CARE FUTURES 2032: Profiling the care economy and society in 10 years
For our April 2022 Care Futures presentation in the Trend Atelier community, we harnessed speculative design techniques and created a ‘futuring prop’ with writing and story telling as our medium. This is something I have done previously for Dazed Beauty as well as in my recent piece “Future Fashion tribe: what will fashion look like in 2041” , in order to immerse the audience and readers in a future interaction and environment.
Speculative design was the gateway to explore what Care futures would feel like and mean as lived in 2032. As such we created 3 future props (3 written and told scenarios). Each one had a central character, with their own context, reference points to the world as it was in 2022 and how they lived a decade later.
Today you can read and listen to our scenarios as laid out below.
Trend Atelier Creative researcher Coline Rialan and I read through each scenario in the first person, projecting ourselves as the central character in order inspire our audience to empathise with the future as if they were beamed into 2032, on a specific day, at a very specific moment, speaking with a very specific person.
"Speculative design is a creative process that produces boundary-pushing prototypes and design systems for the future. Its main interest is to challenge social problems that seem unfixable within our current mentality, by proposing drastic changes in our values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour.” - Tina Gorjanc
Speculative design tries to imagine what life would be like without the current limitations of today. We now invite you to journey through our 3 scenarios designed as ‘events’.
Event 1 - Commuting to School
Hi my name is Arthur. I’m 9 years old. It’s 8 am in Helsinki on April 19th 2032.I’m off to school and just completed my morning meditation exploring my unconscious bias towards robotic birds.
They freak me out. I know they’re needed since the event. But I have issues with eco robots. They make me feel sad. I’ve been doing these meditation sessions especially since Mom went to Crypto rehab. She was part of one of the first crypto powered DAOs and it messed up her mental health. She started seeing effects about 2 years ago.
They took a while to set in but when the mental burnout and the dissociation kicked in, she wasn’t able to look after me. I had to grow up fast and do all this resilience stuff they teach you at school today.I’m off to school actually right now with my care partner.
My father is already off to work. He’s getting trained for home care. It’s a new law that was put in place since the great pandemic of the 2020s. There was too much burden on women to provide care so work schedules in my city have been changing accordingly and men have been taking on more care functions in society.
In my city there’s been heavy investing of public funds in childcare and elder care services because it was seen as more effective in reducing public deficits and debt than austerity policies.
Dad is trying real hard and I think when my carer doesn’t need to be with me anymore I’ll be sad. They were assigned to me by ReUnion network and they’re really cool. They’re also helping me with my projects at Agora and my civics training.
In 3 years I’ll be able to vote. A law was passed that 12 year olds could vote in my city. It has made headlines around the world. Our mayor believes if children could vote, the world would be a better place.
She ran on the premise that older populations in developed countries need to allow children to have their voice and their say as we need the youth to lead. It’s been part of a broader approach to the care and respect of children’s voices in how we care for our futures. Part of a whole new constitutional and civic process. But there have been many safeguarding measures to be put in place.It’s being rolled out over a few years.
Still a lot of controversy about it and it’s been hard for my family. I want to vote for the Care society party, but my uncle is an old school labour voter and it’s been dividing us. He doesn’t take me seriously. He doesn’t understand the new ways. When I was 5 I was able to choose my gender on my passport. What’s his problem?
I’m tired of adults complicating everything. I have a lot to say. And a lot of plans to make this world a place that cares. The Care society party believes children, trees, and animals have a voice.
I want to be a care designer when I’m older. My carer is helping me because they’ve been through a lot of gender discrimination against non-binary people.
I am inventing a new hospital system. In fact it’s not going to be called a hospital. I have already figured out the design but not the name yet. My Agora school mentor has introduced me to things like chromotherapy and modular care. As well as natural aesthetics of care.
My uncle of course rolls his eyes when I talk about this. Well, I know about The new aesthetics of care because there was such a crisis in healthcare in the mid 2020s that a movement to make Healthcare move away from the clinical started to prevail.
I learnt at school that an investment of 2% GDP in the caring industries was predicted to generate up to 1 million jobs in Sweden. Care economics boost employment, earnings, economic growth and help foster gender equality.
