Envisioning futures through decolonised tacit knowledge: The In, Out and On method

• Published in: Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies planning and futures studies, 2024-10, Vol.163, p.103440, Article 103440
• Main Authors: Soler Caicedo, Camilo, Escobar-Tello, Carolina
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arts-based methods; Decolonising design; Future building; Social innovation; Sustainability; Tacit knowledge
• ISSN: 0016-3287
• DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2024.103440

This paper presents a method for future-building based on the journey we undertook as Design and Arts researchers in POR EL Páramo project (2021–2022) in our aim to bring closer the different actors involved in the Paramos (high Andean moorlands in Boyacá region, Colombia). We did this by understanding their everyday life better, and co-designing potential pathways towards holistic sustainable futures that serve the various communities’ needs. Through a series of social innovation workshops, we applied transdisciplinary approaches aimed at decolonising the methodologies used and its facilitation dynamics. The outcomes include our contribution to design and arts-based methodologies that aids continuity to the process of reflection: In(ward), Out(ward) and On(ward). In deploying this decolonisation-based methodology, a more powerful underlying principle came to light too: the use of arts mobilises forms of knowledge that are rather unconscious, but also extremely efficacious in generating proactive mindsets and generating bottom-up ideas. In this paper we build on and argue further, from an empirical perspective, for the utilisation of the tacit knowledge that can be transmitted through non-verbal means in social research dealing with contexts of conflict, reconciliation, and future building. •The In, Out and On method is an design and arts-based approach for future-building based on in-practice or tacit knowledge.•It utilises multi-modal communication tools such as drawing, storytelling, dance and movement to foster empathy.•It places the designer/researcher as facilitator and local communities as the authors and promoters of innovation.•Its solutions-orientation is derived from the elicitation of pre-existing knowledge that was priorly unacknowledged.