Futures & Sustainability: Shaping the Transition

This evening invites you into the heart of how societal transitions unfold. What do they demand of organisations, communities and decision-makers shaping the world ahead? And how do we engage when the path forward is uncertain? Rather than a traditional conference, the programme is designed as a shared experience that blends dialogue, participation and futures-led design.

What do we mean by societal transition?

A societal transition is a long-term, structural shift in how societies organise themselves, from energy and food systems to economies, institutions and cultural norms. These transitions are rarely planned or controlled. They emerge through many interacting choices, tensions and experiments over time.

Societal transitions are not abstract ideas. They are lived, contested and designed in real time.

Why this matters for sustainability

Understanding societal transitions is essential to building a more sustainable world. While sustainability often focuses on targets and solutions, transitions invite us to pay attention to how systems shift and how people respond. For those working in sustainability, this becomes a question of agency: how do we stay connected, move with uncertainty, and create space to explore what might be possible?

This evening creates room to slow down, think together, and approach big questions with curiosity rather than certainty. Not everything has to be heavy to be meaningful. Play, experimentation and shared reflection can open perspectives that formal strategies often miss.

From dialogue to futures simulation

Derk Loorbach, Director of DRIFT (Dutch Research Institute for Transitions), and Michel Scholte, impact entrepreneur and co-founder of True Price and the Impact Institute, will explore societal and economic transition from different starting points. Rather than presenting polished conclusions, they will take positions on key questions, surface tensions and invite the audience to step into the conversation by responding, choosing sides and testing assumptions together.

The evening then opens into a live future simulation led by futurist Krizna Gomez of Rogue Union. Through an immersive, participatory format, participants step into a possible future and experience how values, choices and system dynamics interact over time. The simulation draws inspiration from large-scale social simulations pioneered by Jane McGonigal, whose work shows how experiential futures can help us learn, adapt and respond to complex challenges by living them, even temporarily.

Rather than talking about the future, this part of the evening allows participants to feel how societal transitions unfold from the inside, revealing how the futures we move toward are shaped by what we design, prioritise and practice today.

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Description of the programme

18:15 – Walk-in

18:30 – Programme start: An interactive evening combining dialogue on societal transitions, participatory debate and a live future simulation.

21:30 – Formal close

Afterwards – Drinks and informal conversation

About our event partners

Futures & Sustainability is an Amsterdam-based platform creating in-real-life experiences around sustainability, futures thinking and systems change. We bring together people shaping societal transitions and use dialogue, design and experiential formats to explore what future-fit business can become.

Location