Canadian Centre for Futures Literacy
About the Centre
Canada needs foresight infrastructure, not just foresight projects.
The Canadian Centre for Futures Literacy is an independent, non-partisan, federally registered not-for-profit advancing futures thinking, Futures Literacy, anticipation and strategic foresight.
Strategic foresight is the structured practice of exploring plausible and possible futures to better understand change and improve decisions in the present. Here, “futures” means different ways the world could develop—not financial futures contracts and not prediction.
We exist to strengthen the capacity of people and institutions to engage seriously with the future—and to help build the shared knowledge, infrastructure and community that allow this work to grow.
Our field-building mandate is anchored in Canada. Our research, learning, training, applied foresight and partnerships are open to collaboration internationally.
Why a Centre?
Individual foresight projects end. A stronger futures ecosystem requires things that persist.
Foresight expertise already exists across organizations, disciplines and individual practitioners. But a field becomes stronger when knowledge can be shared, research can be accessed, practitioners can find one another, methods can develop and new people can enter the work.
That requires research, shared resources, relationships, institutional memory, learning opportunities and communities of practice.
CCFL exists to help build those conditions.
Our work.
We combine field-building, open research and applied strategic foresight rather than treating them as separate domains.
01
Advance futures thinking, Futures Literacy and anticipation
We expand understanding and use of futures thinking, Futures Literacy and anticipatory approaches. This means creating opportunities to question assumptions about the future, examine multiple possibilities and develop more sophisticated ways of working with uncertainty. Our role is not to tell people what the future will be. It is to strengthen their ability to engage with what it could become.
02
Build shared foresight infrastructure
Foresight cannot become an enduring capability through isolated projects alone. We develop shared resources, networks, platforms, tools, convenings and relationships that make it easier for futures work to be established, practiced and sustained. Community is central to this work.
03
Produce open research
We conduct and support research into how people understand, imagine and respond to the future. Our developing research program includes the Canadian Futures Barometer. Wherever possible, our findings, methods and resources are made openly accessible so they can contribute to broader public capability.
04
Build and apply futures capability
We provide futures and strategic foresight training, workshops and project-based research. We help organizations investigate emerging change, examine assumptions, explore alternative futures and connect long-term thinking to decisions being made today.
Our orientation.
Independent and non-partisan.
The future is plural rather than predetermined.
Foresight is not prediction.
Rigorous imagination matters when paired with evidence, critical thinking and intellectual discipline.
Futures knowledge should circulate beyond specialist communities.
Stronger futures capability can improve the quality of decisions made in the present.
Canadian in mandate, international in collaboration.
Not to own the field. To help build the conditions in which it can grow.