Over the past month I’ve been immersed in conversations with directors, staff, independent professionals, funders, and association staff, all trying to find a way forward in the face of the massive uncertainty created by the new administration’s Executive Orders and other actions. These conversations are helping me work out what I and my colleagues at AAM might do to help museum people and museums respond to these challenges. One thing I heard is that, in addition to practical advice on coping with short term challenges, people are hungering for hope. This post shares some resources to help fill that need: a workshop on cultivating optimism in the face of an uncertain future at the AAM Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, and three resources that can help people believe in their own ability to influence the future.

Foresight Workshop at AAM 2025

I’m reshaping my annual foresight workshop at the AAM conference to explore “How to Face the Future, Cultivate Optimism, and Defy Dystopia.” The workshop will take place 1 – 5 pm on Tuesday, May 6, and here’s my capsule description:

The operational landscape has changed significantly over the past decade. Museums face profound disruptions from emerging technologies, shifting societal norms and expectations, and major changes in the role of government in oversight and funding. In addition to posing strategic challenges, these stressors are putting museum staff and leaders at risk of apathy, burnout, and exhaustion and contribute to high turnover rates, challenges in recruiting new staff, and a loss of leadership as more individuals leave the profession. This workshop will address how staff at all levels can use foresight to envision positive change, cultivate resilience, resist apathy, and identify plausible options in difficult times.

I’ll introduce foresight tools through exercises to cultivate hope, activate your power as an agent of change, and create a positive vision of the future that can help sustain you in hard times. There is strength and healing in community as well, and the workshop is an opportunity to connect and commiserate with colleagues facing similar challenges.

The $35 ticket covers the cost of refreshments and supplies. You can select the workshop as you register for the meeting or add a ticket to an existing registration. (See instructions for that at the end of this post.) As of this week, the workshop is about 60% full, and historically it has always sold out, so I recommend that if you do want to come, you snag your ticket soon.

Three Resources for Cultivating Optimism and Building Better Futures

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything, Even Things that Seem Impossible Today (2021). In this personal favorite (it lives on my nightstand), Dr. Jane McGonigal draws on the latest scientific research in psychology and neuroscience to show us how to train our minds to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. The book shares provocative thought experiments and future simulations designed to “build our collective imagination so that we can dive into the future … and access urgent optimism, an unstoppable force within each of us that activates our sense of agency.” McGonigal makes a compelling case that stepping back from current crises to consider a 10 year time frame gives our imagination space to expand, and enables us to envision change that may seem almost impossible over the short term.

The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World, (2020). I was attracted to the work of philosopher Roman Krznaric by his challenge that we become “time rebels,” working to build a world we can be proud to leave for future generations. In this book, Krznaric suggests six ways in which we can learn to “think long,” and explores approaches like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Sharing examples throughout history and from around the globe, Krznaric celebrates time rebels who are “reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.” (Fun nugget: the text includes a deep dive into the sewers of London for an example of how a crisis, in this case the “Great Stink” of 1858, can impel democracies to undertake long term planning for the public good.) For an introduction to Krznaric’s ideas, watch his 2020 TED talk on how to be a good ancestor (7 minutes.)

The Promise of Future Design: using intergenerational role play and negotiation to improve planning and decision making—and become better ancestors, School of International Futures (2024). This free PDF shares the principles of Future Design, a practice for embodying a particular community or organization’s future stakeholders through role play, design thinking, negotiation and other forms of group decision making. The report documents the benefits of Future Design as implemented for city planning in Japan and Cardiff, Wales, and suggests how the practice might contribute to participatory democracy in the US. (Also delightfully advocating for the power of costuming in helping participants embody their future selves.)

How to Add a Workshop Ticket to Your Existing Annual Meeting Registration

• Go to the Attendee Service Center
• Use the login and password from your attendee registration confirmation email to login
• On the right of the green menu bar at the top of the page, hover over Service Center and select Purchase Event Tickets
• On the Purchase Event Tickets page select Edit (to the right of your name)
• Click through the following three pages by scrolling to the bottom and clicking Continue
• The fourth page will be Purchase Event Tickets/Ticketed Events. Scroll down and click the box next to the workshop “How to Face the Future, Cultivate Optimism and Defy Dystopia”
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Continue
• Review the purchase and select Continue
• Enter your payment

Let me know if you have any questions or experience any difficulty in registering for the workshop (futureofmuseums@aam-us.org).

Please share your own recommendations for books, articles, videos and tools that help you feel more optimistic and empowered in the face of challenging times. Add them in comments (below), or share on the Future of Museums Community on Museum Junction.

Warmest regards from the future,

Elizabeth Merritt
VP Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums
American Alliance of Museums