Abstract
This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design Futures, Education Research, and Utopian practices, the paper also draws from research on “futurelessness,” the sense that the future no longer holds personal or collective promise. The “enacting micro-utopias” intervention, performed in a higher education context, is shown to help cultivate open-ended futures and plural imaginations.
Keywords
Higher Education, Speculative Design, Micro-Utopias, Collective Imagination
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1424
Citation
García Galiot, R. (2026) Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies of Collective Imagination in Design-based Education, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1424
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Enacting Micro-Utopias: Situated Pedagogies of Collective Imagination in Design-based Education
This paper explores a pedagogical intervention that leveraged speculative enactment as a portal to utopian futures. During a Blended Intensive Program, students were presented with a design challenge that addresses workplace inclusion by reimagining it as a “future otherwise.” The challenge was projected into a future temporality, allowing participants to respond to contemporary challenges with radical imagination. Drawing on Levitas’s (2013) utopia as method and Bloch’s (1986) notion of concrete utopias, this study investigates how engaging with these enacted visions as sensorial expression serves as a mechanism to unleash potentialities latent in the present. Situated at the intersection of Design Futures, Education Research, and Utopian practices, the paper also draws from research on “futurelessness,” the sense that the future no longer holds personal or collective promise. The “enacting micro-utopias” intervention, performed in a higher education context, is shown to help cultivate open-ended futures and plural imaginations.