Food for Thought Tuesdays @ STREAT / 2020 (2 months) / Systems-led Design / Volunteer
The experiment
In January 2020, led by seven Melbourne kids aged 6-12 years, we creatively explored ‘What if you could design how your world looked - what would it look like 20 years from now?’. The kids made collage-style responses, and a shared Statement for the Future.
We deliberately chose to run this first mini-experiment with kids as custodians of future, and to set the tone for latter experiments.
Objectives
Experiment objectives were to:
Reveal a child’s view on what an ideal world looks like in 20 years, to help us consider what changes we can make as an organisation and community to make the future better for everyone
Set the tone for further Food for Thought Tuesday experiments – Help build a ‘STREAT Story of 2040’
Creating stories of the future
The kids sketched and cut and paste from magazines to create ‘visual stories' on one of these topics:
Where would you live?
How will you get around?
How will you eat?
What are you eating?
How do you catchup with friends?
How will you have fun?
How will you keep fit?
What do the kids value for the future?
We went through everyone’s collages and wrote up the shared values they’d expressed.
Place: Abundant nature + space, integration, invisible technology, feeling safe, a feeling of belonging
Action: Individual responsibility + action, informed, conscious choices, and lifestyle change
Collaboration: collaboration with local entities, inviting of communication
Statement for the future
By Woody, Indigo, Olive, Angus, Will, Thomas, Adam
14 January 2020
We believe everybody should have the right to feel happy and healthy, and that they belong and feel safe and can be whatever they want to be.
Our stories show how we want 2040 to be. We still want there to be nature. Technology will be there to support us but we want people connection, people to talk to, and people to take care of us. Our stories also show how nature and space are important to us; technology is not going to overtake things.
We hope by seeing our stories you will want to add or make your own contribution, and be motivated to change your lifestyle to take better care of the earth.
We imagine [one way to make change is] partnering up with companies like 4ocean... expanding organisations... doing more by making things bigger.
