Participatory backcasting is the workshop form: stakeholders co-create the desired future, then co-create the pathway, often using facilitated exercises, small-group work, and “sticky-note timelines” turned into a structured action pathway - sciencedirect 
It is most useful when the problem is complex, long-term, and value-laden (climate transition, education reform, governance, public health), where forecasting can feel like surrendering to trends rather than choosing a destination.
# A minimal backcasting workshop recipe Pick a horizon year and define “success” in observable terms (what exists, what disappears, what people can do, what is affordable, what is trusted), and write it as a scene you could stage.
1. Step A = Aims & Vision 1. Step B = Baseline Analysis 1. Step C = Creative Solutions 1. Step D = Decide on Priorities
Work backwards to identify milestones, enabling conditions, and “must-have decisions”, and then mark the points where you need experiments, policy changes, organisational changes, or new infrastructure.
- Futures under glass - sciencedirect
Turn the pathway into a living artefact: a timeline, a roadmap, a set of “next safe-to-try experiments”, and a list of open assumptions that must be tested - pdf and asset
# How it becomes “participatory theatre”
If you add role-play, facilitation, and performance frames, backcasting can be framed as applied theatre. In the performance the group collectively performs a future as if it were already real, then interrogates the “plot mechanics” that made it real - pdf and asset
A simple theatrical pattern is: 1. Future scene (life in the success-world) 1. Witness statements explaining what changed 1. Stepping backwards through key years 1. Returning to the present with commitments, owners, and next actions.