Just because I’m 9 doesn’t mean I can’t engineer a new system. It’s the adults who are stupid. My care system will include Natural aesthetics. The use of Psychedelics. Materials such as Mycelium bricks and 3d printed sugar cane partitions which are known to be less toxic and biodegradable.
At Agora we have Greta supporting us on this. She’s a guest mentor.
See my mom, she struggled. Social media, Metaverse information bombardment all she was doing was producing content and incentivised by crypto in her dao, and it was just too much for her human brain.
So my future hospital has a big focus on mental health (setting people at ease, mitigating anxiety/fear, creating a certain level of intimacy) There will be stimuli reintroduction therapy with Sensiks stations (those were invented during the pandemic and have become widespread).
I want it to be meditative place and reinforce the mind as well as resilience. People will have intuition therapy where they learn to reconnect with their intuition. Therapies will come through Dream curation. Dreams will be recorded with the help of a new AI that can create a dream map and make them talk to each other to extract problematic thought and neurological patterns. It has had great success with people showing early signs of dementia.
There will be departments for repairing and replacing broken body parts. Wearables & Prosthetics and robotics that don’t freak me out. Lol.
It will be modular care with programs that are tailored to an individual’s needs.
Virtual sessions with your doctor will be available for people who can’t afford these irl therapies. The metaverse is not all bad. It’s just that some people prefer the real deal and it does have a higher cost.
My uncle hates it all. He says it’s all for rich people living in a gated post pandemic world. It’s true that I live in the gated side of the city and daddy has money.
But I say I’m the future. And my uncle’s generation has made a mess of it. If it was up to me I’d strip him of his redemption credits.
I have to go now. My ReUnion carer has to go and my Agora mentor is waving at me so I’ll see you later.
- Speculative design prop written by Geraldine Wharry.
Some examples of what inspired this scenario:
Event 2 - The Hope Factory
It is 2032. The day is April 19th - Oslo.It’s 9:00AM and Spring is in the air. I am on my way to the Hope Factory. It’s warm out. I try and remember a moment in time when the weather was cooler.
A vague memory of damp, fresh spring mornings from when I was a child come up. It sure was a long time ago… Things have changed quite drastically since then.
I look up at the sky and see a gaggle of mechanical geese flying above the park path I’m on. The new government started building these robotic birds and insects a couple of years back to counter the Event… All of a sudden bees, among many other species, had disappeared.
I remember reading about how 1 million species had gone extinct back in 2022, out of the 60 million that had already disappeared by then. The Event had been so sudden and completely unpredicted. It left most of the world in shock.
That’s when the robotic replacements had come in - Bees to replace the practically extinct species so as to continue spreading pollen amongst surviving plants, geese and other birds to spread seeds, fertilizers and other necessities to reintroduce green spaces and inspire what was left of the wilderness back into human occupied spaces.
They say they made them look very life-like but I couldn’t really remember the last time I saw a live one. It’s still quite a recent strategy. There are still some around but they are rare and most of them are currently being kept in these new facilities like “The Arch”.
These had been built in a rush in an attempt for survival and conservation. I heard from someone in the community that they were trying to find a way to help them adapt to more recent climates so they could fare for themselves later on down the line.
Climate has become so erratic in the last decade that most plants and animals that used to grow and roam around couldn’t rely on their natural cycle and were disappearing. We ourselves as a species were endangered.
With the bees gone and pollination having become an issue, this had caused shortages around the globe. Just as during the COVID Pandemic, countries were all impacted in different ways by climate change; all at different stages. Preserving the food chain and as many of the species we could had become the only answer and countries had had to unite worldwide.
All countries and continents had to face the fact that they couldn’t go on with the individualistic and competitive government models they’d been following. They’d simply had to put differences aside and work together. That’s when it all started to shift.
The world had come together and set up a plan towards a better future. A long term goal and transition towards it was put into place and life as we’d known it had shifted. A complete restructure of all systems supervised by all countries, working hand in hand.
One of the new decrees that had come with this reform, was a quarterly visit to the Hope Factory. Every commune has one. Placed at the center of a green space, the short walk serves as a preliminary to what we call the “cure”. Every citizen of the Earth is required to get the cure as part of a support system during the transition towards 2062 - the year we should normally have reached our sustainability goal by.
