NMG announced plans to create a laboratory for dialogue between scientists and creative staff

The National Media Group (NMG) has decided to create a futurological laboratory designed for dialogue between scientists and creative personnel in order to create an image of the dreams of the future Russian society. Svetlana Balanova, CEO of NMG, told Izvestia on June 20 on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2025).

She called caring for the future part of the company's mission. According to her, the current task is to formulate trends that society is interested in, how NMG sees "the beautiful far away" rather than the near future, as well as how to create a dream image for making great discoveries and breakthroughs.

Balanova stressed that Russia has a huge culture of building its own vision of the future. According to her, this story was based on Soviet fiction. She noted that Russia is the leader of a privileged club of a small number of countries that build their own images of dreams and the future.

"We have decided that it is necessary to create a platform for dialogue between scientists and creative personnel with the participation of society in order to help create this dream image. And today we announced the creation of an open futurological laboratory, which, strictly speaking, will be such an open platform," she said.

The CEO noted that the first step in the laboratory's work was the joint research of NMG with the Sketches of the Future SP platform, which studies the perception of the future in Russian society. In addition, Balanova noted that she gives a lot of insights to creative staff on what and about whom it makes sense to create works.

As part of SPIEF 2025, Svetlana Balanova took part in the session "Sketches of the Future. How to model scenarios and images of the "beautiful Dalek".

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On June 20, as part of SPIEF 2025, NMG, together with the Platform CSP, presented the results of the "Sketches of the Future" study. According to the survey, 63% of Russians are optimistic about the future of humanity, especially young people (67% aged 18-24 years). It was clarified that optimism is associated with faith in new technologies, which, according to respondents, will change the nature of work, increase life expectancy, increase household comfort, and reduce the environmental burden.