For three decades from 1982, the New Zealand Futures Trust (NZFT) led the development of Futures Thinking in New Zealand. At the beginning, the value of this work was not widely appreciated. The principles and techniques of Futures Thinking were misunderstood and sometimes poorly applied.
Nowadays, there are many excellent initiatives in Futures Thinking and the field has achieved respectability. While NZFT would not claim responsibility for this new state of affairs, its work made an important contribution.
This website has been established as a repository of the NZFT’s core work, which has enduring relevance. From here, practitioners will be able to access useful resources and think pieces, and students of Futures Thinking will be able to trace the history of the field in New Zealand.
NZFT mission
The NZFT’s mission was summarised as:
… providing credible, timely information on major changes likely to impact on our way of life, and to promote discussion in the wider community on how we might best react to them.
We exist to recognise and tell the untold stories, spotlight trends, and inform anyone who is interested. We're independent, and while we take our work seriously, we're open to any ideas about the future which may appear to be ridiculous at first, but prove to be wise in hindsight.
This mission was pursued in a number of ways, mainly by providing accessible space and opportunities for discussion, research, and workshops for people in all walks of life to explore New Zealand futures in an international setting.
Website content
On this website you can find all 119 issues of Future Times, the NZFT’s quarterly journal, searchable by author and topic. Also available are most of the issues of the supplementary on-line-issues of e-Future Times that appeared on the NZFT web-site; the content of Futuresonline; videoed interviews with international futurists; a book; a report; educational kit set; and lists of public seminars/workshops and contracted projects undertaken by the NZFT.
Acknowledgements
The creation of these resources was made possible by organisational sponsors and the many volunteers who gave of their time and talents, so that the NZFT could operate for over 30 years as a non-governmental, not-for-profit organisation.
On behalf of all those who contributed, I hope that future searchers will find insights and the support they are looking for from the NZFT’s historical record.
Best wishes and happy Futuring
Yvonne Curtis
Copyright Future Times
The material available on this website is protected by copyright. You can reproduce this material free of charge without further permission, as long as you:
.