News about the Uk Foresight Programme
Issue 14 - October 2006
How's your mental capital?
Sir David King, Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, and Head of the Government Office for Science, announced the tenth Foresight project on 12 October. The project will be focusing on Mental Capital & Wellbeing, and its aim is to to produce a challenging and long-term vision for maximising Mental Capital and Wellbeing in the UK in the twenty first century - both for the benefit of society, and for the individual. Bill Rammell MP, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education at the Department for Education and Skills is the sponsor Minister. The scope of the project will be worked up between now and January 2007. The evidence base for the analysis (including reviews and modelling studies) will be collected and analysed during 2007, with a view to launching the project's findings in the summer of 2008. For more information, and a chance to contribute, see the project's home page.
Project News
SEMBE??
In the July edition of e-sight, we announced that we were starting a project on Sustainable Energy Management And The Built Environment (SEMBE). We are pleased to announce that three Ministers have agreed to sponsor the project - Yvette Cooper MP, Minister of State for Housing and Planning, Department for Communities and Local Government; Ian Pearson MP, Minister of State for Climate Change and the Environment, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and; Malcolm Wicks MP, Minister of State for Energy, Department of Trade and Industry. Scoping workshops for the project will be held in November. Again, for further information, please visit the project's home page.
Analysing Obesities
Our project on Tackling Obesities: Future Choices is now well into its analysis stage: scoping workshops have been held, and an extensive review of futures work in the area has been completed and published. The project is moving forward through commissioning a series of science reviews, and workshops to generate information for the systems mapping, scenarios & modelling work. We are particularly pleased that Students from the Royal College of Art have been working with the Obesity team over the summer to explore new ways of presenting the complex issues we are examining. For more information on the project, see the latest update here.
News from our "FAN Club"
A report of the May 2006 meeting of the Futures Analysts' Network is now available here. The meeting focussed on how organisations can learn from their own, and others', experiences to embed horizon scanning and futures thinking in their decision-making processes.The winter / spring programme of FAN Club meetings is also now available.
All Our Yesterdays: we revisit Cognitive Systems
Cognitive Systems was the first Foresight project to be completed under the current model, in late 2003. Three years on, we are seeking to review the outcomes of the project. We will be contacting many people who we hope will be able to contribute to this review, but there may be some that we miss, and even outcomes that we are not aware of. If you are aware of anything that has happened as a result of the project, and would like to bring it to our attention, please e-mail Karl Cunion. The outputs of the project are still online on the Cognitive Systems home page.
Response to the evaluation of Foresight projects
Our response to the recommendations of the independent evaluation of Foresight projects is now available. To see how we intend to take the programme forward, see the response to the evaluation here. (Adobe PDF)
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