‘Media/Everyday Life 2030’ imagining workshop model published in English

Imagining alternative futures is not easy without methods that let us break free from the taken-for-grandtedness of how things currently are. Yet, it is of utmost importance to challenge the status quo and create change. In fact, it has been argued that the lack of imagination has prevented finding effective solutions to the urgent planetary crises (Bendor, 2018), and our time is characterised by the decline of political and utopian imagination pressingly needed to challenge capitalism (Salmenniemi et al., 2024).

In the project Young People Imagining Media(ted) Futures (2020-21), we developed an imagining workshop model called Media/Everyday Life 2030 to facilitate taking distance from the present day and projecting visions of alternative media(ted) futures. Originally published in Finnish, I have the pleasure of presenting its translation - finally! In my current research on developing methods to imagine sustainable digital futures, I have come back to the experiments of this previous project and the results from the online survey that guided the development of the workshop model. It seemed valuable that the workshop model was available for a wider audience outside Finland as well.

Media/Everyday Life 2030 workshop was developed so that young people can think about their mediated everyday life and related struggles playfully. In addition, we wanted to create opportunities for imagining what a desirable mediated everyday life could and should be like. The exercises provide opportunities to choose a theme for the workshop (for example, smart devices, social media, news, or games), and the workshop can be organised in multiple settings from school classes to NGOs and workplaces. In the research project, the workshop participants were employees of our media industry partners and young people aged 14 to 18 years.

The idea behind developing the workshop was that the future is not predetermined and that we can direct its course. We wanted to offer young people spaces to have their thoughts and values expressed and heard and, in this way, strengthen their role as active citizens. The Media/Everyday life 2030 Imagining Workshop emphasises the importance of young people’s perceptions, hopes, and fears about the future, precisely because the future concerns them in a particularly essential way.

You can download the link for the workshop model here

Our extended abstract reflecting the workshop model was published in AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2021 and can be found here