Utopia Now! Local young people set out their visions for the future

A better place for whom?

Utopia Now! is led by a multidisciplinary team of researchers who were concerned that numerous research projects, such as those engaged in robotics, artificial intelligence, and genetics, are set to drastically change the world in which we live but that people outside of universities are rarely asked what this means for them or what they want the world to look like. Drawing on King’s mission to ‘make the world a better place’, Utopia Now! gives local young people the opportunity to express what would make the world a better place for them.

Future Stories: One Day in 2027

One of the key initiatives of the Utopia Now! project was the writing competition, Future Stories: One Day in 2070, which ran between June and September 2020. The competition invited 11–16-year-olds from Southwark and Lambeth to write a story about life in the year 2070.

The competition was run by King’s researchers in collaboration with Lambeth and Southwark Libraries. It was funded through the King’s Together Fund and the NIHR Guy’s and St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Centre, and was supported by the London Research Design Service.

To help the young people develop their submissions, the team put together a 7-day sci-fi story starter resource page, which includes video content, writing prompts and examples of science fiction in popular culture.

The writing competition resulted in an anthology of flash fiction by local young people, with an introduction by acclaimed science fiction writer Stephen Oram. In his introduction, Stephen commented: ‘I had a pleasant surprise when I received the competition entries for judging. They were fantastic. Such insight into possible futures and of human behaviour was heartening. There was some really good story telling too. Not only did they make me smile, chuckle, gasp and raise my eyebrows they made me think about things I'd not previously considered.’

Ranging from unsettling dystopian worlds to futuristic technology, the short stories included in the anthology represents the aspirations and anxieties young people have about the future world.

The most imaginative writers were selected to take part in a creative writing day with Stephen Oram in October 2020 to explore the world of the future. The young people also took part in an illustrations workshop to create images that would accompany their stories.

Dystopia Now!

The team have also recently launched Dystopia Now!, a spin-off project of Utopia Now! funded by the Maudsley Charity, which aims to improve life for young people in Lambeth and Southwark during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dystopia Now includes three online activities for young people to get involved in that aim to shape research, policy, and practice in the local area. Activities include This is the Year, a poetry and spoken word workshop and competition that invited young writers (ages 11-16) to write or record a poetry or spoken word piece exploring their life during the pandemic. The young writers were also invited to join an online workshop with local published poet Belinda Zhawi at Theatre Peckham to develop their entries.

Aspiring town planners, architects, and Minecraft enthusiasts (aged 6-16) were invited to take part in a Dream Lockdown Minecraft Workshop to build their ideal lockdown neighbourhood in Minecraft. While budding filmmakers (aged 16-19) could take part in the Life in a Day of Corona film challenge, supported by an online resource page to help them get started with creating their 1-minute submissions. Selected films created as part of this activity will be woven together to tell the story of a single day in Southwark and Lambeth during these unusual times.

The work from all three activities will be published online later in the year on the Dystopia Now! Time Capsule. The time capsule will also be shared with local policy makers and the Maudsley charity, which is linked to the local NHS mental health Trust. All participating young people will receive a certificate from King's College London to thank them for their contributions.

Find out more about Utopia Now!

Read the One Day in 2070: Flash Fiction Anthology.