Decision-making: children and young people's participation
In the spirit of using this blog as a place to think aloud I'm trying to connect three fascinating things I've read recently.
Decision-making: children and young people's participation (from the Scottish Government)
Game Design as Policy Making (Matteo Menapace)
People Powered Results (from NESTA)
As I consider my masters project the overarching question I keep coming back to is how do we involve children and young people in futures thinking and then respond to what they are telling us with policy that is meaningfully co-created?
In Matteo's article he writes:
Playing games: When we play a video game, its rules are often opaque and enforced by a machine. When we play a board game instead, we have to learn and constantly negotiate its rules. This trains us to think critically about policy.
Making policy: And when we make games, we make policy. Through rules and incentives, game designers decide what players can and cannot do, what they should focus on, and what they should care about.
The Scottish Government paper references a variety of consultations and co-designs that have involved children and young people. These consultations used a range of more tradition tools to gather input. I do wonder however if there are more creative engaging ways to involve children and young people. This is especially true if we are looking to co-design policy for an uncertain future. In other words if we want to help children and young people to imagine what could (or should) be and take this as the starting point for our policy design.
Page 23 of NESTA's playbook references methods for engaging people with think about the future. Perhaps game design is a way to do this?