Future Making - not Future Taking

How do we help young people see the future as something they can participate in creating?

Mō Āpōpō Future-Makers is an initiative led by Tokona te Raki, a Māori social innovation lab in Ōtautahi, that equips rangatahi / young people with the tools, confidence and connections to actively shape the futures they want to inherit.

The kaupapa / project began from an increasingly urgent challenge. Young people are aware of the complex problems facing Aotearoa New Zealand and the world, but awareness without agency can easily become anxiety, disengagement or helplessness.

Mō Āpōpō asks how we might turn that awareness into hope and action.

It brings together futures thinking with Māori perspectives, concepts and stories to help rangatahi imagine different possibilities, think critically about the forces shaping their future, listen across different perspectives, work collaboratively and identify ways they can begin creating change.

At the heart of the work is an understanding that futures are made collectively. Difference becomes something to work with rather than overcome, and rangatahi are encouraged to see their own strengths, experiences and perspectives as resources for creating what comes next.

After being piloted with schools, youth organisations and wānanga, Mō Āpōpō is now expanding across Aotearoa. A new partnership with School Kit will take the programme into 500 classrooms and reach around 16,000 Year 7–10 students.

About the session

In this online session, Mō Āpōpō project lead Alice Dimond will take us inside the thinking and practice behind the initiative.

Alice will take us through one of the Mō Āpōpō tools, showing how Māori concepts and stories are woven into the approach and how these frames can broaden rangatahi thinking about what is possible.

During the session participants will:

Explore what is happening to youth hope, social cohesion and agency and how futures practice can help us respond
Learn how Mō Āpōpō is driving Aotearoa futures practice using knowledge, stories and worldviews from these lands
Experience an ideating tool to bring a shared vision to life

This will be an opportunity to explore Mō Āpōpō both as a practical approach to working with rangatahi and as a wider example of what futures practice can look like when it is grounded in the knowledge, stories and worldviews of Aotearoa.

About Alice Dimond

Alice Dimond (Kāi Tahu) is a social innovation and futures practitioner and Project Lead for Mō Āpōpō Future-Makers at Tokona te Raki.

Her work explores how Indigenous knowledge and futures thinking can help communities imagine and create more equitable futures. Alice is a 2023 Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Fellow and the New Zealand lead for the School of International Futures' Futures Methods from Around the World project, where she has explored how Māori worldviews and ways of thinking, organising and acting can open new pathways towards better futures.

Her research has helped shape the tools and resources developed through Mō Āpōpō, and she has shared this work at forums including the Dubai Future Forum and World Futures Day.

Contact the host of Mō Āpōpō - Future Makers