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Toward a Human-Centered Government

Hopeful state of California seal.

Ridiculously Hopeful Futures: a bold, slightly wild, and very optimistic project to transform how government programs are designed.

Imagine a future where consulting the people who need government support is routine — where their voices shape policies, programs, and services. By listening to customers, we can create better experiences and outcomes for everyone.

About this Initiative

Ridiculously Hopeful Futures in California is a project fiscally sponsored by Realize Impact.

Building off the success of our participatory experiential futures (PXF) work, we are launching the first initiative under this project: the Lived Experience Leadership Institute (LELI), in partnership with Dalbert.Design.

LELI is a training and research platform to equip Californians who have lived experience with poverty, disability, systemic racism, and homelessness with the tools and confidence to embed their expertise into county government processes. This work rests on five hypotheses:

    1. Who frames the questions matters: community-led research yields relevant, actionable evidence.
    2. Evidence must be community-owned: data should be validated and applied by community members themselves.
    3. Futures thinking expands possibilities: scenario design and narrative change create space for systemic alternatives and radical imagining.
    4. Embedding lived-experience researchers accelerates equity: when fellows sit on boards and task forces, inequities can be addressed in real time.
    5. AI, if harnessed intentionally, can amplify community expertise: AI can act as a skill equalizer, compressing inequities and democratizing access to knowledge production. 

Learn More About How We Got Here

The vision for this initiative was shaped by workshops that we hosted in five sites throughout California in the spring of 2025.

 

Map of California with 5 pins representing workshops that have been completed (Visalia, Long Beach, Concord, Riverside, and Sacramento).

We’ve been seeing the landscape of technology evolving before our eyes – both showing both promising opportunities and concerning gaps for the public sector context. We hosted a series of experiential futures workshops across California with state and local leaders; advocates; customer-facing staff; and community leaders to help define the future that people want to see.

Across our different conversations we heard a demand to incorporate the voices of clients/program participants into decision-making processes in a way that elevates a range of perspectives and prioritizes agency, consent and privacy.

What do we mean by Experiential Futures?

Experiential Futures is a method that brings potential futures to life through immersive, tangible, and emotional experiences.

Instead of merely talking about what could happen, we build spaces where people can step into the future. Participants engage with scenarios using storytelling, role-play, artifacts, and other sensory elements. This approach helps people imagine, feel, and understand what different futures might be like, fostering deeper insights and inspiring bold ideas for change.

By experiencing these possible futures firsthand, participants can better envision practical steps toward more customer-centered government services. Watch what it looked like to join one of our experiential workshops:

 

Check out the full series here!

A Word from our Partners

The Stories That We Tell

Virginia Hamilton, Make Fast Studio

“We live into the futures we imagine.” Virginia Hamilton, a longtime public servant turned public sector innovation catalyst, reflects on how our visions shape reality and calls for a new narrative in our Ridiculously Hopeful Futures project. Imagine a future where the government works for everyone, public servants are celebrated, and policies are co-designed with the people impacted by them. Through storytelling, technology, and collaboration, we can build a more hopeful, human-centered future. Join us in imagining a future that we all deserve.

Participatory Experiential Futures

Hillary Carey, Just Visions

“Step into the future with us!” Here, Hillary Carey, Ph.D, from Just Visions dives into the topic of Participatory Experiential Futures for our Ridiculously Hopeful Futures project, inviting people to explore immersive, full-scale visions of what a human-centered government could be through scenes, stories, and artifacts. What would you change? Whether it’s a workshop or a quick brainstorm, everyone has a role in shaping tomorrow.

Recent News

“On PXF Futures,” by Hillary Carey, Ph.D

In this article, Hillary Carey explores how Experiential Futures—immersive ways to help people imagine possible worlds—can be made more accessible. Drawing on Stuart Candy’s framework, she highlights how scaling down from large installations to small, playful prompts allows anyone to engage with future thinking. The piece invites readers to consider how even simple, low-cost experiences can spark powerful conversations about what’s next.

Newsletters

Futures (VOL 1)

Futures (VOL 2)

Futures (VOL 3)

Futures (VOL 4)

 

 

Ready to Shape the Future?

Stay Informed! Follow along as we build a more inclusive, responsive, and visionary approach to government services.

We are actively looking for philanthropic partners to bring these collective visions to life! Interested? Send us an email: futures@civicmakers.com

Let’s design a future where government truly listens.