Time’s Up, together with the 2017 Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union with the support of Arts Council Malta and the Valletta 2018 Foundation, is inviting interested participants to join a selected group of contributors in an exercise designed to imagine possible futures for Malta and Europe. To this end, Time’s Up is setting up two workshops aimed at developing a culture of speculative thinking guided by experts with groups of practitioners.

The Exploring a Post-Citizen Future workshop is particularly aimed at citizens interested, trained or actively involved in political, socioeconomic, cultural or environmentally sustainable undertakings and studies, to residents involved in or connected with local cultural, artistic communities and organizations and to all citizens otherwise interested in co-creating the future. Led by renowned groups of future designers, the workshop will allow participants to draft possible near futures, to imagine a world we all might live in and to implement objects and media existing in these futures.

Migrants, cosmopolitans, refugees, ex-pats, aliens, transplants – we have many words to describe people who move to be part of a group, place or idea they value. The workshop will investigate the ideas of soft and hard ‘citizenship’, membership and belonging, and how these notions may change in the near future. It will briefly look at the role of Malta in the history of movement and belonging, discuss the forces that are redefining ‘citizenship’ today and in the near future, and design new forms of citizenship – of places, things, ideas or something completely different. Through the creation of experiential scenarios, artifacts and media, the workshop will explore these future forms as if they exist now.

The results of the workshop will be widely distributed within Malta and beyond, engaging with the general population as well as being passed on to decision makers within governments and other stakeholder groups.

To join the workshops, please submit a short text (max. 400 words) outlining why you would like to be involved. Please send this to [email protected] before the end of January 2017. Participation is free of charge.