The Government’s transition model was such a drastic and extreme one, due to the severity of the current situation, that its implementation was putting tremendous stress on the population. Suicide rates were skyrocketing. That’s when the concept of the Hope Factory was first brought up and put into action.
The Hope Factory might be in this green haven, however, construction lies all around. Most of the constructions that built cities of the past were severely damaged due to critical weather conditions brought around by climate change. A huge transition effort led by the Green New Deal has been implemented in rebuilding our living spaces.
Rewilding and thinking long term, building off of History and what we now know about the importance of staying connected to Nature. - We’ve started retrofitting the buildings that had shown themselves to be durable enough, as well as erecting new formatted buildings.
The Hope Factory itself is built of Mycelium bricks. Scientists found the solution to fortifying them so that the material could support the pressure of a full construction just a couple of years ago. It had immediately been implemented and used to erect new buildings and structures because of its environmental benefits such as being regenerative and naturally insulating.
The Architectural group I work with is one of the ones to have participated in the development of the new material. I’d originally studied design and architecture but chose to reskill and learn about new alternative materials. It was definitely one of the best choices I’d made… People working around sustainability and alternative designs are very in demand at the moment.
All new constructions are being retrofitted to compensate for economic scarcity. New city plans inspired by the concept of permaculture have been drawn. You think of 19th century Paris with Haussman tearing down the cramped and chaotic labyrinth of slum streets, knocking down buildings and clearing space. Except this time, it’s nature we’re bringing back to the cities. The COVID-19 pandemic had really set the light on the necessity of green space for people’s well being and mental health.
I arrive in front of the Hope Factory. A friendly face welcomes me and the doors slide open. The pheromones sprayed throughout instantly make me feel calm and settled.
The interior of the Factory would be impossible to describe as it was a new form of adaptive architecture, changing shades and colours to fit what the client/patient would find most soothing.
I go straight to the pods in the center of the dome shaped room, settle in and scan my finger on the arm rest. My Metaverse avatars all pop up. It’s nice to have them all together in this one space. Rare are the times we all get to gather. I smile, looking at all these virtual facets of my personality come together. - funny little things they are.
While I go through the cure, my avatars will each be assigned to their AI carer and go through their therapy session. This intimate moment of hope therapy and care for my avatars and I bring us closer and builds trust between us. We feel safe. Mental Health has become a top priority in rebuilding the new world.
Some movements against the Hope Factory claim them to be “dehumanising”. They argue that eradicating stress and numbing down negative feelings simply isn’t what Nature intended for us. That it’s necessary for us to feel the full spectrum of emotions available to us. That is polarising. (but then, Nature hadn’t intended for us to exterminate most of the plant and animal kingdom either, didn’t it…)
They silently protest throughout the Metaverse, leaving “virus tracts” around, but the groups are small. Or so I think they are. The media don’t give them much attention. The new government won’t allow potentially stressful information being spread too much. Wellbeing is prioritized.
The opposition claim the Hope Factories are part of Government Hope Propaganda. I don’t give it much thought though. The world has never felt so serene; even amidst all this reconstruction. What could seem as a chaos of construction towards this new sustainable era feels calm and manageable. - You feel united with your community; working towards one same goal. So, surely, propaganda or not, it can’t all be that bad…?
Criminality is close to zero. Inspired by neighbouring Norway’s past prison system and rehabilitation programs, criminals are now sent to “Hope Bootcamps” in the intensive aisle of the Hope Factory. There, they go through a vigorous therapy and a socialising training - a complete reprogramming of their inner anger and frustration which usually leads to them becoming model citizens.
I sit back, plug in, and let “the cure” do its thing.
- Speculative design prop written by Coline Rialan.
Some examples of what inspired this scenario:
Event 3 - The Community Custodian
It’s 8am and I’m in Helsinki. Today is April 19th 2032. Since fleeing the UK due to flooding I have joined the ranks of climate refugees. I’m 39 and have now been here for 1 year.
I’ve been hard working as a community custodian fanning out The Distributed Cooperative building system I created back in London. It’s been a massive undertaking to set this up in Helsinki and I’m feeling under-resourced, underpaid.
I believe in the care economy. But the direction it’s taking is still mostly benefiting the privileged and that was never my vision. But I can’t give up.
In 2021 at Galerie Britta Rettberg in Berlin, I saw an exhibit called ‘On Survival’. I’ll never forget what it said, which was so central to the type of community architecture and work I was creating.
