OCAD University will be represented at the Anticipation 2026 Conference, taking place July 1 to 3, 2026 at the Design Department of Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy. The international conference brings together researchers, designers, philosophers, policy makers and practitioners to examine how futures are imagined, sensed and shaped under conditions of uncertainty, indeterminacy and unknowing.
Associate Professor Suzanne Stein, director of the Super Ordinary Lab at OCAD U, and Graduate Research Associate Roberto Pires will present an accepted paper in the Embodying and Sensing Futures panel, sharing emerging research on anticipatory creative emergence - a design-led approach to enabling creativity, participation and care within futures literacy and foresight practice. The presentation builds on ongoing work developed through OCAD U’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program, the Digital Futures program and the Super Ordinary Lab.
The research explores how design can help shape the conditions that make creativity possible in anticipatory and civic contexts. Drawing on several years of methodological experimentation, the team is developing a set of principles to support creative civic engagements, bridge scientific and participatory approaches to futures work, and broaden the range of perspectives that inform the policies and prototypes of tomorrow.
“Anticipation 2026 offers an important international platform for sharing how design-led, embodied and participatory approaches can expand futures literacy," said Stein. "This research asks how we might create the conditions for creativity, care and collective imagination to play a much stronger role in how futures are explored and made.”
The paper being presented in Milan builds directly on case studies and experiments developed over the past year through OCAD U initiatives including the Futures of Creativity and Compassion Nexus, a major participatory conference co-hosted with the Association of Professional Futurists, and the evolving Jailbreaking Canada and Democracy Futures workshop streams connected to DemocracyXChange. These initiatives have demonstrated how embodied, relational and participatory futures methods help to deepen public engagement, strengthen civic imagination, and support more inclusive approaches to strategic foresight.
For OCAD U, participation in Anticipation 2026 reflects broader efforts to strengthen international research visibility and deepen the University’s leadership in strategic foresight, futures literacy and experiential futures. The conference is hosted by a leading design institution and foregrounds design as a transdisciplinary mode of inquiry into unresolved, emerging and contested futures.
The Milan presentation also supports ongoing efforts to expand OCAD U’s international research collaborations and further establish the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program as a distinctive leader among futures and foresight programs globally. The broader Strategic Foresight and Innovation community, including past and present students and alumni, will also be present in Milan, contributing to the strengthening of OCAD U’s international network.
This research has been generously supported by the David Binet Design Leadership Fund, which is helping OCAD U advance research, global engagement and design leadership through the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program. The team expects the conference presentation to contribute to a publication in the months following the event and to inform future research, teaching and public programming.