Future Horizon — building a better future now
Article
Future Horizon — building a better future now
Article
The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.
— Eckhart Tolle
These words came to be the foundation of what’s now functioning under the name of Future Horizon.
This initiative, started by Mateusz Cyrankiewicz, the founder of HOO KOO E KOO — a global brand and product studio, can be best described as a gathering to envision, build and celebrate a new sustainable future for humanity and the planet.
The first gathering took place between 11–16 March, in Cabarete, Dominican Republic. It hosted 60 participants from various professions, including Entrepreneurs, Designers, Futurists, Architects, Artists, Ocean Conservationists, Storytellers, Philanthropists, and Investors. All of them came together to empower each other to make a real-world impact on a better tomorrow.
Our future is not yet decided.
Billions of people make choices that impact the world every minute. Making the right choices on a big enough scale can still turn the world around.
Many amongst us are striving for positive changes in an increasingly distressing world with an ever-resilient spirit. By taking matters into their own hands, countless impact initiatives are tackling these multifaceted environmental and political issues.
The aim of Future Horizon (the past and the future editions) is to connect, promote, celebrate and incubate impact initiatives towards a sustainable future.
Sustainability will be the new profitability.
Increasingly businesses, investors, and creators are turning towards sustainability. Today sustainability is a new luxury, but soon it will be the new profitability.
A critical mass is fast approaching to turn things around for the planet. Global Warming is no longer a radical concept, but a subject of daily household conversation. We now have the opportunity to engage financial interests in embracing a more sustainable mode of thinking, creating, and investing in our future.
The example of Greta Thunberg demonstrates the force of nature that springs from our collective distress and resilient spirit. The world is ready for a remarkable paradigmatic and generational shift.
Impact
One of the main elements of the first edition of Future Horizon was the reveal of the biggest underwater sculpture ever made, for Global Coralition, of which HOO KOO E KOO is a founding partner. The sculpture is the first piece of a new coral reef, farm & lab.
The talks held during the gathering focused on envisioning and tackling design & technology challenges for protecting 30% of our oceans, exploring approaches to cleaning our ocean waters. Speeches were enriched by workshops on storytelling a new future, to both learn from, and educate communities — local and global.
Since the event, in just short 4 weeks, the community launched MaskForce which has already distributed 10s of thousands of masks to medicine practitioners in need, as well as CabareteUnidos which is ramping up to feed as many as 10,000 people during the COVID outbreak, in an impoverished community in the Dominican Republic.
Multiple other initiatives have been started and are underway for a release in the near future, including a sustainability-oriented global hub and accelerator.
At Future Horizon, the HOO KOO E KOO team and the Tribe — a group of industry and thought leaders, connected for the first time with the Burning Man F Community (also founded by Mateusz Cyrankiewicz in 2017), as well as some other incredible people. F Camp was the first sustainable camp at the Burning Man and seeded the idea of the Future Horizon. The gathering also was a second HOO KOO E KOO retreat where the whole team, working remotely on a daily basis, was able to meet and spend some creative time together.
The event received incredible feedback, has had a real measurable impact in such a short time and the work to organize the next one has already started!
In addition to the talks, discussions, and workshops, Future Horizon provided a space to unwind and reflect on new ideas through guided meditation, yoga sessions, art therapy workshops, and connection with nature. All to promote inner peace and clarity, as well as to enable the participants’ spirits to envision new horizons.
Great ideas can’t be born without a bit of playfulness, so Future Horizon’s nighttime programming was rich with changing themes, charming dinners, live acts, and special guest DJs' live performers, dancers, and bands. The off-time enabled more socializing and strengthen the community.
What’s next?
Following the first successful “inception retreat”, we are now talking to partners about turning Future Horizon into an event series to further the impact. The goal is to create a community that can make an exponential difference in the future of humanity and the planet. Working together, sharing skills, knowledge, and motivation, we hope to contribute to creating sustainable solutions and initiatives that could trigger the mindful development of our future.
The primary goal is to make an exponential difference on an increasing scale. By gathering experts and futurists from various fields, and providing them with a common space to hold discussions, Future Horizon is hopefully going to create environments where new ideas and projects are born in events around the globe.
Thank you for reading!
With love, HOO KOO E KOO