“Coexistence seems to be among the most pressing issues in need for a radical re-thinking both on a planetary and molecular scale. On Survival addresses the ambiguities and tensions behind contrasting modalities of human subsistence and in particular their tendency towards mutual care and solidarity, or self-preservation and societal withdrawal.”
Today some things worked and others are still in the works.
I was able to develop the principle and foundations of The Distributed Cooperative, this idea of the Home and the building as a living system, as a microbiome in theory.
Within the living system, I helped scale a Deepmind x Material Futures collaboration at Central Saint Martins by Prima Nontakaew and George Donham. At the time it was the first UK council operated AI system that was capable of identifying and recycling 100% of plastic waste and manufacturing everyday essentials for the most vulnerable in society, in our case our neighbourhood.
And the waste exchange Rachael Taylor helped me set up allowed our neighbourhood to live off of a new currency also being manufactured with the help of our AI, from local waste.
The idea grew in popularity and came at a time when community projects such as the Pattern Project’s micro factory in South London were showing the possibilities of what could happen locally, even down to what could happen in a building, depending on the resources retrofitted to that structure.
Back then the idea of Fashion commons was also taking hold.
As we entered the 2030s, there was a global ban on fossil fuel subsidies and the use of coal, and all new cars had to be electric. These actions began to bear fruit: oil demand was plummeting, and there was a major focus on making agriculture carbon positive.
But then the event happened early 2030, my home was destroyed by floods along with 80% of my neighbourhood and I had to start over in Helsinki. I was accepted as a climate refugee because of my achievements in the UK and Sweden’s interest in self regulation communes and my Distributed Cooperative work.
With temperatures rising, the increase in flooding and food scarcity, my concept of buildings and communes fit well into the resilience model countries and localities were rushing to enact
So along with our AI system that was capable of identifying, recycling and manufacturing, and currency making in our building, we are now allocating a section of the building for 3D printable food which has been funded by the UN, The Gates Foundation, The Weekend (he’s retired from singing now) and local authorities. If this works, it will be scaled.
We aim to be mindful about this because the food we print deserves respect and is now seen as a key interface. It’s not just nutrients. It’s a form of therapy, it’s a living organism. BUT we live in a Heat or Eat world of poverty, and geopolitical hoarding. So we have no choice but to scale food printing as fast as we can.
I guess you could say when it comes to being a refugee, I’ve had opportunities like no other. I feel displaced though. And still grieve my past life and the world as I once knew it. Someone asked me recently, what is this caring city/caring architecture you are building?
Well it’s not on my own. We are a community. I am paid via the government, the building’s waste currency, as well as from Refugee NFTS and funding that come from around the world.
I had read once about caring cities, and infrastructures of care during a conference in 2021 by Future Architecture. So many ideas around the economy of care were taking hold at the time, as we were fighting our way through a pandemic.
I read on The Landscape of Care:
“Designers, architects and urban planners are increasingly taking on the task of managing social and political issues of relationships, neighbourhoods, energy flows, mobility, cultural heritage, identity and urban change, rather than just spatial and formal aspects. The theme ‘Landscapes of care’ focuses on a change of direction in the values, interests and priorities that drive architecture and urban planning. The main focus changes from the individual actor or the individual object, towards a greater sensitivity to issues of interconnection, attachment and interdependence.”
So that sums up my vision to this day.
I would say the gap in my work is the set up for an older population. I’m working with ReUnion around this as well as a young fellow I met who has insane ideas around the future hospital and is brilliant. He’s only 9. But I think his ideas could work and children are a key part of rebuilding society now.
Here are the challenges we are still faced with:
100% circularity
hybrid work, as we rely on this to help run the communal features of our building
The roll out of UBI which also enables we can successfully run our distributed commune
The scarcity of natural resources. For this we are looking at seed preservation within our building and other forms of vertical and indoor farming
But certainly the wider adoption of the Wellbeing economy alliance and the growth of the Care workforce has really helped my work gain momentum.
Well it was nice chatting with you. If you want to fund my work, just go to Refugee crypto and look me up. My NFT is called Refuge. Simple.
- Speculative design prop written by Geraldine Wharry.
Some examples of what inspired this scenario: