Futures Lab
Futures Lab is an innovative collaboration between the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and byStudents, designed to cultivate the next generation of foresight-driven changemakers. Through a hands-on learning journey, students work with partners to co-create imaginative, future-ready solutions to real challenges.
Join us in shaping a more resilient and visionary future and become a partner in 2026.
About Futures Lab
Futures Lab is a structured educational and workshop programme designed to strengthen students’ futures literacy, the capacity to imagine and prototype alternative futures in a critical, creative, and strategic way. The programme consists of five phases divided into seven workshop sessions, in which students are introduced to futures literacy as a competence and to various elements of the discipline of foresight. Through this, students learn to explore and develop concepts grounded in the future.
The Futures Lab programme differs from other competency and futures literacy initiatives by being explicitly situated outside formal institutions, developed with and for young people, and by orienting futures literacy as a competence relevant to the transitional phase from student and youth life to professional and adult life — all while placing society and our shared future at its centre.
As a partner organization, you will engage with motivated students who apply their knowledge to your real-world challenges, using methods rooted in future studies, design thinking, and systems thinking.
Futures Lab Playbook
This playbook offers practical tools to help organisations develop futures-literacy programmes that empower young people to understand, engage with, and shape the future. It provides foundations, principles, and examples to support futures-oriented learning across diverse contexts.
Playbook highlights:
- How to strengthen youth agency and responsibility through futures literacy
- Adaptable guidance for designing Futures Lab programmes
What is Futures Literacy?
Futures Literacy is the ability to envision the future in different ways, critically assess dominant perceptions of the future, and constructively engage with opportunities and challenges. Creative, systemic thinking fosters a hopeful approach to future scenarios that we genuinely wish to live our lives in. Futures Literacy provides input for proactive and targeted efforts towards achieving those scenarios.
Students engaging in Future Literacy design innovative ideas for a sustainable and equitable tomorrow and use these tools to explore scenarios and co-create solutions to pressing societal issues, working closely with companies and organizations like yours.
Why Become Our next Partner?
As a partner in Futures Lab you would benefit from::
- Gaining fresh, foresight-driven perspectives on emerging trends and challenges in your field.
- Accessing a talent pipeline of young thinkers equipped with practical and strategic Futures Literacy
- Engaging with motivated students capable of delivering future-proof prototypes, concepts or narratives.
- Building thought leadership by contributing to a program rooted in sustainability, creativity, and innovation.
If you are interested in becoming a partner or want to know more about the project, feel free to reach out to us through the button below:
Futures Lab 2025
Futures Lab program
In 2025, Futures Lab brought together students from universities, creative and vocational schools across Denmark to participate in a series of seven workshops from February to May. The program was based at Studenterhuset in central Copenhagen with sessions hosted at partner venues around the city.
Structure & Focus
Each workshop combined a theoretical lecture, group work, and interaction with expert speakers. Students applied tools such as:
- Megatrend analysis and futures triangle
- Scenario archetypes
- Impact/uncertainty mapping
- Assumption and discourse analysis
Through this journey, each group developed a full futures scenario and conceptual prototype tailored to a specific partner’s challenge. Additionally, they also received guidance in funding applications and project development, culminating in a final pitch.
Partners & Themes in 2025
The 2025 edition engaged partners including The LEGO Group, IKEA, Andelsgaarde, and Sony Music Denmark, each offering a distinct case centred on future challenges in areas like community, sustainability, circularity, and creativity.
Highlights from the 2025 Program
- 7 workshops held on Wednesday evenings (18:30–20:30)
- Sessions hosted in Copenhagen creative hubs such as Studenterhuset, BLOX and Thoravej 29
- Futures-focused events open to other young people and the wider community
- Participants guided through hands-on solutions from ideation to concept prototyping
- Final outcomes included actionable insights and grant-ready project concepts
About Us
Futures Lab is a collaboration between Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies and byStudents, intended to enhance futures literacy and thus sharpen your ability to anticipate and innovate when faced with uncertainty and complexity. This prepares you to initiate positive change in society.
byStudents is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of young people and students through a focus on communities and engagement. We are an organization of students for students. This is evident in everything from organizing the KU festival, holding weekly community dinners at Studenterhuset’s café, to niche volunteer activities planned by engaged students. Studenterhuset is part of the byStudents organization. It functions as a café, concert venue, study area, group room, and facility for events, thus part of byStudents’ commitment to creating an inclusive and dynamic environment for young people in Copenhagen.
Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies is a nonprofit think tank whose purpose is to help people imagine, work with, and shape the future. CIFS provides tools to act on the future, based on over 50 years of experience in futures studies and foresight. CIFS is independent of commercial and political interests, and all profits go to research and initiatives. The institute hosts the Danish hub for Teach the Future, which works to spread futures literacy as a life skill by bringing the future into education processes.