Welcome to this (temporary) landing page for current Foresight 3.0 projects in the Mind-Lab (Laboratory of Collective Intelligence)….

‘Horizon Uttarakhand’ –

  Strategic pathways for a volatile future…

University of Manchester / Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

13-14th October 2026




Horizon Uttarakhand – looks ahead to the medium and longer term. We look at multiple transformations in progress, with risks, challenges, opportunities and pathways between economic, social, and environmental themes.  
The programme takes place over two days in October at IIT Roorkee, with an interactive workshop, in person and online. The program is based on the Synergistic Method and ‘Pathways Toolkit’, facilitated by Joe Ravetz, Director of the Mind-Lab, University of Manchester UK.
Participants will include policymakers, business, civil society, academics, and citizens. The result aims at a visionary but practical synthesis of such opportunities and pathways over 5, 10, and 25 years. This will contribute to official strategic programmes such as Developed Uttarakhand 2047, and also to research, civil society and creative agendas.

Overview

This unique part of India is on the front line of many processes of change.  There is social change, urbanization and restructuring of rural communities. There is economic change and development of infrastructure, roads, dams, wifi etc.  There are new patterns of travel, migration, tourism and pilgrimage, all contributing to stress and opportunities in the landscape. And the landscape itself is increasingly unstable, where one-third of ice has melted in 40 years – with catastrophic results in Rasuwa in Nepal, following on similar disasters in Uttarakhand in 2013 and ongoing.

The future of this landscape and people is then a huge open question – we cannot assume that trends so far over the last decades will continue smoothly. So we have to question and challenge established thinking, and connect the dots in a much bigger picture. Looking ahead, not only to 5-year plans, but to 20 year ‘road-maps’ and beyond, past the limits of trends and forecasts, into realms of challenge and opportunity – this is the scope of foresight.

Foresight is an international set of methods, tools and platforms, with applications from international level to local communities.  We now use the latest version – Foresight 3.0 – with special focus on how all parts of society can learn, communicate, co-create, co-produce, and thereby build their ‘collective intelligence’.  Also we draw on the international program for harnessing the AI potential, as the combined Foresight-CHAI (‘Collective Human Artificial Intelligence’).

This programme is a pilot for what could follow on a larger scale. We aim to demonstrate in a short time by working with a wider group from right across the community as far as possible. We use creative / interactive methods to look for deeper layers of value and meaning, beyond the material development of roads, dams etc – with the cultural, social, psychological, even mythical layers of the human experience.  This then enables a further horizon of possibility and transformation, which then forms pathways / road-mapping for strategic economic, social, environmental or urban / rural development.

From this, we produce a summary report (online) with illustrations, which opens the door to continuing debate and research.  We aim also at practical contributions to official strategies such as Developed Uttarakhand 2047, of the Uttarakhand State Centre for Public Policy and Good Governance (USCPPGG) with its economic, environmental and society themes.

The Pathways Toolkit has four basic stages, each framed with a simple leading questions:  (with a strategic future framed as ‘2050’, a round number for medium-longer term thinking).

  1. What are the ‘Top 3 challenges’ – the current situation in your theme?
  2. How are things changing – the ‘Top 3 changes’ expected by 2050?
  3. What is the potential – the ‘Top 3 opportunities’ coming up by 2050??
  4. How to achieve them – the ‘Top 3 priorities’ for action, now / soon / later??

The program can also work in hybrid mode, much needed in Uttarakhand.  The visual templates shown in the programme below are all contained in a large online workspace, which has been developed and used in many projects around the world. Links will be provided in advance.