When people talk about countries leading in futures
literacy, Denmark might not be the loudest voice in the room, but it has
quietly become one of the most influential. Its approach blends long-standing
institutions, citizen participation, design-driven methods, and academic
research into a culture where thinking about the future feels natural rather
than exotic.
The story begins in 1969 with the Copenhagen Institute for
Futures Studies, one of the world’s oldest and most respected foresight think
tanks. For more than five decades it has advised governments, businesses, and
international organisations while also pushing futures thinking into public
spaces, classrooms, and boardrooms. Its simple framing—that futures literacy is
about helping people imagine, work with, and shape possible futures—has given
Denmark a foundation that is both rigorous and accessible.
At the same time, Denmark pioneered one of the most powerful
models for public participation in future-oriented decision-making: the
consensus conference. Developed in the 1980s by the Danish Board of Technology,
this format invited everyday citizens to sit face-to-face with experts, debate
complex issues like biotechnology or data privacy, and deliver recommendations
that could guide Parliament. It became a global reference for participatory
technology assessment and gave ordinary people a real role in exploring
possible futures.
Another layer of Denmark’s approach comes from its design
culture. Organisations like the Danish Design Center have taken abstract
futures and translated them into experiences—scenarios turned into prototypes,
stories turned into workshops, strategies tested through speculative design.
Instead of simply reading about possible futures, policymakers and companies
can touch, test, and rehearse them. This ability to make the intangible
tangible has been one of Denmark’s most distinctive contributions to foresight
literacy.
For many years, the Danish government also ran MindLab, an
innovation unit where civil servants worked alongside citizens and businesses
to rethink public services. Using design methods and forward-looking
exploration, MindLab normalised the idea that futures work and human-centred
design could shape policy. Even after its closure in 2018, the influence of
MindLab spread across Danish administration and inspired governments worldwide
to set up similar labs.
More recently, Denmark has brought futures literacy into
academia at the highest level. Aarhus University, together with the Copenhagen
Institute for Futures Studies, was awarded the UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory
Leadership and Futures Capabilities in 2022. This signaled that foresight
literacy was not just a professional tool but a scholarly discipline, with
research, teaching, and leadership training all dedicated to making
anticipation a core competence.
Education has also been a focus. The Copenhagen Institute
for Futures Studies leads Denmark’s participation in the Teach the Future
network, creating curricula and workshops that give pupils and teachers the
chance to practise futures thinking early. On a Nordic scale, Denmark is part
of FLiTaPE, a collaboration to embed futures literacy into teacher and
professional education so that classrooms of the future will cultivate
imagination and agency by default.
What emerges from all this is not a single grand policy or a
one-off initiative, but an ecosystem. Denmark has a permanent institute
advancing foresight, participatory models that bring citizens into the
conversation, design organisations that turn ideas into experiences,
public-sector experiments that embed futures into policymaking, and a UNESCO
Chair that ensures the next generation of leaders and teachers will see futures
literacy as a natural part of their toolkit. For a small country, this combination
makes Denmark a quiet powerhouse. It shows that leading in foresight literacy
is less about headline projects and more about building a culture where
imagining the future becomes part of how society works.
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