About

TikTok futures is a workshop format that empowers young people to imagine the future.

The workshop aims to give young people agency and optimism over the future by teaching skills and mindsets in strategic long-term thinking. These skills make the future seem less like something that 'just happens to you' and more like something that you can shape.

The workshop uses TikTok to do this in a fun way (no lectures or classic workshoppy stuff).

Young people watch films and play games about the future, before using TikTok as a way to share and express the futures that they have imagined for themselves.

By placing creative authorship into young people's hands the project helps them to share and to shape their own visions of the future.

The workshop can be run in 3 days, 1 day or in a series of afternoon sessions.

PODCAST

Workshop process

The workshop uses a double diamond process: In the first step young people learn about a topic by watching videos and exploring pre-prepared future trends. They then discuss some pre-constructed scenario 'sketches' that outline possible ways that the topic could evolve in the future.

In the second step young people choose a future to explore in more detail and come up with ideas about the kinds of TikTok videos that they might see in that future. They then actually make these videos with their smartphones to create provocative speculative videos about possible futures.

Futures Framework

For the "pollinators in decline" workshop, young people explored and elaborated on four 'sketched' future scenarios. These scenarios contracted intensive vs regenerative approaches to biodiversity management as well as centralised vs dispersed approaches to policymaking. They discussed the challenges and opportunities of each and shared their perspectives on the current directions of biodiversity policy.