About Us
Yvonne Curtis - Chief Instigator
Mother, grandmother, chemist, teacher, community enthusiast and futurist, Yvonne discovered her passion for futuring thirty years ago and has dedicated herself to the discipline ever since.
Born in Gisborne on the East Coast of the North Island of New Zealand, Yvonne grew up with a love of free air and a passion to contribute. As a young child she was deeply moved by the Christian ideals of love and compassion. She threw herself whole-heartedly into the work on her grandmother’s farm, her church community, Girls Brigade and orchestra. After school she came to Wellington to study Chemistry at Victoria University. In the sparky intellectual environment she found like minds. She became a chemist, married her lecturer and had an active career in research, teaching and motherhood.
It was later in Yvonne's career that she came across futuring. She first met James Duncan, the founder of the New Zealand Futures Trust (NZFT) at Victoria University where he was a Professor of Chemistry. In 1982 he encouraged her to join his fledgling team of futurists. Yvonne was inspired by James’s leadership and delighted to be part of a team with a broad and inspiring goal. The NZFT was one of the first organisations of its kind in the world, set up in response to growing international recognition that the world was changing in profound ways and that we need to prepare. Its mission was to provide timely, credible information on major changes likely to impact our lives and to promote discussion in the wider community on how we might best respond to these. Being independent, it could lift above the narrow constraints of planning processes, to engage a broad spectrum of the community and to be open to ideas that might seem ridiculous at first but prove wise in hindsight.
Yvonne became a pillar of the Futures Trust and worked as a volunteer from its inception, until it was disbanded in 2013, serving on the executive and board, researching, facilitating workshops and writing and editing for the trust’s quarterly journal, Future Times. (The NZFT archives found here are a wonderful repository of the trust’s work.)
Over this time she has learnt much and gained wisdom and friends all around the world. Now, at the age of 80, she has started this blog to share this.
There is an art to considering the future. It requires the courage to step into the unknown and the patience to follow a systematic process, moving from a wide scan to a more narrow focus to allow possible actions to emerge naturally. This broad, deep approach enables real change and constructive momentum! It creates pivot points in history.
With this blog, Yvonne hopes to encourage more people to bring this deep broad futures thinking to their planning processes and have the courage to step into the unknown.
It is for the dreamers, the futurists in all of us who want to cast their mind into the unknown and come back with something unexpected.
Listen to an interview with Yvonne on FuturePod here.
Loo Connor - Ideas Midwife
Loo (or Elizabeth for long) has a background in Physics and a Masters in Science Communication from Imperial College in London. In 2009 she was awarded the inaugural New Zealand Prime Minister's Prize in Science Communication by John Key. She is currently helping quantum physicists to share the relevance and beauty of their research with a wide audience. Like Yvonne, Loo met her most influential mentor and inspiration at Victoria University of Wellington while studying for an honours degree in Physics and Maths. She bumped into Sir Paul Callaghan, the great New Zealand scientist and visionary, in the corridor and asked him for a job. He introduced her to the field of science communication and sent her around the country interviewing researchers. It was during this time that Loo discovered the power of storytelling to bring people to life and rekindle confidence and purpose. Paul supported her to win a scholarship to attend Imperial College and later win the PM's Prize. He remained an inspiration and support till his untimely death to cancer in 2012.
Paul inspired Loo with his rebellious optimism, intelligence and care for people. He dared New Zealanders to think audaciously about our future and to grow beyond farming and tourism to nurture a culture and economy based on creativity, niche technologies and care for the environment and people.
From a young age, Loo’s dream was to start a renaissance that reconnected science, arts and spirituality. There was something about Paul's spirit that rekindled Loo's hope in this dream. The Prime Minister’s prize gave her an incredible opportunity to test ideals in action. She travelled the country looking for rebellious optimists and developed a storytelling training programme and competition for postgraduate scientists at Victoria University. This was the basis for her consultancy, The KinShip, which she has run for the past ten years.
Her projects have included storytelling and networking programmes for postgraduate scientists, Magnificent Science Variety Shows involving theatre, dance and comedy and training workshops to help regional council staff work in partnership with farmers, environmental activists and iwi. She is currently writing for the Dodd-Walls Centre for Quantum and Photonic Technologies.
Her less professional projects include notChurch, a weekly gathering, held in her garage to bring people together across ages to share inspiration, sing and eat cake; and Planet Magic, an imaginative guided journey to another planet in which people can experience their bodies and their lives from a new perspective.
Loo’s favourite job is creative midwifery - helping people to find and share their creative ideas. This is the role she is playing for Yvonne. It is her great pleasure to find the spirit and wisdom that animates and inspires Yvonne and to help her to share it.
Watch Loo's TEDx talk here
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