We started to dream about the future last August in Mühlhausen during“Dare 2 Dream Differently”, this continued in “Dare 2 Care” in Novemberin Thessaloniki, and we came back together again.
From 08.03 to 15.03.2020, our SmaF team of Jasmin Jäger, Moritz Borchardt, Carolina Alves, Mike Cotterell and Ulyana Duve facilitated the third and final youth exchange of the KA1- Erasmus+ project “Show me a Future II: Dare 2 Dream!”, named “Dare 2 Do,” in Mühlhausen, Germany.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. That’s why 23 participants from Estonia, Greece, Germany, Romania and Italy cametogether to this final Youth Exchange*. The third youth exchange, ‘Dare 2Do,’ inverted the previous youth exchanges’ approaches and looked at the present from the point of view of the future, encouraging the participantsto ‘reverse engineer’ the solutions to today’s challenges from the vantagepoint of a year 2050 in which they already have been overcome. Over thecourse of the eight days, we covered the areas of ‘identity and community’, ‘politics and governance’ and ‘work and the economy’, building up a comprehensive vision of the future created by theparticipants that included concrete steps of activism, education, and problem-solving how to get there. Besides daily creative ways of presenting the ideas of everyone to the group, such as Tomorrow’s TV orTomorrow’s Ads, the final ideas were presented in a Future Slam, followedby a farewell party.
*Needless to say, the world in which the decision was made to go aheadwith this event was far from today. To remain aware of the developing situation, the team remained in contact with their partner organizations, so as to be on top of what developments would affect our participants asbest as possible. This last international gathering was about problem-solving, hope and optimism. Despite all the challenges, the participants were creative and thought about solutions and alternative narratives for the future. Their visions have been collected in short stories and articles, which will soon be published in a booklet here.
“Show me a Future” will return!
