The Lumisphere Experience drew over 50,000 visits in Rio, revealing the powerful impact of immersive storytelling on human emotion. Participants reported increased optimism and hope, alongside a marked decline in feelings of despair and disengagement.
NEW YORK, April 16, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The Lumisphere Experience has demonstrated the power of cultural experiences to activate what its research partner, Institute for the Future (IFTF) calls "urgent optimism" — the belief that the future can be shaped for the better and that people have the agency to influence it.
Conceived by Visions2030 and co-created with Minds Over Matter, the Lumisphere is a three-dome installation using 360° projections, surround sound, interactive storytelling, and a bespoke AI experience that invites participants to imagine a future without limitation. Its first stop on a global tour took place last fall as part of the Museu do Amanhã's Esquenta COP Occupation in Rio de Janeiro, timed to coincide with COP30 in Belém and The Earthshot Prize Awards Ceremony, joining a historic season of global climate dialogue in Brazil. As part of its partnership with Visions2030, IFTF is leading the Census on the Future, a research effort to measure and amplify the Lumisphere's impact on public imagination, agency, and belief in positive futures.
The Findings: Urgent Optimism is a Collective Social Resource
Over 11 weeks during its Rio presentation, the Lumisphere Experience drew more than 50,000 visits and 36,000 responses from participants. The findings provide strong evidence for the impact of cultural experiences and immersive storytelling. The Lumisphere Experience elicited dynamic shifts in confidence and hope while reducing despair and disengagement — participants were significantly more likely to report the highest levels of optimism after the experience, and significantly less likely to report none at all.
"What we're seeing with the Lumisphere Experience is remarkable — not just a statistical uptick, but a genuine and measurable psychological shift across thousands of participants," said Jane McGonigal, PhD, IFTF Research Director. "This program didn't just raise the ceiling of optimism — it lifted the floor, reducing the number of people who felt no sense of agency or hope about the future at all."
"In the face of widespread anxiety about climate collapse and ecological loss, the Lumisphere represents a transformative alternative. It shifts the climate conversation from fear to possibility, offering an experience that is emotionally engaging, aesthetically inspiring, and psychologically empowering. Our partnership with IFTF has taken this project to a whole new level of impact. We could not be more proud of our collaboration with Jane and her team," said Elizabeth Thompson, Visions2030 Executive Director.
Replication and Strengthened Statistical Validation
The full 11-week dataset confirms and strengthens earlier findings. Patterns observed in the initial five weeks did not just persist — they replicated consistently across all four measures (mental flexibility, realistic hope, future power/self-efficacy, and openness to possibility), with shifts in urgent optimism holding steady and, in some cases, deepening. "One of the most important outcomes of this extended data collection is validation. When effects replicate across time and expand with larger samples, our confidence in their reliability increases substantially," added Dr. McGonigal.
What This Means for Climate Engagement
Ultimately, the research suggests that large-scale, immersive, and emotionally resonant experiences that blend creativity, play, and purpose can generate measurable improvements in how people relate to the future. They provide a path to a better future that begins not just with technology and policy, but with how people feel about what's possible. This measurably strengthens psychological readiness for large-scale change, serving as a social resource for building better futures.
A New Way to Measure Future Readiness
By making urgent optimism measurable, IFTF is helping define a new category of future-readiness metrics — tools that assess the emotional and cognitive foundations of resilience, collaboration, and long-term thinking.
"At IFTF, we see the Lumisphere as a vital example of imagination as a public good, and we are honored to support its mission through research and foresight," said Dr. McGonigal. "In creating the Lumisphere Experience, we focused on crafting an environment that helps people touch their imaginations to envision desired futures. When you can picture where you want to go, the byproduct is a feeling of hope," said Carey Lovelace, Visions2030 Founder. "The collaboration with IFTF helps measure the intangible power of the imagination -- to shift consciousness. Building a vision is powerful in itself; it also leads to pathways to action."
DOWNLOAD THE RESEARCH DATA AND EXECUTIVE REPORT HERE.
About the Lumisphere Experience™
The Lumisphere Experience was conceived by Visions2030 and co-designed with acclaimed immersive design studio Minds Over Matter. Through three interlocking domes, guided by voice and visual storytelling, visitors are immersed in vivid moving projections, soothing sound baths, and are led to imagine a potential world. Our goal is to inspire over one billion people by 2030 to build a global movement of imagination in action. Learn more.
About Visions2030
Founded in 2019 by Carey Lovelace, Visions2030 is a New York City-based creative studio drawing from diverse disciplines such as design, art, science, and technology to explore the immense potential of imagination to facilitate new ways of thinking. It consists of a diverse team of dreamers and crafts experiences that reimagine complex global challenges—such as climate, inequity, urbanization, and social justice—and reorient toward solutions, transmuting despair into hope. In-Visions NP Corp, doing business as Visions2030, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Learn more.
About Institute for the Future (IFTF)
IFTF readies the world to create a better future by infusing the present with visions of transformative possibilities. It was founded in 1968 as an independent, public-interest nonprofit, a spinoff of the RAND Corporation, with original support from the Ford Foundation. Our founding articles of incorporation state that "it is imperative that society acquire the necessary tools, methods, and research capabilities to identify and cope with socio-economic questions before they become tomorrow's critical problems." This was a revolutionary call-to-action at a tumultuous time in history — a call for a more rigorous systems approach to the future that would help people find agency in their own expertise to be better prepared in uncertain times.
Over half a century later, we are still driven by this same singular ambition: to look as far ahead as possible and imagine the world "if." Asking "what if?" allows us to transcend the limits of short-term thinking, to change course before it's too late, and to see future possibilities framed in intensely human terms. IFTF is the world's oldest continuously running futures research and educational organization. We believe people can harness the power of "if"—the power of imagination to awaken a sense of agency in their future and drive change in themselves and their organizations—and our tools and programs are designed for exactly that. Institute for the Future is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization. Learn more.
Minds Over Matter (MoM)
MoM was founded by the Chief Creative and Design teams behind Obscura Digital, a company that pioneered Experiential Content and Immersive Technology. In 2017 Obscura was acquired by Madison Square Garden to design and develop the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. MoM has been innovating groundbreaking events, campaigns, architectural installations, and products for Fortune 500 companies for over 20 years.
Website: https://www.thelumisphere.earth/
Follow: @thelumisphereexperience | @visions2030.studio #lumisphere #lumisphereexperience
Communications and Media Relations
Lyn Winter, Inc., 213-446-0788, [email protected]
Institute for the Future
Jean Hagan, Executive Producer, 656-740-1386, [email protected]
Media Contact
Lyn Winter, Lyn Winter, Inc., 1 213-446-0788, [email protected], www.lynwinter.com
SOURCE Institute for the Future
Share this article