“Rehearsing Futures – Pedagogies of Hope” took place from the 15-17th May 2025 at HKBU and the outlying island of Peng Chau. Academics, community leaders and creative practitioners from Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands, Canada and the UK joined forces to envision better futures and shared ideas to create a roadmap for change in teaching, research and social action.

Conference participants tackled the following questions: how do we keep hope and engender change in a world filled with climate change, environmental degradation, inequality and political polarisation? How do we teach people to care so that we can collectively work towards better futures and seed world-making capacities? How do we learn to tend to the invisible and the inaudible relations between humans and non-humans that make up our world and to create networks where we recognise such interdependence? How do we organise, cultivate, drive and sustain actions that are equitable and support the diversity and viability of all? In short, how can we make hope possible rather than despair convincing?

Rehearsing Futures focused on the two senses of rehearsing: the practice – as in the methods and pedagogies; as well as the rehearsal – the repetition, preparation and implementation of such methods. Change points to action, but it also requires practice and repetition; it is an emergent phenomena, which we need to prepare for.

More Details: Rehearsing Futures – HKFoodWorks