Future Tense: Harnessing Design Futures Methods to Facilitate Young People’s Exploration of Transformative Change for Sustainability

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.

Transforming our Critical Systems

“…In our efforts to create the right conditions to enable deliberate transformation to emerge from complex systems dynamics, there is currently a disproportionate focus on parameter interventions, the WHAT realm, advocating for leveraging existing mechanisms such as setting targets, introducing standards or providing subsidies, but falling short on developing new processes or rethinking existing ones as a prerequisite for achieving system-changing outcomes. Moreover, a singular focus on parameter interventions poses a risk of creating interventions that lack the interrogation of the dominant worldview, values and paradigms that underpin the current system (Angheloiu & Tennant, 2020). Shallow levers can potentially support systemic change, but shallow interventions may backfire in the absence of a suitable paradigm or shared mindset on the part of the stakeholders.…”

“…Tackling the multiple global challenges that, by definition, involve everyone is impossible without creating space for diverse voices and solutions. In a democratic, dynamic and diverse society, implementing solutions to problems depends heavily on the support of informed, critical thinking and active citizens (Angheloiu & Tennant, 2020). Improving how we structure and organise our information flows to and from relevant stakeholders allows participatory approaches such as policy co-design or participatory budgeting to leverage systemic change.…”

“…The example from Jakarta illustrates that decisionmaking processes should be inclusive and participatory, inviting the citizens that are most affected by climate hazards to play an active role in determining how best to avoid them, build resilience and pave the way for systemic change. Policymakers that proactively evolve participation beyond consultation through joint visioning processes, gathering input from citizens and enabling more inclusive decision-making processes, such as policy co-design or participatory budgeting, build the kind of stakeholder support that is essential to any systemic change or sustainability transition (Angheloiu & Tennant, 2020).…”