Between 2022 and 2024, "The Future is Now" experimented with methods to "Equip young people and the youth sector with futures literacy (tools, methods and practice) that allows them to imagine alternative futures and influence the present." The project involved more than 200 youngsters (teenagers to young adults) in Slovakia and Brussels, in ten separate sessions.

What we learned

An analysis of the stories and creative matérial created by the young participants yielded several insights.

Many young people initially view the future (at least the future in general, sometimes not their personal futures) in a rather negative light, leading them to feel uncertain and sometimes fearful. However, (i) a significant part of our young participants -- with strong variations from session to session -- have a more positive outlook on the future, and (ii) the results with older audiences are not very different.

Many young participants hold basic ideas about the future that are shaped by dominant narratives they encounter in media, books, and films. It's no surprise, then, that for many, the first things that come to mind when thinking about the future are the climate crisis and technology. These themes appear in nearly all the stories co-created with young people, although the collective creation also helps them move beyond them.

That being said, the most important topics emerging from the groups' creative and reflexive work are the following:

• Environmental crises, ecological restoration, and the urgent need for sustainability are recurring themes, reflecting growing concerns about the planet's future, the necessity for action and, if we believe the stories, the reality of inaction.
• The rise of digitization, automation, AI and autonomous machines (aka robots) also frequently appears, with a focus on how these technologies will affect the labor market, social structures, and individual purpose. As robots take over more tasks, young people question the role of human work and its significance in a highly automated world.
• Our young participants place significant emphasis on mental health. Mental health challenges are a constant concern in their stories, particularly regarding emotional regulation, loneliness, digital overconsumption and/or bullying, and the loss of purpose due to automation. This often connects to a broader theme of losing deep and meaningful relationships.
• The theme of surveillance, especially through AI and intrusive technologies, also surfaces frequently. Young people do not want such control over their lives and, in their imagined futures, are prepared to resist a world dominated by artificial intelligence and other digital control mechanisms.
• While society already feels the effects of increasing polarization, this theme also appears frequently in their future stories. Whether it's polarization due to identity politics, societal inequality, or the disparity between the rich and poor, the challenge of coexistence and understanding others emerges as a significant issue. At the same time, there is a strong desire, if not a necessity, to coexist despite these differences. This is evident in stories that feature refugees, where individuals are forced to leave their homes due to environmental challenges. Despite their differences, these characters are united by a common desire to confront difficult situations together and find new ways to survive.

How we did it

The methodological approach of all workshops was based on a "Futures Literacy" framework. Initially championed by Unesco, Futures Literacy is defined as "the skill that allows people to better understand the role of the future in what they see and do", "the capability of imagining diverse and multiple futures, and using futures as lenses through which we look at the present anew."

Each session developed is a slightly different form, adapting to the participants, the context, and also experimenting with various approaches. In spite of those differences, a common pattern emerged, which has been translated into a "Futures Literacy Toolbox":

1. Stage 1, "Connecting to your inner future", aims at "understanding one's basic relationship with, & engaging in conversations about, the Future(s)." It is mostly made up of short, playful, collective exercises.
2. Stage 2, "Identifying trends, signals and factors of change" was sometimes merged with the previous or following stages. It is mostly about being aware and/or understanding what generates change, and why the future is likely to be different from the present.
3. Stage 3, "Crafting stories and images of the future", is about imagining alternative futures. After testing with classic scenario methods, the project decided to focus on more creative practices: theatre, video, podcasts, collages... This resulted in 10 different, sometimes very imaginative, stories from 2050.
4. Stage 4, "Your part in creating the future", is about two things: making futures personal, by inviting participants to imagine themselves in the futures they have created together; and taking stock, by identifying the takeaways (in terms of skills, of emotions, of actions...) for each participant.

Wow!

Among the most powerful lessons learned from the project are the following:

Generating Hope Through Action

What was found significant through the experience of co-creating stories of different futures is that young people do see hope. Triggered (at least in part) by the Futures Literacy activities, they begin to realize that the future doesn't have to be entirely dystopian, and to recognize the important role they have in shaping it. Often for the first time, they are also considering what they can do about it — whether individually or collectively.

A unique theme that stands out is the emphasis on personal agency and the belief that individual or collective action can drive significant change, offering a more optimistic view of societal transformation. Hope does not come from a passive belief in a positive future, it emerges from the participants' realization that, in a generally more difficult environment, they can together be forces of change.

Getting Over the Tired Utopia vs. Dystopia Debate

While theoretically relevant, the classic distinction between probable and desirable futures did not prove very helpful in practice - especially during the early stages of the work.

• Making the difference between "probable" and "desirable" is not as easy as it seems, especially when thinking about the future where complexity and uncertainty make it more difficult to untangle knowledge, beliefs, and values. When talking about a post-growth future, is it because we "objectively" think that the environment will force this future on us ('probable'), or because we feel it will reconnect us to deeper sources of meaning and satisfaction ('desirable')? When refusing such a future, is it because we believe that technology will provide a way out of the environmental crises ('possible'), or because it feels too bleak to even contemplate ('undesirable')?... In our experience, these differences became more easy to discuss after the group creation than before.
• Don't ask participants to produce "positive futures": there is a strong pressure to generate positive images of the future. It is based on two assumptions that have not been verified in the project: first, that when left alone, people will tell overly dark ("dystopic") stories; second, that dark images of the future breed despair and anomy. What we found in practice was that when given freedom, participants mostly told stories in which, in a world where life is generally more difficult than today (not an unreasonable assumption), the protagonists were able to carve out spaces for change, solidarity and hope.
• People will, and should, disagree on what is a desirable future. Discussing desirable futures is in fact the essence of what politics is about. There is no reason why young people should agree about them more than their elders! The best that can be expected from the group effort should be to create images of the future where different values can cohabit, and in the reflexive phase at the end, to allow participants to debate their respective views of what is and isn't desirable in a constructive way. Whereas, when the constraint to tell positive futures weighs too heavily, participants will often oblige by producing bland stories where things magically go right, with no trade-off nor major difficulties, removing most of the complexity that is such a central concept of Futures Literacy.
• It is more interesting, and more difficult, to help participants move away from the "tropes" coming out of the entertainment industry. Young participants have all been exposed to movies, TV series, video games, novels and comics full of fancy technologies, savior heroes, "Big Brother" or Terminator-like technologies, etc. This is where an open co-creation process, mostly directed by the needs to produce a good (shareable) story and media production, can help: by giving space to the imagination of all participants, by letting characters and stories unfold in unexpected ways, by leaving space for fun, etc.