What's "The Tomorrow Party"?
The Tomorrow Party is a way of using Participatory Design in which people imagine themselves in a near future and share stories about the desirable futures they envision. Developed by Monash University researchers for the Wellcome Trust Policy Lab, the method blends conversation, creativity, and guided speculative time travel. It gives people with lived experience a more meaningful role in policy design, moving them from passive testimony-givers recounting past hardship toward active co-creators of imagined futures.
Who is it for?
The Tomorrow Party was designed for policymakers and designers seeking to integrate lived experience insights into policy development, moving beyond extractive consultation. The method is relevant for community facilitators, social innovators, and public servants interested in participatory approaches that value embodied, emotional, and experiential ways of knowing. The work is also relevant for anyone who needs to explore futuring methods that are inclusive and build collective hope and agency.
Approach
In developing the project, the team were inspired by the Māori concept ka mua ka muri (walking backwards into the future). 12 parties were run across eight countries with over 479 participants, arriving at a method in which participants speak in first-person present tense about a near future. The team drew on Ethnographic approaches to observe and refine the method across these events. The process was documented through audio and video recordings, practice stories from participants, and reflective writing by the facilitation team.
Contribution
The project demonstrates how first-person futuring makes policy engagement more collaborative, with people actively shaping ideas rather than simply being asked for their views. Imagining yourself in the future helps draw on personal experiences and emotions in ways that traditional consultation does not. The work shows that when people imagine futures together, they become more open, more collaborative, and more empowered to act. It also suggests that treating past, present, and future as connected rather than separate helps people sit more comfortably with uncertainty. Finally, the research contributes practice stories, reflective accounts written by facilitators, as a useful tool for understanding what happens during the process.
Why is it in the Observatory?
This project shows how Indigenous knowledge can provide a foundation for participation in futures thinking, offering ways of relating to time that open up richer conversations about what lies ahead. It demonstrates how Design Research can integrate the experiences of real people into future-facing policy work, giving lived experience a central role rather than a peripheral one. The work also shows how Ethnography and Participatory Design can be connected in ways that are playful and aspirational, helping people articulate hopes rather than simply document problems.