Co-Constructing Multispecies Futures

How this works

This tool guides groups through building and telling speculative scenes, then into roleplay, movement and rehearsal, and back to the story. It builds on The Thing From The Future (Candy & Watson, 2014) and the Rehearsing Realities framework (Smith, Leadabrand, et al., in press).

• Spatial and Temporal are always running — together they set the where and when for whatever you're building.
• Add more layers with the chips above: Speculation (a guiding "what if"), Affect (a tone), Voice (who's telling it) and Form (what it becomes), Collaborator (another participant), Pivot (a twist), and Sensing (a reflective practice).
• Pull the lever to spin every active, unlocked reel — each one lands at a slightly different moment.
• Lock a reel to hold its result on the next pull. Keep what's working, re-roll the rest.
• Voice and Form combine into a single "Narrative" line on the slip when both are active.
• Use the pencil icon to edit, add or remove prompts in any reel for this session.
• The session slip shows the current combination. Save it with your notes as text or JSON, or print it, before drawing another combination. The JSON also includes your current prompt bank; there is no automatic history.
• "Tell it" is a scratchpad for the story this combination creates — write or record it as you go. "Now: try it" gives you something to do physically — with a Collaborator drawn, it's a way of relating to that being; otherwise it's a general prompt to get up and play it out. Then come back to "Tell it" and keep going.

This works best with company. Bring other people, but also objects, plants, animals, or machines already in the room into the co-creation — the more intelligences present, the more the world can become. Adapt the prompts to your group, setting, or workshop.

Co-Constructing Multispecies Futures was created by Ash Eliza Smith, developed in the Speculative Devices Lab with Julia McQuillan and Sam Bendix. The deck and interactive tool build on The Thing From The Future (Stuart Candy and Jeff Watson, 2014) and the Rehearsing Realities framework (Smith, Leadabrand, and colleagues, in press).

The embodied approach is described in Performing the What-If: Embodied Worldbuilding with More-than-Human Intelligences, from Roleplay to Emerging Technologies by Ash Eliza Smith and Julia McQuillan, forthcoming in Strategic Handbook of Worldbuilding (Routledge). Its wider practice draws on performance, dance and somatic practice, walking scores, speculative design, spatial storytelling, playable theater, and immersive practice.

Move between telling, making, and rehearsing while the scene is taking shape. Begin with what another being can sense, do, and need; let its limits and responses change the scene. Another being’s experience remains partly unknown. Agree on shared authorship, name an end to roleplay, and reflect on what you want to carry forward or set down.