1. Future Views Workshop futureviewstoolkit.com
The workshop is divided into three colour-coded sections, each lasting roughly an hour.
Divide the group into two or three teams of around 4-8 individuals. It’s important to mix the age groups up so that young people and adults are working together. Encourage them to record their thoughts at every stage so that you can review them later. You might also make an audio recording of their conversations at the points where ideas are shared as a group.
Materials: Each team will need Post-it notes of at least 3 different colours, coloured pens, and several large sheets of paper.

2. What creative activity would you do if you had more time?
We’d also like to know your name, and how you are involved in your local area.
Ice breaker
Go around the room inviting participants to introduce themselves. The question is intended to get them thinking about their own creative lives. This will be revisited at the end of the workshop.
Give each person 30 seconds (or less) to answer, unless you have enough time for more!

3. The Challenge!

4. Education and arts organisations are:
to ensure…
Working now in
the present day…
that in the far future all young people can be creative wherever they live for years to come…
and they need to know what you think

5. …that the UK is a creative powerhouse, and has been for a long time.
Did you know …
…that the UK is a creative powerhouse, and has been for a long time.
Tourism
Museums and Heritage
Digital Industry
Music
Game Design and leisure
Film and TV
Visual Arts
Theatre and Drama

6. BUT THAT IS AT RISK! Bigger tuition fees and debt at University
Artists don't earn enough with rising costs of living
BUT THAT IS
AT RISK!
97% digital businesses small and vulnerable
Local places losing theatres and museums
Uncertainty in UK economy
Arts and technical subjects squeezed out of schools

7. To view the future takes imagination

8. the current drivers for change.
Now
Near Future
Far Future
Identify
the current drivers for change.
We will take you on a journey through three steps:
Step 1 is going to be about what is happening now that has potential to impact on the future of arts and creative learning in your area

9. Now Near Future Far Future
Identify
the current drivers for change.
Focus
on the impact. What will this mean?
Step 2a is about this question: If these things don’t change, what will that mean in the near future?

10. Now Near Future Far Future
Identify
the current drivers for change.
Focus
on the impact. What will this mean?
Develop
ideas. What new things will exist?
Step 2b is about ‘How can we ‘flip’ these into positive scenarios?’

11. Now Near Future Far Future
Identify
the current drivers for change.
Focus
on the impact. What will this mean?
Imagine
What will our future world be like?
Develop
ideas. What new things will exist?
Step 3: What will this mean for our future?
We will talk about: Who will live there? What skills and attitudes will they need to thrive?

12. Let’s get started!

13. ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM Level 1 - Now
This first round is designed to generate lots of ideas, digging deeper into things that stop young people from engaging with arts and culture, specifically those things happening now that will impact on the future if they don’t change.
There are three questions, each one looking at a different level of factors. Ask the groups to note thoughts on Post-its, different coloured for each question.

14. Identify your top Gamechangers
Zoom out…
What are some big things happening in the world that might affect your access to culture and creativity?
Identify your top Gamechangers
e.g. on Purple Post-it notes

15. Identify lots of local barriers
Zoom in…
What barriers are there locally for young people’s cultural and creative lives?
Identify lots of local barriers
e.g. on Yellow post-it notes

16. Identify lots of internal barriers
Zoom in again…
What are the personal factors that stop children and young people from engaging more in culture and creativity?
Identify lots of internal barriers
e.g. on Blue Post-it notes

17. Internal External Step back and look.
Place factors that are most personal on the left, and factors furthest from your control on the right.
Internal
External
Ask the whole group to arrange their Post-its in one shared line from ‘internal’ to ‘external’.
Ask each team to choose the Post-it that is the most personal or Internal factor, then as a whole group decide which team’s Post-it should be placed in the extreme left position. Then do the same for the most external factor (or most outside of their control). After this everybody brings all their Post-its and place them where they feel they belong.

18. Internal Character Skills and Capacities External Context
Step back and look
Place factors that are most personal on the left, factors that are furthest from your control on the right.
Internal
Character
Skills and Capacities
External Context
Stand back from the line and look at the colours of Post-its. You should see clusters representing three areas of Character, Capacity and Context. Also, you’ll see the colours are quite mixed up.
Factors relating to internal character are likely to relate to personal feelings and emotions (e.g. ‘I have nobody to go with’ and ‘people might judge me’)
Factors relating to skills and capacities are likely to relate to local infrastructure, opportunities and the ability of individuals or organisations to harness these. These are also likely to afford the most potential for change
Factors relating to external context are likely to be factors that ‘happen to us’ or are imposed on us, (e.g. governmental policy, world economics)
Flow’s Thrivable Culture framework illustrates how the three sets of factors impact on each other, for example an external issue might be solved by addressing the skills and capacities a young person has, which will in turn impact on their thoughts and feelings (see online toolkit for more).
Invite each team to identify 3 or 4 factors that they feel are most pressing, urgent, or important for their local area, ideally selecting a mix of internal, relational and external. They will use these for the next round.

