Dear Subscriber First Name,

The trees in Finland are a beautiful spectrum of oranges, reds and yellows. We may be settling in for the long nights, but there is a wonderful buzz of energy around new projects and ideas. This October newsletter we’re sharing:

🍊 Our fruit trees: The Futures We Create blog and upcoming workshop

🌱 Our new shoots: Reflections from the Service Design and Design in Government conferences

🌰 Sowing seeds: Imagination Trainings - We need your help!

🌞 Sunshine: Appreciating our weird mushroom family

We see this newsletter as a catalyst for conversations, relationships and collaborations - so we’d love to hear from you! If anything resonates, don’t hesitate to drop us an email at collective@falayconsulting.com

Fruit trees: The Futures We Create

Ideas, projects and practices that are active and already fruitful with learnings and impact.

Over the summer, The Futures We Create project (lead by Andrea, Savannah and Sara from our collective), hosted a series of workshops supporting participants to face the complexity of emotions around the future, and then imagine hopeful and realistic futures.

Reflecting on the project so far, the team have written a blog detailing the process and tools piloted in these workshops, including an embodied practice for longing, a guided trip to the future, and a shared method for future storytelling. Read the blog at the link below.

New shoots: Conference Reflections

Emerging work that’s inspiring us, or that we are beginning to nurture

Design In Government Conference

Our collective member Anni Leppänen fantastically chaired the International Design in Government conference at the start of October. The conference was filled with incredible speakers and thought-provoking topics.

In her blog, Anni reflects on the conference’s Dinner & Stories event which explored design legacies and personal journeys in government design. Inspired by Prof. Sabine Junginger’s framework, this unique dinner fostered connections and meaningful discussions on design’s evolving role in public organisations.

Are you interested in attending or co-organising a transition dinner with us? Drop us a message to know more.

Service Design Global Conference

What a big week for the design community in Helsinki! At the same time as the Design In Government conference, Falay Transition Design also attended and ran a workshop at this year’s SDG Conference.

Led by Zeynep, Iines and Savannah, our team hosted a session exploring the principles and practices of Transition Design. A mix of lecture material and practical exercises, we had great attendance for the workshop with some fantastic conversations about the role of dystopias, imagination, technology and more in shaping our futures.

“Thanks for a great workshop - this has inspired me to challenge my team and colleagues to be more future-focused in how we approach our work.”

- Workshop participant

If you didn’t manage to attend the workshop, we’ll be running similar sessions in the upcoming months. Check them out and register your place below:

Sowing seeds: Imagining and sharing the projects and change the world needs

Imagination Trainings - We need your help!

We are currently developing a new training module in Collective/Social Imagination work for sustainability transformations.

If you’re interested in learning about how imagination methods can support your community or organisation’s sustainability transformation, then we’d love to hear from you! As we develop the training we’re collecting ideas and wishes from our community - so please spare a couple of minutes to fill out the survey below

We’ll be holding a pilot training in late November / early December to test the approach at a discounted price. You can register your interest at the bottom of the survey!

Sunshine: A dose of energy, uplift and hope

Before the darkness of November comes, we’ve been enjoying the beautiful autumnal hues of October in Helsinki. But nestled in and amongst the fallen leaves, we also love watching the weird and wonderful mushroom family reappear for the season.

Here are some mushroom appreciation pictures from our collective, we hope they bring you some joy too:

Let’s build a better future together.