The future of childhood

How can we work towards a better childhood for children in the future?

We know that decisions are made today that will inform what happens in the future. We also know that children are the experts in what makes a great childhood. That’s why we set out to understand children’s hopes and dreams for what childhood might be like in the future.

We partnered with schools and community groups in the areas we work in across the UK and asked children to share their vision for the future in different creative ways. 

We also wanted to hear from professionals working in children’s policy, education and services, to understand what childhood is likely to be like in 2040, if nothing changes. 

The Future of Childhood report explores children’s vision for the future of childhood. It compares children’s vision with a possible future for an imaginary child in each nation of the UK, based on what we know now. The report asks us all to think about how we can change our current trajectories, and work towards children’s vision for the future. 

The child-friendly report (Welsh version here) can be used with groups of children across the UK to discuss the future of childhood, and how we can work towards a better future. The Future of Childhood activity pack - see below - can also be used for a range of activities to help children think about the future. 

This project was funded by the National Lottery Community Fund as part of their ‘Emerging Futures’ funding programme. With this funding, organisations and communities across the UK worked together to imagine a future they wanted to create. These future visions were developed by communities during the pandemic, as a way of identifying the futures they wanted to work towards, and how they might get there.