Cultivation, carrots, combine harvesters

With “Just Add People”, the cooperative construction game, you can steer the future of agriculture in completely new directions. You don’t need much – just rods, connectors and colourful sticky tape. Use them to build participatory beaver castles, autonomous insects and other adventurous constructions, then alter them or pull them down to create something new. Exciting missions, fun and new perspectives are guaranteed!

Venue: Forecourt | recommended from age 6 | no registration required

Discover our brand-new exhibits in the Lab: with our “Future Landscape Simulator” you can create your own landscape of fields, forests, wetlands, settlements and solar fields. See in real time how your decisions impact the environment, crop yields and societal structures.

At our three interactive “Double Harvest” stations, you can chug across the (solar) field in a tractor, fly through the world as a bumblebee or explore the agroforest – a mixture of trees, bushes and fields.

At “Shared Grounds” we want to discover your own ideas and thoughts. In workshops, you can develop creative prototypes on topics such as soil health, water stress or fair access to land that will help our participatory installation to keep growing. The result is a collective picture of possible futures that continuously stimulates discussion and reflection.

And in our wall murals “Invisible – Visible”, you can learn how digital technologies can be used in agriculture to assess plant behaviour more accurately.

Ort: Lab | ohne Anmeldung

The improvisational theatre group “Improvisionäre” will transform Futurium into a weekly market for trading in the future – on the forecourt and in the foyer, the goods on offer will be sustainable concepts that’ll be paid for with ideas, not money. Whether young or old, you can experience topics such as soil, climate and biodiversity through exhibits that come to life, spontaneous drama and exciting conversations.

Venue: Forecourt, foyer | for all ages | no registration required

Plough, sow, harvest! In order to supply a city and make your farm fit for the future, you’ve got to act economically, generate good yields and always have an eye for climate protection and biodiversity. Just like on a real field, your hands are your best helpers if you want to make progress with your farm in our brand new farming game. But it’s trickier than you think, because you’ll constantly find yourself confronted with challenges for which you’ll need to find solutions. Pick your solutions wisely, because they not only have to work in the short term, but also in the long term. Plough your way through the challenges, prove that you’ve got green fingers and make your farm fit for the future.

The game “Futureland” is a collaboration between the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) e.V., Dresden University of Technology and gamelab.berlin at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Venue: Foyer | recommended from the age of 12 | no registration required

Just imagine: no more pasta with tomato sauce, no more wooden chairs and no more of your favourite pairs of jeans. Without agriculture, you wouldn’t have any of these. In our guided tour, we’ll explore with you what the agriculture of the future might look like. Maybe it’ll be as smart as our phones? Will we grow our fruit in high-rise buildings? And, if so, will we still need fields? We’ll be bringing light into the darkness – all the way down to the very depths of our soil, where living organisms still grow and thrive. On this tour, you will also discover the brand new exhibits in the Futurium Lab!

Venue: Exhibition and Lab | from age 6 | in German | registration required at the information desk

Dive into the hidden world beneath your feet! It’s about the future of soil. Whether you send a robot mole on a hunt for microplastics, bestow new rights on the soil itself or design a whole new plant world, this workshop will be all about building, drawing, tinkering and inventing! Your prototypes will become part of a shared landscape of thought – a participatory installation that will be on display in the Futurium Lab from today onwards.

Venue: Forum III | recommended from age 10 (accompanied by an adult) | no registration required

May we present: Mika, the microbe. She’s curious and always keen to discover new things. You want to get to know her? Then read our new comic! Illustrator Alexander Roncaldier, Mika’s creator, will be showing you how to invent and design your own comics. He’ll draw Mika with you and reveal what exciting adventures await this little microbe.

