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When so much is uncertain, it’s even harder than usual to imagine future possibilities, and what counts as “future” might be next month instead of the next decade. KnowledgeWorks Foundation suggests applying scenarios as a way of starting.
They help us make and manage assumptions and explore multiple narratives about change so that we do not get focused on a singular future or pretend we can predict what will happen. Scenarios can be organised around critical uncertainties or alternative assumptions. For example, we may be uncertain
Creating scenarios presents the opportunity to get creative and challenge yourself to think of what could happen, not just what you think is most likely to happen.
Now, choose an area to focus your futures scenario, e.g. learning, civic engagement or careers in your city or region.
Then, follow these steps to create your scenario:
- List uncertainties young people may be facing in their future learning, civic and career pathways.
- Prioritise those that seem most important or most impactful for young people.
- Pick two of those top-priority uncertainties to form the axes of a scenario matrix in the scenario worksheet.
- Label the end points (for example, low/high duration and low/high spread)
- Identify features of each resulting scenario, which can be simple as listing bullet points or can take the form of a more developed story.
If you have a team, together explore your future scenarios and collect insights on ways learning, civic engagement or careers may unfold.
Here are some examples of applying future scenarios.
The Network of Cities of Learning offers this learning activity within the capacity-building project ‘Youth co-design learning, civic and career pathways’. We are grateful to the EU’s Erasmus+ Programme for co-funding support for this project.
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