Press Release 20.08.2020
Happy Birthday, Futurium!
On 5 September 2020, Futurium will be celebrating its first birthday by opening its house from 10:00 to 22:00 to everyone who wants to visit. Our first anniversary will also be the starting signal for the first post-lockdown events to take place in Futurium’s Forum. The programme until the end of the year will include, among other things, the Bioeconomy Festival, further editions of the Doable! series, and a day devoted to the researchers of the MOSAiC Arctic expedition.
Happy Birthday, Futurium!
Futurium is turning one. And even though things are somewhat different in 2020 owing to the corona situation, our House of Futures is inviting all those interested to come to our birthday party on 5 September. Futurium will be open from 10:00 to 22:00. The programme will include happy encounters, exciting future-based discussions, and some little surprises. For instance, visitors will have the chance to invent the Next Big Thing while speed-dating with people they know – and even with complete strangers; or they can attend our Feedback Cabaret and listen to the best visitors’ ratings and commentaries from Year 1 being read out – while obeying the social distancing and public hygiene regulations, of course. For our birthday celebration, all guided tours will be free of charge. And, for the first time, we’ll be offering guided tours in sign language too.
It was a turbulent – and sometimes downright crazy – first year.
“It was a turbulent – and sometimes downright crazy – first year. During this period, we basically opened Futurium twice: first in September 2019 and then again, step by step, from May 2020 following the lockdown. Despite our temporary closure on account of corona, more than 560,000 people have already paid us a visit – and that’s surpassed our wildest expectations. Following the reopening, we were also delighted to see that, despite the restrictions imposed as a result of COVID-19, Futurium continues to be an important point of contact for people who want to engage with issues of the future. We’re convinced that the key question discussed at Futurium – ‘How do we want to live?’ – will become even more urgent once we’ve overcome the corona crisis. But, first of all, we’re looking forward to celebrating this extraordinary first year together with our visitors on 5 September,” says Dr Stefan Brandt, Director of Futurium.
Everyone has worked with great commitment to make Futurium a place that enables visitors to have extraordinary experiences.
Nicole Schneider, Commercial Managing Director of Futurium, adds: “Our team has overcome the special challenges of the first year in a magnificent manner. Everyone has worked with great commitment to make Futurium a place that enables visitors to have extraordinary experiences, even under corona conditions – an excellent reason to celebrate this anniversary and to look to the future with confidence.”
Thematic Festivals at Futurium
From 10 to 13 September, Futurium will celebrate the “Bioeconomy Festival”. It will address the political question at the heart of the vision of a sustainable future in Germany. Visitors will be given the opportunity to tell us what innovations they would like to see in the future, learn more about new bio-design in the Lab, and even produce their own bioplastic. Special guided tours of the exhibition will deal with the topic of bioeconomy. Literary events featuring international authors are going to be one of our festival’s special highlights.
And from 26 to 29 November, the future of cities will be on the agenda. Safe city, social city, self-sustaining city – Futurium will dedicate four full days to sketching and discussing the urban worlds that are possible.
Further Event Highlights in 2020
In October, MOSAiC, the largest Arctic expedition in history, will finally come to an end when the research icebreaker Polarstern returns to port at Bremerhaven. On 23 October, only a few days after the end of the expedition, Futurium will welcome the researchers to Berlin and dedicate an entire day to them and a number of invited guests in our House of Futures. The scientists from all over the world will take visitors on a virtual journey into the eternal ice, and talk about their experiments and the international cooperation behind them. They’ll give insights into their research and the reality of what it’s like to live on an ice floe.
Expect a controversial discussion in the latest edition of our series “Doable! Future through Bans” on 20 September, when Maja Göpel and Ulf Poschardt will be arguing about how the transformation to a sustainable and climate-friendly society could be made to succeed. On 28 October, Robert Habeck (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) and Thomas de Maizière (CDU) will be exchanging their views on the question of how we might be governed in the future.
As the guests for the autumn editions of his interview format, Ranga Yogeshwar has invited Stefania Milan (19 September) and Rezo (5 November) to discuss with him the risks and promises of Big Data, as well as the power of influencers.
Owing to the coronavirus situation, Futurium’s programme of events will be taking place in a hybrid form with on-site events, livestreams and online offerings. Our House of Futures continues to rely on the responsible behaviour of its visitors in observing the existing social distancing and public hygiene regulations, and we’ve implemented a variety of measures to reduce the risk of infection.