Routes to the Future – Future Views

While the future may feel alarming from a distance, especially through the current lens of political, technological and environmental change, we found underneath all of this a sense of hope, and often excitement, about what is possible.

There are many opportunities for Cultural Education Partnerships to have a real impact on children and young people’s lives through opening access to arts and culture, through the values and sense of agency this can nurture.

We would love to hear from you if you have tested our tools, or if you have some feedback or comments to share. Write a blog post, or just say hello! Contact us via hello@flowassociates.com

Run your own Future Views Workshop

The Future Views workshop is designed to help you to uncover your own local story of change now, and in the future.

Drawing out young people’s concerns, insights and dreams should help you to plan more responsively. It has been tested with teenagers and university students in mind, but you could try adapting it for younger people to further explore their capacity to imagine the future of work, learning and play.

We found that a combination of young people and adult cultural leaders also worked well. Imagination is an essential skill for thinking about the future, and the young participants encouraged the adults to be open-minded and playful. The adults in return supported the young participants to explore positive and constructive paths.

Our trial workshops lasted 90 – 120 minutes, but would work well as a full-day workshop, or could be split to run over several sessions. Within the guidance notes, we have included extension ideas, including role-play or creative writing, so that this workshop can be tweaked to suit different styles of engagement, allowing everyone to be comfortable and feel confident about participating. We have also outlined the methods we used to analyse their insights, so you can do the same.

Download the Future Views workshop slides and guidance notes:

Powerpoint or Slideshare

These are free for you to use, but we would ask that you credit the Future Views partners: Royal Opera House Bridge, Artswork and Festival Bridge, and Flow Associates, who were commissioned to research and produce these tools