Inspired by the Dream Project post idea here’s an attempt to flesh out just that.
I would like to work with several diverse groups of similarly aged children or young people. We would have two or three school days together to work use a variety of design research methods to consider their preferred educational futures, We would do three things:
- Collaboratively create a speculative scenario focussed on an educational future. I would like to ground the stages of the work that follow in this co-created scenario (rather than simply presenting the children or young people with a scenario I have created).
- Respond to this scenario in a way that creatively articulates how they want education to be. The question remains to focus on one design research method or try and create a set of shorter activities utilising a variety of methods. The children/young people would work in smaller groups and have the opportunity to explore each others work.
- Create a public group display, statement or manifesto synthesising the children/young peoples work. Thereby giving them an authentic audience/outlet.
- A final fourth step might be to connect the different groups work to the current policy landscape. This could be done by utilising some type of trend map or final report.
An important part of this work is the diverse nature of the groups I would work with. Scotland – like any nation is diverse in all sorts of ways (geographic, cultural, socio-economic) there is an obligation to present the type of future forecasting I’m considering here in a way that reflects that diversity, rather than gloss over it.
This approach is inspired by a variety of sources discovered during my EFI courses and wider reading. These include:
- Schooling, Education and Learning 2030 and Beyond (Published by Scottish Parliament & Scottish Futures Forum 2020)
- Little Book of Speculative Design for Policy Makers (Imagination Lancaster 2020)
- NESTA Playbook for People Power
- THE FUTURES BAZAAR A PUBLIC IMAGINATION TOOLKIT (BBC; Filippo Cuttica and Stuart Candy)
- The Future Everything Manual (Drew Hemment)
