for a new research board to take forward to foster empirical possibility research so we sincerely invite all researchers with an interest in possibility research to attend.