Back casting

Overview

Work backwards from your ideal future to understand the actions you need to take today.

Preparation

• Optional: Prepare an 'ideal future' in advance.
  Tip: you can use the 'Creating your vision' or the 'Customise scenarios' activities to prepare this. Additional help is given in the
  Ideas section.

Materials

• Worksheet

What you do

• Agree on the ideal future you are working from and write it in the far right column of the worksheet.
• Working right to left, complete all four columns.
• Add fictional examples or scenarios to describe your vision of the future.
• Define how this vision can be realistically achieved
• Step back to the present and ask - ''what can we do now to move towards the desired future?''
• Create an agreed action plan to start moving forwards.
  See an example of this activity here for inspiration.

Top tips for your group activities

• Be well prepared
• Consider changing your usual meeting environment
• Know what you want to come away with before you start
• Break the ice with a warm up
• Give people enough time to get into and do the activities
• Keep people engaged and motivated
• Encourage and proactively get input from everyone
• Think about how your going to capture the notes
• Use flip charts, coloured post its, coloured pens, paper, stickers
• If possible use a flexible and effective facilitator

Use worksheet online (Exploratree)

Activity worksheet download