19. Impact! Level 2 – Near Future
Invite each team to identify 3 or 4 factors that they feel are most pressing, urgent, or important for their local area, ideally selecting a mix of internal, relational and external. They will use these for the next round.

20. What impacts will your barriers and gamechangers have caused?
In the near future
What impacts will your barriers and gamechangers have caused?
Focus on the impact. What will this mean?
This is a mindmapping exercise. Give each team a large sheet of paper and several coloured pens. They stick their selected Post-its onto their sheet, and draw or write all the potential impacts that each factor could have. Encourage them to also draw out links between the factors, what will A + B result in? What if both C & D happen but E doesn’t?
To encourage people to think more deeply, ask them to look at their map and for each point they have made think ‘what then?… and what then?… and what then?…’

21. What impacts will your barriers and gamechangers have caused?
In the near future
What impacts will your barriers and gamechangers have caused?
Tag your ideas as positive, negative, or both.
Half way through this activity interrupt the group and ask them to review what they have written so far, indicating which of their outcomes are positive and which are negative. You might hand out two different coloured stickers for them to do so. It is likely that they will find that the majority of their stickers relate to negative outcomes, which creates an opportunity for you to discuss the value of having a positive view of the future, to identify opportunities instead of barriers.

22. which way things will go
It’s hard to know …
which way things will go
Discuss the spread of positive and negative ideas, give them an example of things that society got wrong when trying to predict the future (such as the great Horse Manure crisis of 1894)
Then give them examples of future thinking that people got right, such as Sir Joseph Bazalgette who designed London’s Victorian sewerage system to accommodate 4 million people, twice the population of London at the time. Thinking creatively and building it too big meant that now, with 8.5m people, London is only just needing to build new ‘super sewers’.

23. Why does it matter? Creativity can help us solve problems
CULTURE is all the ways art and creativity are saved, shared and interpreted
TECHNOLOGY and other big shifts could change art and creativity so much we can hardly recognise it
Whatever changes we will always NEED ART: to sing, dance, make images, tell stories
Arts help you be creative, which is GOOD FOR YOUR LIFE and work
Additional slide, if you need it, to discuss the value of creativity in solving problems.
Creativity can help us solve problems

24. What positive outcomes could also happen?
Flip it!
What positive outcomes could also happen?
How will people use creativity to solve problems?
Develop ideas. What new things will exist?
Ask the teams to revisit their mind maps, and using a different coloured pen think of positive, creative solutions, or alternative positive impacts that could arise.
This is a good point to mix the teams up by moving two or three people from each team into another one. This encourages them to re-think the issues as they describe them to their new team mates, giving them a fresh perspective.
Once they have had time to discuss their positive perspectives, each team summarises their thoughts to the others, so that the participants can discuss their positive vision of the future as a group.

25. What does the future look like now? How is it different?
Welcome to the Future!
We have arrived!
What does the future look like now? How is it different?
Ask the participants to re-arrange themselves in a circle and explain that you will be playing an improvisation game to create a picture of the future. They will take it in turns to suggest something new that will exist, or a way of being, in the future. There is only one rule, that each person has to respond to the previous person’s idea by saying ‘yes, and...’. Start the group by deciding what year you have arrived in, and ask the first person a question such as ‘what are you most excited about now you are there?’.
Questions as prompts if people get stuck could include:
What is new here that was not here before?
What is better?
What are you most excited about?
How do you feel in this new future?
What do you miss from the past?

26. Level 3 – Far Future
The neXt factor

27. Write each idea on a separate Post-it
In the far future what kinds of people will we find? What skills or attitudes will they need to thrive?
Write each idea on a separate Post-it
Imagine: How is this different for work, learning or play?
Re-arrange the group into three teams. One will focus on the world of work, one on education, and one on leisure time. Ask them to think of all the skills, values and attitudes that young people will need to lead thriving creative lives in these areas, writing them down on a large sheet of paper.
Ask each team to decide on their three most important points and share these with the rest of the group, discuss any similarities between their ideas.
You could also point out that it is the people sitting in the room that will be responsible for making sure tomorrow’s young people have the opportunity to develop these. The adults can create the conditions for now, and the young people are tomorrow’s future cultural leaders.

28. people in the present day
You have successfully imagined
what the future needs!
Let’s tell the
people in the present day
Re-arrange the groups one last time so that the young people and adults are now in their own peer groups, and ask them each to discuss how the other age group could act to make the positive future they imagine a reality.
Turn their chairs so each group is facing the other, and then they take it in turns to pitch to the other group, trying to persuade them to make the changes they feel are most important for a thriving, creative future.

29. Have a wonderful future!
Thank you
Have a wonderful future!