Future tense: harnessing design futures methods to facilitate young people’s exploration of transformative change for sustainability
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Angheloiu, Corina
Sheldrick, Leila
Tennant, Mike
Chaudhuri, Goldie
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The research starts from the premise that as the world is changing rapidly and in nonlinear ways, we are educating future practitioners for jobs and contexts that don’t yet exist. They instead need to be equipped to work for and with uncertainty to be able to grapple with the scale and pace of emergent change. The fields of design and futures studies bring significant insights to this challenge, including an array of methods, tools, and frameworks for prospective and systemic explorations of alternative futures. The emerging field of design futures can be framed as ways to develop and deploy prompts, artifacts, and narratives to critically interrogate tomorrow’s societal debates today; as such, it is intentional from the outset in its pursuit of preferable futures and therefore social and environmental justice. The process of imagining the future is an active, values-laden social practice, which requires a layered approach to a methodology to surface and challenge dominant patterns—making it an ideal approach for training the young people who will shape our future. This article reports on the design and delivery of participatory workshops that employ design futures methods to facilitate the exploration of transformative change for sustainability. These workshops were conducted with young people aged sixteen to seventeen to equip them to develop and explore alternative futures. The results suggest that design futures methods can facilitate participants from non-design backgrounds to develop alternative futures and artifacts that might sit within them. It was found that developing a sense of ownership was key to enabling participants to effectively reflect on alternative futures and their implications. Finally, the study highlights the potential for these methods to inform both design and sustainability pedagogy.
Date Issued
2019-04-23
Date Acceptance
2019-01-23
Citation
World Futures Review, 2019, 12 (1), pp.104-122
ISSN
1946-7567
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Start Page
104
End Page
122
Journal / Book Title
World Futures Review
Volume
12
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in [citation info] by Sage Publications Ltd. All rights reserved. It is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1946756719844050
Sponsor
Economic and Social Research Council
Identifier
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1946756719844050
Grant Number
ES/P000703/1
Publication Status
Published online
Date Publish Online
2019-04-23