Background

“Signs of Change” is a futures speculation toolkit and facilitation process, leveraging public-facing signage as critical artefacts for communities to critically explore the effects of climate disrupted futures and implications of emerging products/systems/services.

Not only does this serve to educate on future literacy but also to visualize and make tangible the consequences of climate disruptions. The nature of the signs being able to pop-up anywhere helps broaden the discourse by engaging different Stockholm-based communities and organizations in jointly imagining and nudging new social norms and behaviors in response to climate disruption. Speculative signs can be encountered throughout the city scape, including but not limited to shop windows of small businesses, public transportation vehicles, and cultural institutions.

In collaboration with Radical Norms, Angelika Seeschaaf-Veres, Daniel Daam-Rossi and Koby Barhad we will explore Signs of Change in Stockholm in 2022 thanks to funding we received from Vinnova, the Swedish State Agency for funding research and development.

Prototyping a pop-up exhibition

With 13 Signs and their tagged micro scenario, year and position, we composed a timeline guiding guests into the space of futures shaped by climate change. Starting as close as 2023, signs of change were printed as prototyped posters leading through shifts in environment, culture, health, policy and jurisdiction based on research and brilliant expert interviews.

A selected amount of contributors were asked to respond to a questionnaire during the event – contributing with initial reactions, effects, and actions that are emerging around the signs. The goal is to localise the future narratives in day-to-day realities and explore new emerging situations that speak to emerging new behaviours, products, systems, services and situations that will require the production of more signs. 

Exhibition setting

With over 23 signs developed and produced as perfect counter-fits by the City of Stockholm street sign makers we explored different set-ups from an indoor exhibition setting to an outdoor public intervention.

With the first venue of Trikfåbriken, a vibrant mix of visitors postgraduate Hyper Island students and faculty from different nationalities, professional backgrounds and ages explored the forest of sings. Members and visitors to Naturvårdsverket responded to the organisational and economic aspects of the signs and contributed to the discussion and micro workshop. Participants shared actions they would likely take in various future scenarios brought by the signs and ideated about other signs they could see appearing in their respective communities and neighbourhoods.

Pop-up public space

Leveraging the urban beach of Tanto with its diverse environmental contexts, this pop-up installation focused on climate realities connected to water. The featured signs (supported by extreme weather conditions on the day of the workshop) invited passers-by of Stockholms’ popular waterfront recreation area to immerse themselves in scenarios related to relevant climate shifts (flash floods, rising sea levels, increased temperature, acidity of the Baltic Sea etc.).