Unscripted 2025 Episode 3 with Aisha Shillingford & Laura Nissen

How can we get unstuck from our assumptions about the future?

Join us for Unscripted: Candid Conversations about Who Gets to Imagine the Future, a week-long series where RWJF grantees pair up each day to talk one-on-one about the power of “futuring”—anticipating, imagining, and designing possible tomorrows. (www.rwjf.org/unscripted)

In Episode 3, artist and worldbuilder Aisha Shillingford, MSW, MBA, artistic director of Intelligent Mischief, connects with disruptive foresight practitioner Laura Burney Nissen, PhD, MSW, former dean and professor emeritus of Portland State University, School of Social Work, and research fellow at the Institute for the Future.

The conversations are “unscripted,” so we don’t know where they will ultimately go—but here’s a taste of where they might:

• How can we get unstuck from our assumptions about the future?

• Can multi-sensory and anti-disciplinary art and artifacts help us “feel” the future?

• How can futures thinking help us imagine systems that begin from a place of repair?

Head over to www.rwjf.org/unscripted to register for the full series, meet the cast, and learn how you can co-create stickers inspired by the conversations. Each episode builds on the last as the guest from one episode becomes the host of the next!

Questions? Write us at unscripted@rwjf.org

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RWJF is a leading national philanthropy dedicated to taking bold leaps to transform health in our lifetime. Through funding, convening, advocacy, and evidencebuilding, we work sidebyside with communities, practitioners, and institutions to get to health equity faster and pave the way together to a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. For more information, visit