Postcards from the near Future: Towards communicating communications

In this paper we present a case study of a project carried out in a telecommunications research center. The Postcards from the near Future project sought to begin to reflexively address the difficulties faced by telecommunications researchers in communicating their specialist research with colleagues and stakeholders across academia, industry and with a wider public. We devised an experimental practice based research project, Postcards from the near Future (PFTNF), as a pedagogical structure to support reflexive practical learning within the research centre to this effect. The PFTNF project invited PhD students and Post-Doctorate researchers within the telecommunications research lab to express their technical research through making postcards. The postcards created visual and narrative fictions of a future where research carried out within the telecoms lab might actually become deployed. Our case study of the PFTNF project provides insights into the nature of the challenge of communicating complex technical research. We show how the experimental communicative practice developed through the PFTNF project influenced researchers and catalyzed change in the communicative culture of the telecommunications lab. We argue that the kind of experimental communicative practice engendered within the PFTNF project merits further research and development, and we make suggestions to this effect.