Choose Your Future: Co-creating Life in 2070

Teach the Future: World Futures Day 2026-Young Voices

As part of World Futures Day - Young Voices (WFD-YV), a global 24-hour conversation exploring possible futures, co-facilitators Rafaela Valencia-Dongo (Peru–Spain) and Erica Austin (New Zealand) partnered as Next Generation Foresight Practitioners (NGFP) 2026 Fellows to host an interactive session focused on youth voices and collective imagination. Bringing together participants from around the world, this collaboration created space to explore how futures thinking can help us reimagine belonging, community, and thriving in a rapidly changing world.

What happens when we pause, close our eyes, and imagine the future, not as something distant, but as something we are already shaping?

As part of World Futures Day, we invited participants into a guided futures storytelling experience to explore life in 2070. Together, we stepped beyond prediction and into possibility.

Waking Up in 2070

We closed our eyes and woke up in 2070.

Through a structured scenario adventure, 36 participants from over 10 countries imagined themselves living in different future worlds—each shaped by shifting climate realities, governance systems, and social dynamics.

Participants stepped into diverse perspectives (from a curious child to a reflective elder)and crafted stories of daily life, relationships, challenges, and hope.

By the end of the session, the group had created 16 micro-narratives, each offering a glimpse into what the future could hold.

What We Explored

Across the narratives, participants grappled with some of the most pressing questions of our time:

• What does home mean in a world shaped by climate migration?

• Who gets to move, and who gets to stay?

• How do communities adapt, rebuild, and care for one another?

• What does it mean to grow old, or grow up, in an uncertain future?

Themes of belonging, displacement, resilience, and intergenerational responsibility emerged strongly throughout the stories.

Participants imagined futures where borders tighten or dissolve, where new cities are built from loss and adaptation, and where community becomes the foundation for survival and thriving.

Rethinking Hope

One of the most powerful shifts in the session was how participants reframed the idea of hope.

Rather than placing hope in institutions or systems alone, many stories located hope in people, relationships, and collective action.

Hope was found in:

• younger generations choosing collaboration over competition

• communities rebuilding together after disruption

• individuals making small, intentional choices that ripple into the future

This reframing invited participants to reconsider their own role. Not just as observers of the future, but as active co-creators of it.

From Imagination to Action

Futures thinking is not only about imagining what might be. It’s about asking what we can do now.

Through storytelling, participants reflected on what actions could have been taken in 2026 to create more just, inclusive, and resilient futures. Many pointed to the need for:

• stronger global collaboration

• earlier action on climate and mobility

• deeper investment in community and care

• listening more closely to diverse voices, including Indigenous knowledge and young people

These reflections highlight a simple but powerful idea: the future is shaped by the choices we make today.

Imagine Your Own 2070

This session was an invitation and that invitation remains open:

👉 Imagine your own 2070:
https://chooseyourfuture2070.tiiny.site/

👉 Explore other micro-narratives created by participants:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uCB11yxeaYccKEuaMRLuMztbLZcYTvWq?usp=drive_link