A Q&A with Ms KAY CHEW LIN, Futures Catalyst at the Sustainable Living Lab makerspace, where she helps individuals and organisations explore future trends and their impact on the world. She was previously a strategist at the Centre for Strategic Futures, Public Service Division.

Q: What's a futurist like you doing in a makerspace?

A: When it comes to “the future”, the verb we often use is “think”. The future, we imagine, is faraway and something that will happen. What if we use the verb “make” instead? For the future is not something that will just happen. If we want certain outcomes (or to avoid others), the only thing to do is get our hands dirty. This is where making comes in. Creating a multidimensional way to interact with ideas and possibilities can excite people in ways that written reports (though important!) cannot. For example, we organised a series of Future Friday public sessions in 2015 around the theme of transport, a response to the train breakdowns then. Volunteers designed and built a transport-planning game. It was in the making that we started to experience for ourselves the tradeoffs a policymaker has to make, e.g., between speed (by prioritising motorised transport) and community spirit (through pedestrianised streets).

Q: How does making relate to policy?

A: Can we put ourselves in a future that a policy is meant to create, before we even implement it? For policymakers, immersion is a way to express policy outcomes in concrete ways that can be much easier for members of the public to understand.

It is also valuable for persuasion and gaining partners and champions. Even before creating experiences, the process of putting together the underlying story – a curation of assumptions, values or outcomes that matter to us – can be illuminating. In the transport game, for example, the reaction of “What, no cars? How can?” highlights an opportunity to transform our mental models about the purpose of transportation. Making is also an opportunity to find new possibilities. A material like cardboard or wood presents to us opportunities that words cannot. In a Future Friday session on creating simple prototypes for product design, participants had a brief to design a toothbrush from the future. Using the same materials, they created a rich universe populated with different needs and desires – a combined toothbrush-nutrition analyser for the health-conscious, a frowning toothbrush for those who need emotional encouragement to brush – ideas we might have dismissed as silly if we simply talked about them. Making then is another form of language.

Q: How do I start making?

A: Making is not only for the technically gifted, nor does it require expensive equipment. All you really need is some time and creativity. In the process, we also inculcate in ourselves the maker mindset: Craftsmanship tells us to take pride in what we do – we do good work, dream good dreams and build good futures. The can-do spirit comes when we trust our curiosity to take us to unfamiliar places and learn new skills. What we don't know now, we can learn, and use that to carry on. Openness tells us to share. It is a future that we share after all, and by dreaming together and sharing our skills, perhaps we will be better able to shape the futures we want.

Making is not only for the technically gifted, nor does it require expensive equipment. All you really need is some time and creativity.

Got a question or topic you want answered by a pro? Send your suggestions to psd_challenge@psd.gov.sg

Employee figures in the Public Service

Based on data from the Public Service Division and the Department of Statistics, the proportion of public officers in different agencies have remained consistent since 2008, at approximately