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 structure 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 this 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
