The reality of our utopia

• Target group: Secondary, VET, Higher education, Adults
• Focus: Imagine and invent the world as you career
• Activity: Educating
• Form: Group
• Duration: 270 minutes

This activity is a group activity for young people and adults to promote the development of vocational hope and the imagination of potential futures and societies

Inspiration for the tool

This activity was created by the Portuguese innovation factory.

Rationale: Why is this needed?

This activity has potential to promote participants vocational hope by combining a focus on the critical analysis of the contemporary world with the transformative potential through careers, by considering political dimensions and emphasising collective agency and action.

Objectives

By the end of the activity, participants will be able to:

• Identify dimensions of social, economic and environmental sustainability in their interests, competences, hobbies, and life experiences and how to have a positive impact on the world
• Analyse critically the contemporary world and imagine utopian possibilities
• Identify what could contribute to a more just world
• Identify strategies to mobilise collective efforts to improve living conditions in society and reflect on their own role

Resources needed

Before the implementation of this activity, it would be important to have already explored and worked with the group on:

• the concept of social, economic and environmental sustainability, so that participants are prepared for the reflection on a utopian world,
• to have already explored participants’ vocational/career/life interests, goals and competences, as well as their values.

Therefore, this activity should come at the end of a career counselling process and could be used in its final stages to support the development of vocational hope and support their projection onto the future.

Activities

First session: Individual activity: each participant starts by collecting all the work previously developed during the sessions to compile a portfolio focused on their own vocational/career/life interests, values, aims and competences. Based on that portfolio, the first session will be dedicated to each participant completing their portfolio by defining how these activities/aims/interest can have a positive impact on the world, considering social, economic and environmental sustainability issues (e.g., using the Sustainable Development Goals as the basis for that analysis).

Second session: Participants are organised into small groups (but it would be important not to have more than three groups to present in the next session):

• Each group will share among them and reflect on the output of the previous session; how one’s own activities can have a positive impact on the world (e.g., studying or aiming to study engineering/economics/business, among others.; being part of a youth group; being an athlete; being an activist for inclusion in society; training to be a medical doctor; becoming part of a union, social movement or a political party; etc.)
• Based on how these activities/aims/interests can have a positive impact on the world, they are then invited to brainstorm what an ideal/utopian world/society would be for them. They should be guided to describe:
  • how this society is organised
  • how people interact with each other
  • how people interact with the environment
  • how the labour market is organised
  • how work is organised
  • what are the fundamental values of this society
• They should prepare a way to present this to their colleagues (it can be a simple narrative that describes this world, it can be enacted or they can also use visual aids).

Third session:

• Each group presents the result of the previous session
• The facilitator encourages reflection and debate of the complete group on what is hindering the construction of the ideal society developed by each group. Reflective questions to guide the discussion:
  • What is missing in the contemporary world to achieve these utopias?
  • What current societal values that should be questioned or challenged
  • What should we keep from the contemporary world?
  • What should be reformulated / reconstructed in the contemporary world to achieve the ideal world?
  • What is the role of work and professions in order to achieve these utopias?
  • What should change to achieve these utopias? (in social, economic, political terms, in schools, companies and the labour market, etc)
  • What can we do to achieve these utopias?
• Each group has the responsibility to take notes on the result of the discussion (in each group there are participants who are responsible for taking notes of the debate on each utopian narrative presented).

Forth session: Participants go back to their groups:

• The ones who were responsible for taking notes of the debate will present them to remind all of the discussion.
• They will return to their utopian narrative and will discuss and prepare a project of what should be implemented to achieve that utopian society. They should consider not only individual actions but how to organise in the community, socially and politically.
• Each group presents their project to the complete group and the facilitator encourages analysis and debate of each project
• The facilitator should finalise the session by promoting reflection on the importance of solidarity and collective work to contribute to social transformation.

Extension activities

There could be an individual reflection sheet after this activity in which participants would be invited to answer the following questions:

• What do you think you have learned from this activity?
• What do you think you would like to include in your own life and career aims from what came up during the activity?
• What are your concerns about the implementation of such a project to achieve a utopian society?
• How would you like to contribute to a utopian society and what can you offer?
• What can you do now?