It sounds like mission impossible: How can we create a future where young people can thrive while the levels of reported stress, anxiety, and loneliness are higher than ever?

In the fall of 2022, DDC – Danish Design Center decided to mobilize 150 critical actors in the field of mental health and well-being to explore how we can create more than just another plan for a thriving youth: We wanted to create a foundation for an entirely different future. 

“We know that we are on the road to one of the biggest welfare crises ever, but no one seems to know where to start,” says the Director of Social Transition at DDC, Sara Gry Striegler.

She sensed a general hunger for new tools and ideas in the field – a way to both shake up and inspire decision-makers in the current system. In other words, an excellent starting point for introducing a radically different approach.

Sense the future

Sara Gry Striegler and DDC specialize in mobilizing actors within health and social action. Using design methods, we have created tangible, immersive scenarios for future healthcare in Boxing Future Health and the future of aging in New Days. Design can be a powerful formula to create necessary systemic shifts when we encounter complex challenges, such as the current mental health crisis among young people.

 “We know that design is a unique method for mobilizing people, forging new connections and collaborations, and launching new ideas and initiatives,” says Sara. She adds:

“When we design future scenarios, we use our collective imagination to place ourselves somewhere else entirely – for instance, in a future where young people thrive. When we can see, feel, and listen to alternative outcomes of the future, it stretches our imagination of what that future could be, and it becomes clearer what we need to do here and now.”

A new approach

Among the participants in the mobilization effort was Janne Koefoed Jørgensen, Head of Program at the cross-municipal collaboration, The Frontrunner Network, which focuses on helping vulnerable citizens solve challenges that may arise in their meeting with the government.

“We wanted to find new solutions to an issue that we really don’t know how to solve,” says Janne. She found the design approach both appealing and inspiring. During the process, she and the other participants explored signals and glimpses of the future in the present to better understand what may be coming. 

“That was an incredibly inspiring process. Creating a preferred future helped us create a language and focus on WHAT we wanted to change rather than on change itself. We must recognize that there are issues we simply can’t solve with what we know today. I read somewhere that contemporary literature lacks utopias. I think this is somewhat similar: It is difficult for us to imagine what a better future actually looks like.”