The Imagine Sheppey Fast Forward Project team held an event on Saturday 8 November at the Blue Town Heritage Centre in Sheerness on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent. This event brought to an end a one year project, which looked at how young people from the area imagine the future. It was attended by a mixture of local people, artists, and academics who heard about and discussed key findings of the research and viewed a video documenting the process of imagining the future used in the project.
Working with the artists ‘Tea’ and a group of young participants, the team explored young people’s images and ideas about the future through improvised performances and activities. Photos from workshops and posts can be viewed on the project’s Facebook page. This research builds on earlier work in the Living and Working on Sheppey project which used narrative to explore futures. Imagine Sheppey is part of a large AHRC/ESRC Connected Communities research grant called Imagine.
Dr Dawn Lyon, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, who has been working with Dr Giulia Carabelli and the artists Tea, including Peter Hatton in School of Music and Fine Art at Kent, said “It was great to see and hear people’s reactions to the project who weren’t already familiar with it. We had a lot of fun – as you can see in the video on our website! – and also faced some challenges using arts practice in sociological analysis”.
For more information on the project, see www.livingandworkingonsheppey.co.uk