ABSTRACT
One of ALL-YOUTH’s aims has been to study how young people imagine the future and how they can contribute to sustainable future horizons. Making sense of the future is a challenging task, as it is entangled with social and power relations, which deeply shape people’s imageries of it. While acknowledging the trickiness of the question of imagining futures, the authors have engaged in such imaginings by working together with diverse youth groups in creative ways. In the chapter, they discuss their fieldwork experiences, building on the idea of play and creative thinking as one of the capacities that constructs young people’s well-being. They argue that a convivial, safe and respectful research atmosphere is an avenue to high-quality knowledge, but also an important possibility to value young participants as who they are and strengthen their sense of belonging and sense of being acknowledged as important. To genuinely achieve these aims challenges the researcher to constant critical self-reflection, attentiveness, flexibility and high tolerance of discomfort. Young people may experience the research situation differently from what researchers expect and can participate in ways that, without attentiveness, may remain unnoticed and unacknowledged as participation and a valuable source of knowledge.
