The Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight

What's Your Future?

The Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California is inviting people across the state and around the world to imagine the future of California. With this competition, IFTF is turning up the volume on California's problems and potential future solutions. The grand prize for the California Dreams competition is the $3,000 Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight.

May the best dream win

California Dreams is sponsored by IFTF, where Dr. Amara worked in the 1970s. California Dreams is a public call for ideas to imagine the future of California in the next 3-10 years. Everyone gets to vote, and the final winners will be ones that vividly show a day in the life of a California that keeps growing, starts conserving, reinvents itself, or collapses. Extra credit is given for targeting groups or problems that may seem small today but will be significant or widespread over the coming decade. In March, five winners will participate in an expenses-paid design showcase with mentors in Palo Alto, and the grand winner will receive the Roy Amara Prize.

Why we're offering this prize

Institute for the Future is a 42-year-old nonprofit research organization that uses forecasting to help public, private, and nonprofit organizations address the most pressing issues of the times, including youth, seniors, energy policy, science, technology, education, health care, nutrition, and sustainability. The goal of the Roy Amara Fund for Participatory Foresight is to translate foresight research into concrete actions that address future social challenges. It uses participatory tools, from workshops in local schools to online challenges like California Dreams and BodyShock, to achieve this goal.

Amara's legacy of social impact in the state

In the early 1970's Roy Amara was instrumental in bringing IFTF to California and his dedication to bringing futures thinking to the state has been a part of the IFTF mission since that time. As a luminary forecaster and former president, Roy's professional roots were as a California public educator and we honor his memory with this participatory contest.