Oceania Futures and Foresight Symposium 2027, Meanjin, Australia

The co-creation committee (Dr Elissa Farrow, Dr Melissa Innes, Kathryn Maggs and Helene Barrie) warmly invite futurists and foresight practitioners across the Oceania Region (and those curious to learn more this incredibly diverse field) to bring their knowledge and practical foresight and immersive skills to this community-building event. 

SPEAKER EOI TO BE OPEN SOON 

Framing & Intent — Oceania Futures & Foresight Symposium 2027

Theme: Weaving Tomorrow: Youth Agency, Intergenerational Reciprocity & Embodied Cultural Futures Across Oceania

Framing: Emerging From Community, Held By Community

The 2027 Oceania Futures & Foresight Symposium is shaped by the people who practice futures work across the region - youth, elders, facilitators, researchers, designers, cultural leaders, and positive futures advocates. The symposium is conceived as a collective weaving, where diverse voices, methods, and cultural practices come together to imagine and shape Oceania’s futures.

This framing recognises that futures and foresight in Oceania are already deeply relational, intergenerational, and culturally grounded. The symposium honours these traditions by creating a space where community knowledge, lived experience, and practitioner expertise guide the agenda, the conversations, and the futures we explore.

Cultural stewardship is not a separate lens; it is a way of being in futures work that is embodied, practiced, and shared across generations.

Intent: Why We Are Gathering

This matters now because Oceania is navigating converging transitions (climatic, cultural, technological, demographic) that demand collective foresight, intergenerational capability, and youth-led imagination. We have a unique opportunity as those interested in shaping positive futures in helping the region move from reaction to agency, from fragmentation to relationality, and from abstract futures to embodied, culturally grounded practice. The intent of the symposium 2027 is to:

• Strengthen Oceania’s futures ecosystem by bringing together practitioners and advocates who are already shaping positive futures in their communities, organisations, and cultural contexts.
• Centre youth agency as a vital force in regional futures work, recognising young people as active shapers of present transitions, not just future inheritors.
• Deepen intergenerational reciprocity as a core capability, valuing the long arcs of wisdom held by elders and the imaginative courage held by youth.
• Embed embodied cultural practice into futures methodologies, ensuring foresight is not only intellectual but also sensory, relational, land‑based, ocean‑based, and grounded in place.
• Create a shared space for experimentation, where practitioners and those new to futures thinking can explore new methods, challenge assumptions, and co‑design futures pathways that reflect Oceania’s diversity.
• Invite community leadership in shaping the program, themes, sessions, and provocations, ensuring the symposium reflects the region’s collective aspirations and lived realities.

This intent positions the symposium like the past two years as a platform for co‑creation, not a pre‑determined conference. The community shapes the content; the co-curators hold the space and also contribute from where they sit.

What We Are Asking of the Community

As we prepare to release the call for EOIs soon, we are inviting the you to start thinking of a contribution:

• Session proposals that reflect lived practice, emerging methods, cultural knowledge, or youth-led innovation.
• Dialogues and conversations that bring intergenerational perspectives together.
• Embodied futures practices movement, sensory inquiry, land/ocean-based learning, ritual, story, performance.
• Case studies from organisations, communities, or cultural groups across Oceania.
• Creative provocations that stretch imagination and challenge dominant narratives.

To be inspired check out the 2026 program https://sites.google.com/view/oceania-futurists-sy...

The symposium was and always will be built from the premise that the community leads.

Contact Dr Elissa Farrow on +61407025804 or drelissafarrow@gmail.com for offers of assistance, youth ticket sponsorship or special group ticket deals.