Venue: Exhibition | recommended for children aged 6 to 10 | no registration required

Where would we be without agriculture? Whether our morning coffee, the cotton for our clothes or the wood in our furniture – many things start with agriculture. But agriculture also contributes to climate change and is itself affected by it. In our guided tour, we’ll be exploring exciting ideas on how land can be managed and used better and more sustainably in the future. We’ll be showing you our brand new exhibits in the lab and we’ll be talking about indoor farming, agrivoltaics and the Fairy Bot, among other things. Never heard of it? We’ll be bringing light into the darkness – all the way down to the very depths of our soil!

Venue: Exhibition and Lab | recommended from age 16 | in German | registration required at the information desk

You’d like to see flowers sprouting wildly from the soil all over the place? Or would you like to provide a cosy home for your garden’s earwigs? The young garden specialists from Schreberjugend will help you do it. Drop by, make seed bombs, build earwig hotels and learn lots of interesting facts about the plants and creatures living in your garden.

Venue: Forecourt | recommended from age 6 | no registration required

What might a farm of the future look like? Perhaps drones will be flying over the fields, sensors will be collecting various soil data and artificial intelligence will be helping with the harvest. What sounds like science fiction is already a reality in many fields today. Genetically modified seeds play a role, too. At Futurium, you can test the technology yourself: explore how image recognition works and what role artificial intelligence plays in this regard. You can also develop and creatively design your own plants of the future.

Venue: Workshop area in the Futurium Lab | from age 8 | no registration required

Playing, inventing ideas for the future and having fun? In our hands-on workshop, you can do three things at the same time. Programme robots, tinker, paint and draw objects of the future or invent great new structures with our large building blocks.

Venue: Studio | recommended for children up to age 10

The earth is hot, far too hot. It’s literally melting away, and there’s no cooling in sight. To make matters worse, most of the soil is plastered over. Punch desperately wants to do something about it, but can’t come up with a good idea. Might an old crocodile from the Netherlands and an earthworm from the Amazon know what to do? And can you help them?

A puppet theatre play by Artur Albrecht.

Venue: Exhibition | for all age groups | no registration required

Every place in the world has agriculture.
Agriculture is important.
It supplies us with many goods –
vegetables, fruit and cereals, for instance.
But also wood and cotton.
Lots of useful things are made from these.
But agriculture harms the environment.
And climate change is making agriculture ever more difficult.
In our guided tour, we’ll address the problems.
And we’ll point out ideas and solutions.
So we can do things better in the future.

Venue: Exhibition and Lab
in plain German
registration required at the information desk

Where would we be without agriculture? Whether our morning coffee, the cotton for our clothes or the wood in our furniture – many things start with agriculture. But agriculture also contributes to climate change and is itself affected by it. In our guided tour, we’ll be exploring exciting ideas on how land can be managed and used better and more sustainably in the future. We’ll be showing you our brand new exhibits in the Lab and we’ll be talking about indoor farming, agrivoltaics and the Fairy Bot, among other things. Never heard of it? We’ll be bringing light into the darkness – all the way down to the very depths of our soil!

Venue: Exhibition and Lab | recommended from age 16 | in German and German Sign Language | registration required at the information desk

Good mood guaranteed: start off your visit by grooving to the beats of DJ Arno.

Venue: Forecourt

Without fertile soil, there would be no habitat for animals and plants – and therefore no food for us. And the climate depends on it, too. But this valuable soil is in danger. Intensive agriculture and climate change are causing more and more destruction. Soil erosion and desertification are the result – even in our own neighbourhoods. What does this mean for our agriculture? Far too little thought is being given to this issue. That’s exactly what we want to change! Together with you and experts with on-the-ground experience and from science, we’ll be dealing with the topic – in a way that’s easily understandable, exciting and oriented towards finding solutions. Drop by and join the discussion – so that we won’t lose the soil beneath our feet!

Guests: Dr Kathrin Grahmann, Agricultural scientist and scientific director of the patchCROP landscape laboratory – Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), and Freya Fliege, farmer and agricultural influencer
Moderation: Thomas Zander

Please register for the event here.

Venue: Forum I | recommended from age 14 | with interpretation into German Sign Language | registration required