sciencehorizons

sciencehorizons was a DIUS funded initiative to hold a national series of conversations with the public on the potential future uses for science and technology, using a set of fictitious potential scenarios set from 2025.

This public engagement exercise was run from January to July 2007, as part of the Government’s ongoing work to gauge the public’s views about particular issues well in advance of policymaking decisions. It was a true public consultation whereby views were gathered and fed directly back to policy makers.

Above – scenes from some of the scenarios

We were responsible for devising and developing the scenarios, which were presented in a pack featuring and interactive CD and guidelines to run group discussion events. We unveiled the results in September 2007 at the BA Festival of Science, York.

Feedback showed that participants were broadly excited about the future for science and technology, particularly its capacity to help improve our health, environment and lifestyle, though this was tempered by concerns about over-dependence on technology and the risk that access to such technology might not be distributed equally.

sciencehorizons was funded by the DIUS Sciencewise programme and was run by a consortium of Dialogue by Design, Graphic Science, BBC Worldwide Interactive Learning DEMOS and Shared Practice. For more information see the Sciencewise site.