Teach the Future’s Colombia Hub is known for the important work on peace, futures and, youth carried out by Lucio Henao and his team. In this blog post, we highlight the work of Diego Leal-Fonseca, also a member of TTF Colombian HUB, who just released a translated version of the Futures’ Bazaar in Spanish: “El Bazar de Futuros”.
Watch out for more news from Colombia on Teach the Future’s blog and social media accounts.
One pressing issue in Latin America, regarding the teaching of futures in primary and secondary schools, is the limited availability (in local languages) of pedagogical and didactic resources that support teachers and practitioners in bringing futures thinking to their classrooms. In addition, data from the English Proficiency Index suggests there is an important language gap in the region that limits the use of existing English-written resources.
Considering this, the translation of interesting materials (taking care of language and form aspects that go beyond the current capabilities of digital technologies) remains a good way to democratize access to ideas and practices that can inspire pathways to enriched local futures.
In October 2022, Stuart Candy y Filippo Cuttica released a toolkit for an experiential futures methodology called "The Futures Bazaar." Given that this toolkit is published under open licenses, we decided to take on the task of translating, testing, and adapting it, with the goal of making it accessible to more people in the Latin America region: “El Bazar de Futuros”.
What’s included in “El Bazar de Futuros”?
As stated on the original Futures Bazaar project page, the toolkit includes:
● A Manual to help you plan your own event.
● A set of Slides to help you run it.
● Printouts to distribute to participants on the day of the Bazaar.
All of these resources are packaged in a single zipped folder containing the full set of PDF documents. The toolkit is available for download in its original English version or in the Spanish translation.
Translating and adapting
Translation and adaptation of The Futures Bazaar were carried out in collaboration between Diego Leal-Fonseca (at that time, Associate Director at Center Imagine Futures), Tatiana Ortiz-Pradilla and Alejandra Vidal Ramírez (professors from the Management School). All from EAFIT University (Medellín, Colombia).
We started by doing a translation that kept both the look and content of the original toolkit. We tested these resources as support to a Futures Bazaar conducted with students and staff from the Center Image Futures at EAFIT, facilitated by Alejandra Vidal-Ramírez and Diego Leal-Fonseca, who have extensive experience in the design and facilitation of workshops and learning experiences. Participants in this Futures Bazaar highlighted the value of experiencing an environment where there is not a single correct answer and where imagination is the main tool. Some students even shared with us that this is how their other classes should be. 😄
These adjustments were tested in another Futures Bazaar, conducted with a group of representatives from higher education institutions in Colombia (participants in the Futures Festival held in May 2023) and facilitated by Alejandra Vidal-Ramírez and Diego Ortiz-Morales. Once again, participants reacted with curiosity and had the chance to consider possibilities and futures they hadn't thought about before, both in their personal and professional domains.
While the exercises we conducted locally may not match the scale of the original Futures Bazaar, they provided enough insights to adjust the materials based on our experience facilitating the event.
What can you download?
So, if the Futures Bazaar is something you'd like to implement, now you can get:
● The original version of the toolkit (version 1.0, English).
● The original version of the toolkit (version 1.0, Spanish translation).
● The adapted version of the toolkit (version 1.1, Spanish), with some adjustments in slides and printouts.
An account of our process (Spanish only) can be found here.
We hope that this small contribution brings us one step closer to a future where our schools have additional resources to foster imagination and promote conversations about the futures we would like to build!
If you want more information, don’t hesitate to write to: diego@teachthefuture.org