Young people’s orientations to the future: navigating the present and imagining the future

This article discusses the findings of the Imagine Sheppey project (2013-14) which studied how young people are ‘oriented’ towards the future. The aim and approach of the project was to explore future imaginaries in a participatory, experimental, and performative way. Working with young people in a series of arts-based workshops, we intervened in different environments to alter the space as an experience of change – temporal, material, symbolic. We documented this process visually and made use of the images produced as the basis for elicitation in focus groups with a wider group of young people. In this article we discuss young people’s future orientations through the themes of reach, resources, shape, and value. In so doing, we reflect on the paths that our young respondents traced to connect their presents to what is next, what we call their modes of present-future navigation. We explore the qualities and characteristics of their stances within a wider reflection about how young people approach, imagine and account for the future.