I’m reblogging this post from the Future Views (link here Future Views) website. We have been commissioned to run this project, and are seeking contributions.

This explains our research design for Future Views, and about how you can get involved in the process. Future Views explores how emerging technologies, organisational behaviours and critical trends in the world might affect young people’s abilities to live productive, creative and collaborative lives up to 2036. 

Our approach is always guided by the theory of Flow, which is that in order to be optimally engaged so that you can learn and flourish, you need the right balance of challenge and support.

Between now and December 2016 we will conduct research into current and future trends, and run consultation with young people and leaders in each region. Focusing on three Local Cultural Education Partnerships (LCEPs), in Fenland, Colchester and East Kent we can build a ‘future view’ of each area, which we will use to ask how we can make the best of future changes for CYP, up to 2036, to stimulate the next generation of cultural learning.

Our first step was to carry out background research, and to share papers on three themes:

• On digital technology (link here On digital technology) in context of cultural learning, and this infographic version (infographic version)
• On changes in education (link here education) and the wider world that affect children and young people now
• On living and working in the world, informed by a situation analysis (link here situation analysis) of social, environmental, technological, political & economic, legal and wellbeing-related drivers for change. Over the 6 months, we will refine this as more is known (e.g. outcomes of EU referendum).

If you have time, please do download and read these papers. We are inviting people to submit short pieces we can blog here, or comments, that respond or add to any of the issues raised in these three papers, bearing in mind our core question. You might be a young person thinking about your future, or from one of the three regions, or an adult with a professional or academic interest in these themes. Do get in touch.

Right now we are gathering information about the three local areas, inviting leaders and partners of the LCEPs to share with us their visions and challenges. (If you know these areas of Fenland, Colchester and East Kent, do feel free to give your view in the comments below or by email.)

Between 28th September and 20th October, we will carry out the youth consultation using a bespoke speculative design toolkit, in workshops with youth arts panels and a school group. In October (Thursday 20th, TBC) we will invite a panel of experts to take part in a discussion event with the young people, which will be broadcast online. The panel will react to the young peoples’ future visions, and the challenges described through our research.

Using all these ideas we will produce a ‘Routemap to 2036’ for each LCEP, which considers how cultural and educational organisations can best collaborate to ensure that all young people will be fully empowered to make, consume, learn about and work in arts and culture right up to 2036. The Future Views toolkit will also be available to download/use online for other LCEPs to replicate the process.