Shaping Possible Futures — Excerpts from Talks ’26
In February and March 2026, I gave a series of talks on imagination, futures, and cultural leadership. They all circled the same question: what does it mean to actively shape the futures we want, rather than react to the ones being built for us?
If we do not develop our own visions of the future, we begin, often unintentionally, to work toward someone else’s. Futures are shaped every day: by technological development, political priorities, economic incentives, and cultural narratives.
The question is not whether futures are being built, but who is shaping them, and on what terms. Researcher Geoff Mulgan has described this moment as the disappearance of the future1, not because change is slowing down, but because the sheer speed and complexity of that change makes it harder to imagine alternative trajectories.
82% of Danes don’t believe society will be better in 10 years.2 The future isn’t disappearing, but our ability to imagine it is. This is a crisis, and it demands a response. The arts are uniquely positioned to answer it, because imagination is not a luxury, it is the precondition for any alternative. Before we can build different futures, we have to be able to picture them, and that has always been the work of artists, storytellers, and cultural institutions.
PHOTO: Books that inspired me the past couple of months, we need guides to our possible futures.