You’re building a futures & foresight practice in Europe. But you don't have to do it all alone.
The Futures Practitioners Network is a community and network for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small business owners in Europe whose work is futures and foresight.
Supporting a community of futures & foresight practitioners in Europe
Futures Practitioners Europe is a community and network for independent futures and foresight practitioners: freelancers, solopreneurs, and small business owners doing this work commercially, not academically.
This isn’t a space to learn methods.
It isn’t a content library.
It’s a space where people doing the same work can find each other, meet regularly, ask honest questions, and figure out the business side of practicing foresight, together.
What you'll get by being a member
Monthly live calls
Covering what it actually takes to run a futures practice: pricing, clients, AI, resilience, and everything the methodology textbooks skip.
Not recorded. To participate, you need to be present.
A dedicated forum
A simple, old-school forum for questions, ideas, and peer support during calls. This builds on open-source tools so that you can get away from "the alogorithms" and find what you need.
An opportunities board
Within the members' area, we're building a resource full of futures and foresight opportunities in Europe and beyond. Think jobs, tenders, and open calls.
Practitioners directory
As a member, you can create a profile that we feature on the Futures Practitioners Europe website to give you more visibility and make you "findable" in our searchable directory.
Plus:
- access to the Futures & Foresight Special Interest Group
- invitations to ad-hoc mini-workshops and peer events
- a regularly-updated calendar of futures & foresight events in Europe and beyond
- in-person meetings (if we grow sufficiently!)
- discounted pricing to professional learning events in the Futures Fit Academy, and
- an opportunity to be part of building the first futures & foresight practitioners network in Europe that focuses on the business side of doing the work
And the best thing of all? As we're building this community and trying out this idea, this is all free 🙂
Futures Practitioners Europe is a network for independent futures and foresight practitioners
This network is for you if you are an independent futures and foresight practitioner based in Europe, and you are either already working with clients, or actively building toward doing so.
Think:
- Freelancers & sole traders
- Solopreneurs
- Small business owners (of practices of 1-5 people)
Our focus is primarily on the "business-side" of futures and foresight, rather than the research. So if you're curious about starting, building, and growing your practice, this is the right place for you. If you're more interested in the research, there are other networks that might be a better fit.
Why now? And why this network?
Let's face it: we're living in challenging times. Wicked problems abound, we're facing not one or two crises but a polycrisis, and uncertainty is a recurring theme in society, business, and government.
We need the new ways of thinking, insights, and capacities that futures and foresight can introduce. And to do that we need people who understand processes and can lead futures and foresight initiatives. More people are starting to use the methods and tools, introducing these to clients as practitioners. But foresight can be hard to define and to sell.
And if you're a freelancer, consultant, solopreneur, sole trader, or small business owner, working out the business-side of selling and delivering foresight initiatives can be... tough.
Other networks and communities exist (and they are valuable!), but none are talking to the person trying to price a futures workshop or find their next client. And none focus exclusively on this challenge for European Futures & Foresight practitioners.
This community fills that gap.
Why the European focus? What about the rest of us?
The network has a European focus. Deliberately. Much of the global conversation about futures and foresight is shaped by North American voices and contexts.
European practitioners bring different perspectives, different client cultures, and different ways of working with uncertainty. This network exists to make those voices more visible, and to create a space where European practitioners can find and support each other.
If demand exists, Suzanne is open to exploring networks with a focus on other regions. Get in touch if you'd like to talk about this, or sign up to be notified of developments in this area.
You may also be interested in the Facilitating Futures & Foresight SIG, where Suzanne already brings together practitioners across the globe to explore the practical aspects of facilitating futures and foresight work.
Your host Suzanne Whitby: Futures Facilitator, Futures Researcher, and "Futurer"
The Futures Practitioners Europe network/community was created by Suzanne Whitby, a professional facilitator, futures practitioner, and researcher with 20+ years of international experience, and the founder of Futures Fit. Suzanne's work is guided by her conviction that it is possible to co-create hopeful, sustainable futures, and to do that, she is a firm believer that we need to build futures and foresight capacity in every sphere of society.
That means that we need more people who can facilitate this work. Through regular conversations with fellow independent futures & foresight practitioners, she noticed that many of her peers were struggling with the business side of their practice. As a serial entrepreneur with both practical experience in building business and experience early in her career in creative communication, she decided to create this new network to facilitate peer sharing, learning, connection, and growth.
You can learn more about Suzanne's strategic and experiential futures work and her futures & foresight training offerings at Futures Fit. You can find out more about her broader work at the intersection of science, society, storytelling, and sustainability at suzannewhitby.com.
Have a question? Get in touch →
Curious? Questions? Ideas? Get in touch
Send a note using the form, or via email at hi@futurespractitioners.eu.
Frequently asked questions
What other networks exist?
We have two important associations in Futures & Foresight that we feel are worthwhile joining, each with a slightly different focus.
However, it's worth noting that neither focuses exclusively on independent futures and foresight practitions, in Europe, tackling the challenges of marketing, selling, and delivering foresight within a small business.
They are:
- the World Future Studies Federation, which is essential for further futures research and the academic side of things, and
- the Association of Professional Facilitators, which has rich content and a global community of futurists, dedicated to promoting professional excellence and demonstrating the value of strategic foresight and Futures Studies for their clients and/ or employers
What does it cost to join?
At the moment, we're piloting this idea. It's free to join.
Looking ahead, there may be a time when we think, "Ah, this is adding real value and it's taking lots of time and energy to run", and at that point, we may consider introducing a reasonable monthly or annual fee.