Dubai Future Forum

The Dubai Future Forum is the world's largest gathering of futurists and foresight practitioners, drawing over 2,500 participants from 100 countries, with a further two million watching online. Held at the Museum of the Future in November 2024, the forum brought together scientists, policy makers, artists, and technologists to examine the challenges and choices ahead. The building itself sets the tone: a torus-shaped structure engraved with Arabic calligraphy, designed as a statement about the human capacity to shape what is to come.

Honor spoke on the role of museums in making futures thinkable. In a panel conversation with architect and film director Liam Young, moderated by Brendan McGetrick of the Museum of the Future, they explored how cultural institutions can close the gap between abstract scenarios and lived experience — moving audiences from passive recipients of futures thinking to active participants in shaping it. Drawing on her work at ArtScience Museum, Honor argued that museums are not merely repositories of the past but among the most powerful tools we have for rehearsing possible futures.

She also presented her talk "The Future We Make: Designing Hope for a Changing Planet," which addressed how imaginative practice, exhibitions, and speculative design can generate genuine hope rather than managed anxiety. The same week saw the formal launch of Cultivating Futures Thinking in Museums, edited by Kristin Alford, to which Honor contributed an essay on the museum's transformative potential.