Creative professionals develop visual worlds and create narratives – in films, photographs, stories, works of art and beyond. But what if diversity became mandatory in their work, or if progressive narratives were prescribed? How would these speculative questions change our visual worlds? This is where speculative design comes in, an experimental approach to developing new, surprising perspectives on the future and making them tangible. What makes it special is that futures are not seen as predictions, but as scope for exploration. This scope is used to explore how our societies, stories and images could develop differently. The method invites us to question familiar narratives and to devise scenarios that irritate, surprise or raise new questions.

What is the workshop about?

The workshop, which is taking place as part of the 5th RETURN IAF, deliberately uses ‘what if’ questions to reflect on the social, cultural and ethical implications of possible future scenarios. This year's festival motto, ‘Civilisation, did you read the terms and conditions?’, forms the basis for the ‘what if’ questions, which encourage reflection and often reveal the hidden consequences of current structures. The process is designed to be playful: small teams work together to develop simple game or scenario concepts in order to achieve creative, action-oriented results. Together, they use simple design fictions to explore how speculative thinking can break down and change our narratives and who and what becomes visible in them. The following provocative questions form the basis:

Quotas versus penalties: What if government quotas dictated the presence of marginalised groups in film, media and art, with harsh penalties for violations?

Permission requirement: What if all stories could only be told by underrepresented groups and members of dominant groups had to obtain special ‘permission’ to do so?

Algorithmic censorship: What if algorithms decided which narratives could be produced or published and who could tell them?

Diversity inspection: What if there were a ‘narrative inspection’ that reviewed scripts and only approved them if a minimum diversity quota was met?

Civilisation terms and conditions: What if every media production were bound by a global ‘terms and conditions’ agreement that specified which stories could be made visible?

The workshop is being held in cooperation with RETURN IAF & the Thuringian Agency for the Creative Industries (THAK).

📍The venue is the Museum Neues Weimar, Jorge-Semprún-Platz 5, 99423 Weimar.

💬 The speaker is Tom Ritschel.

🎟️ Register free of charge

You can register for the workshop free of charge here (limited places available): https://thueringen-kreativ.de/event-post/workshop-spekulativ-die-zukunft-der-medien-gestalten-okt2025/