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Newspaper of Tomorrow

The Newspaper of Tomorrow tool gives you the opportunity to project into the future to create a shared vision on a certain topic. 

When different stakeholders come together, they bring different perspectives. This is of great value for participatory and collaborative work. However, there is a risk that objectives and goals are different and difficult to combine. Creating a shared vision in the group becomes then an essential part of a project. This tool can be very helpful to reach this objective in a creative way. 

To run this envisioning technique, ask the stakeholders around you to imagine how a newspaper, magazine or blog of their choice would talk about a chosen topic (it can be the project/solution you are developing) in two or five years from now. Let them imagine the storyline, write down the headline and sub-headlines, find a relevant image and if there is enough time, let them write the beginning of the article. 

In order to sctruture the exercise you can divide it into several steps: 

  • Step 1: Give time to participants to answer on sticky-notes to pre-written questions that will help defining the chosen topic and finding content for the article.
  • Step 2: Open the floor for a shared conversation during which all participants read their answers and react to other participants' ones. The conversation must help you identifying some potential headlines.
  • Step 3: Now that you gathered the answers try to find ONE effective headline. Something that makes news, talking about your topic. You can explain it with a few lines beneath and bring some quotes from the previous steps. If you manage, try finding a suitable image.

 

Who is the tool for?

When should the tool be used?

City practitioners in charge of multi-stakeholder groups

Local stakeholders

It should be used at the beginning of the project in order to create a shared vision among your project team. 

It can be used during brainstormings, ideation workshops.

 

How to use it online?

 

This tool can be used during virtual meetings to organise an online collaborative exercise. You can create a blank'Newspaper' template on an online collaborative whiteboard platform (such as Miro, Mural...). You can also write directly the topic related questions on the board and participants answer them on sticky-notes.

Open the floor for a shared conversation. You can even invite people to vote for their 2 or 3 favourites ideas. 

Fill in the blank 'Neswpaper' with participants proposition. 

'Newspaper of Tomorrow' template created by Liat Rogel on Miro for the URBACT e-University

 

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