At UN Global Pulse, we believe imagination is a driving force for innovation and transformation. In 2023, we published “The Most Creative Look to the Future“, a research paper exploring how creative and speculative practices can help the UN reimagine solutions for global challenges. The research laid out clear pathways for integrating imagination into the UN system—unlocking creativity to help deliver on our bold vision for people and the planet. It also showed how artistic, speculative, and visionary approaches can serve as powerful tools for shaping the futures we want.

Building on these insights, in 2024, UN Global Pulse and CoFUTURES at the University of Oslo have partnered with 13 civil society organizations and 4 UN entities across Brazil and Mexico to explore the role of speculative storytelling in driving transformational change.

Key insights include:

• Stories as tools for inclusive planning: Elevating community voices helps shift the UN from being a service provider to a facilitator of inclusive solutions.
• The role of care in transformation: Care is not secondary—it is fundamental to how we engage with partners and design initiatives that foster trust and long-term impact.
• Active listening for better outcomes: Open feedback loops ensure that projects remain adaptive to real needs.
• Creating safe spaces for honest conversations: Meaningful change happens when communities, policymakers, and UN teams engage in open dialogue.
• Long-term, values-based partnerships: Sustainable relationships strengthen the UN’s ability to drive change in a way that is inclusive and locally relevant.

Why Speculative Storytelling?

Speculative storytelling uses imagination to navigate complexity, challenge existing paradigms, transfer knowledge, and envision alternative ways of being in the world. It is a participatory approach that sparks conversations and actions, making room for diverse perspectives and new possibilities. During the first phase of this project, we explored how storytelling-based processes can strengthen the way the UN engages with communities, partners, and stakeholders. As we move into the next phase, we are focusing on how these methods can support the UN’s transformation under the UN 2.0 vision.

What’s Next?

In 2025, UN Global Pulse will launch pilot projects with UN entities and external partners to refine and test participatory approaches for strategic planning, capacity building, and policy support. These initiatives will help us expand our offerings to sister organizations and member states—demonstrating how participatory innovation can:

• Improve policy discussions and decision-making by integrating community perspectives into UN processes.
• Strengthen participatory methods in service delivery through storytelling-based feedback loops.
• Support UN teams navigating change by embedding participatory approaches into organizational transformation efforts.
• Enhance multilateral collaboration by ensuring diverse voices shape program development and implementation.

At its core, this project is about more than innovation. It’s about creating spaces across the UN where everyone belongs, where new ideas can thrive, and where we collectively shape futures that serve all.

Want to learn more or collaborate with us? We’re looking for partners who share our vision for a more inclusive, creative, and future-ready UN.

In what ways can participatory frameworks and new forms of storytelling help the United Nations reimagine the future of multilateralism?

Our impact

This initiative aligns with “Our Common Agenda” and the “Pact for the Future“, reinforcing the UN’s commitment to greater inclusion, participation, and trust in shaping global governance. By integrating participatory innovation into the UN’s transformation agenda (UN 2.0), this project aims to demonstrate how imagination-based approaches can help create a more responsive and community-driven United Nations.

The experiment’s expected long-term impact, through concrete projects with UN entities, is envisioned to improve policy-making, community-building and decision-making, ensuring the UN system is more future-oriented and participatory.

Resources

• Handbook: Beyond Numbers: A New Approach to Impact Storytelling
• Workshop Deck: Realists Of A Larger Reality
• Report: The Most Creative Look to the Future: Imagination and Creative Practice in Service of Organizational Transformation
• Workbook: The Right Invitation – A workbook for creative transformation
• Creative Practice Competency Model: A framework for the attitudes and behaviors required to practice creativity in a way that leads to innovation and impact
• CoFUTURES Literacy Project at the University of Oslo