In the autumn we celebrated our twentieth anniversary with a live-streamed look back at our past and our vision of the future. It was an hour of chat, commentary and good-natured banter – a virtual torrent of two decades-worth of content.   

But as we close out 2020 and reflect on what’s happened this year, we find ourselves curiously bereft of things to say. Maybe this is no bad thing. What we all need now as we take time out to pause and reflect is the void of silence, a cathartic moment when we allow ourselves to be washed clean of the tragedies both personal and public that have played out throughout this crazy, poleaxing year of calamity.  

Wherever you are, and whoever you’ll be with as we celebrate the season and say goodbye to all that 2020 has delivered and welcome in the New Year, all of us at The Future Laboratory wish you peace – just a few moments of real, unfettered peace.  

As we begin to grasp what the Transformative Twenties holds for us all – a decade of unparalleled change – we realise that sometimes this will be breathtaking in its beauty, at other times awful in its inhumanity.  

Stop, breathe, reflect and consider. And we’ll see you back here, with new words, new thoughts and new horizons in 2021. 

The Future Laboratory will close on 23 December and re-open on 4 January.