The Futurescope

The Futurescope is a time machine. It’s a means of projecting visions of a town's past history and earth science, it's present political and economic structure. The Futurescope projects illustrations of improbable, but plausible (and often hilarious) futures. The audience (known as the Futurist Committee) responds to the imagined futures with drawn maps, plans, inventions, and suggestions to help the people of those futures. The drawn work is presented and the audience discusses the group's strategies and adaptations to change. Tom Dawson (as the Temporal Cartographer) draws on examples from the design and invention professions to show real world parallels to the group's strategies. The education goal is to foster awareness of a changing planet and to develop social tools to collectively plan for environmental change. Designed as a egalitarian traveling program, the Futurscope has appeared in libraries and schools in North Carolina, as well as art galleries and government centers.