About This Project

Libraries and Futures Work

In the summer of 2020, we applied our trends and scenarios methods to support Surrey Library Service in considering the kinds of needs their communities may face over the coming decade.  With a small group of managers, we documented well-established trends and drivers of change (e.g., population ageing, digital technology, housing growth) alongside highly uncertain factors such as economic growth levels post COVID-19.

With the same managers we then used these data to create evidence-based scenarios to test strategies for their public library services and wider cultural offer. This was an inexpensive but impactful way for managers to apply trends data and their own tacit knowledge to test potential strategies against multiple ‘new normals’.  Our work consisted of a two-part workshop, informed by service-specific data, with the background evidence and resulting scenarios documented using Miro (a kind of digital whiteboard) so it could be easily shared internally.