The Workshop
I facilitated a workshop at the annual LA Design Week 2025. This year the focus of the LA Design Week was ‘Futurism’ — and I wanted to bring some of the more creative and ludic approaches to futuring and introduce it to a wider audience.
The workshop was designed to give participants the opportunity to explore and create speculative Design Fictions for the future. Specifically for an engaged intergenerational public, the workshop's goal was to provide a glimpse at the power of futures-oriented collaboration and imagination.
Of course workshop means ‘work’, and so I deliberately oriented things towards a hands-on approach, encouraging participants to actively engage with materials and concepts to envision their futures. Using Near Future Laboratory's approach of rapid creation of ‘podcasts from the future’ using Google's powerful NotebookLM, participants were able to quickly prototype and share their ideas.
Participants left with a deeper understanding of the potential of Design Fiction as a tool for exploring and shaping the future.
If you or your organization is interested in exploring Design Fiction and futures thinking, please reach out to us for more information on future workshops and collaborations.
Summary
This workshop provided participants with the tools and frameworks to explore and create speculative Design Fictions for the future. Through hands-on activities and collaborative storytelling, participants were able to envision and prototype their ideas for a more hopeful and inclusive future.
Participants left with a deeper understanding of the potential of Design Fiction as a tool for exploring and shaping the future.
Written By: Julian Bleecker
Semantic Tags DESIGN FICTIONFUTURES THINKINGPODCASTWORKSHOP
la-design-festival-imagine-harder-futuring-workshop** Let’s Make a Podcast From The Future ** Create a podcast as if it came from the world you imagine
The Mission
In your group, you will create a podcast episode from the future — as if it were an ordinary podcast in that world. This is your chance to give us a glimpse into a plausible, optimistic, and habitable future — through the everyday.
Imagine a world shaped by changes in:
- Food: How do we eat, cook, share meals, or even farm?
- Cities & Work: How has labor, leisure, and nightlife evolved?
- Education: What replaces the 4-year college? What does learning feel like?
- Art & Entertainment: What’s the new film, gallery, or meme?
- Style & Consumption: What do we wear? Do we buy less, or buy different?
- Travel & Social Life: Do we go places differently? Connect differently?
- Cultural Futures: Is it Solarpunk? Post-growth? Neo-Bauhaus? Something else?
Your podcast should feel like it comes from that world — not about the future, but of it.
Step-by-Step Instructions
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Form your group (3–4 people).
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Discuss your vision of the future:
- Take notes, record your conversation, collect links, images, or moodboards.
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Feed your materials into Notebook LM to generate a short audio segment — like a trailer or excerpt from your future podcast.
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Listen & make light edits if needed — time is short!
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Give it an identity:
- Podcast Name
- Short Description (1–2 sentences)
- Square Cover Image (like a podcast thumbnail)
Submission Instructions
Place the following in your Group Folder: 📁 [REDACTED]
- A text file or Google Doc with the Podcast Name + Description
- The audio file from Notebook LM
- A square image (JPEG or PNG, ideally 1400x1400px)
Some Helpful Tips
- Keep your idea/concept tangible, grounded, and plausible — as if someone living there made it. We’re not looking for The Jetsons but almost a normal, ordinary, everyday feel to things.
- Let your podcast feel normal in its world, even if it feels strange to us.
- Think of it as a cultural artifact that gives us a sneaky glimpse into what’s coming. Something you might find or stumble across while walking down the street. Make something that today would feel extraordinary feel ordinary — familiar, banal, hum-drum.