The Future Problem Solving programme has allowed me to discover new ways of looking at the future from my own unique perspective, as well as allowing me to improve my creative writing skills. I’ve always loved looking at changes in the environment and making predictions about it, so when I was introduced to Scenario Writing I was immediately hooked.
Scenario Writing is a division of the FPS programme, where participants write a 1500-word story relating to one of the four yearly topics. The story has to be set over 20 years in the future and use imagined but logical futuristic outcomes of events happening in the world. In 2022 I wrote a 1500-word narrative encompassing the topic “Insects”. My writing followed a farmer in Britain in 2067. My future scene portrayed a futuristic agricultural industry where farmers work behind a computer, remotely controlling the machinery that sustains their farms. Devastation hits when a plague of insects descend on the characters farm, destroying his livelihood. He is left hopeless, as the effects of climate change of the insects growth rates allows them to decimate crops across the country.
My writing won First Place in the Junior Division and I received an invitation to attend the Future Problem Solving International Conference at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in June 2023. By attending the conference, I have the opportunity to compete internationally and represent NZ. The topic for the international conference is “Currency” and I am conducting research that will form the base of my 1000-word competition scenario which I will have a strict two hour time period in which to write. Through a series of workshops, I will also have the opportunity to collaborate with other writers, and build my creative thinking skills.
An enormous thank you to the Bobby Stafford-Bush Foundation for supporting me to attend this event. It truly is an honour!
