The future of young people in 2035

Background The project "Future of Youth 2035" is based on the TrendWatch Youth project, as a natural continuation and extension. The reason why we decided to implement this project was that we see the importance of continuing the work we started on trend mapping in the lives of young people. It is a sociological qualitative research on newly emerging phenomena, and what influence and impact they have on the culture, experience and behaviour of youth. When trends are presented we are often faced with the expectation of instant solutions on how to respond to trends, which is not realistic to provide given the diversity of youth work but also of young people. At the same time, we also raise the topics of what the future of young people will be and what we need to teach them to do in order to teach them to live in a rapidly changing world. We are naturally drawn to consider what these trends mean for the future when we are trend mapping, as this is one of the aspects we take into account when analysing trends. However, the question of the future was very distant for us and although we had some idea before the project started, a whole new interesting dimension of working with young people and the concept of the future was revealed to us. Young people are the future, but more than 80% of young people think they are not being heard. With this project, we wanted to reflect that by listening to what their ideas of the future are, helping them to create it together and at the same time disseminating it to important adults and those who work with them. Objectives What we have achieved is that we have tested and experimented with the concept of the future as a tool to develop young people's competences but also to create so-called prototypes or alternative scenarios of the future. These are meant to stimulate debate about what kind of future we want and to help social transformations. Which was much more over the top than we had expected, as we were rather expecting to do with the concept of the future in the context of trend research. However, during the course of the project we found that we were going much further than that and the project was helping to develop a core competency needed for a rapidly changing world. This is also why Unesco has recognised futures literacy as a 21st century competence. In addition, there has been a very significant shift in both organisations. The way the Belgian partners look back on it is that it is only because of this project that they have managed to survive the post-covid aftermath, they probably would have disappeared. This project was an inspiration for them, a space to focus on important aspects in the organisation, a great mirroring of processes and functioning, but most importantly a support to involve young people in the project, where the outputs were made as participatory as possible. For YW it is especially a space to transfer know how from abroad, to try out and experiment with completely new tools like art and the future, and to prepare the ground for transfer to youth work in Slovakia. Implementation During the project we worked on 4 intellectual outcomes. O1 focused on identifying the theme of what is considered urgent to address, with the theme of mental health and relationships emerging. O2 was focused on the analytical and research part with respect to this topic. We investigated what appeared to be essential and relevant for the future or what is the current status quo within the topics and what are the trends for the future. We then conducted multiplier events with groups of young people, where we presented the research findings to them and talked to them about what their visions for the future were. Based on the discussions and exercises with the young people, the visions of the future captured by O4 were developed. In August 2022, an international Slovenian-Belgian training trip to the future was carried out, where they had to analyse the visions of the future more, talk about how to get to those visions and then try to experimentally create the future through an audiovisual work- films. The young people "lived a few days in the metaverse in 2035", as they assessed themselves, and helped them to realise some things. But the output in the form of films and a website (O5) serves as an outlet to start a discussion and to think about what kind of future do we even want. We disseminated all the outputs and outcomes of the project at multiplier events. Achievements O2- questionnaire survey and interviews with experts to identify pressing questions about the future O3- mapping the present- desk research aimed at mapping the current issue, identifying trends, local specificities, at the same time we interviewed experts on the topic. O4- principles from the future or young people's visions of what the world should look like in 2035 to have a sense of mental wellbeing and healthy relationships. O5- stories from the future- an audiovisual work and a website that aims to take us into the future for a moment and reflect on it. All outcomes of the project are accessible on www.youthfutures2035.com