Welcome to fam signals

Welcome to Fam Signals, a new publication from Fam Studio, exploring the edges of what is shaping the lives of kids and families in the next decade.

“Imagine a world where children’s voices, dreams, hopes, and needs are seen and heard to help shape the future for all forms of life on the planet.”

Fam Studio

The world is changing faster than ever. And children and families are among the hardest hit by the big challenges we’re facing around the world: from the climate emergency to the cost-of-living crisis, from political division to loneliness.

As practitioners, innovators, designers, funders, and policymakers,  what can we do to shape a future where every child and the people who care for them can thrive in such uncertain times? Fam Signals will explore and curate actionable, accessible clues about the future for children and families to support us in our work.

“The way children interact with the world is literally a different way of thinking. They develop things collectively. We’ve got to engage children and young people, not only for the insights, but because they’ll be the ones to change things going forward. I think there will be a whole ethical, moral, values-driven movement when we engage children.”

- Bo Stjerne Thomsen, LEGO Foundation

Exploring the Big Questions

Questions we’ll be tackling – in dialogue with you and with guests from around the world – include:

• How are the needs of children and their families changing? 

• How might play and technology help tackle the challenges they face?

• What big ideas are researchers, thinkers, creatives, and grassroots communities all over the world working on? How are practitioners translating, prototyping, and turning these ideas into tangible experiences, services, products and policies for children and families?

• What models are emerging for governance and safeguarding that will allow us to work closely with children and families?

• How might AI become a creative, collaborative, ethical part of futures work involving children and families?

And many more. We’d love to hear your questions, and we’ll work to address them in future posts.

“When ideas come from children, they’re perceived as coming from a heartfelt exploration of what the world could look like – not as a political statement.”

Zelda Yanovich, Fam Studio

First Season

Fam Signals will be organised around ‘seasons,’ each exploring a different theme. 

Our first season will be focused on Young Futures. 

Every child is imaginative, creative, and naturally futures-focused. Their ideas and approaches have so much to offer as we find our way through thinking through and acting on solutions. How might we include young people in decision-making, strategy, and policymaking in more creative and inclusive ways? What benefits might this bring to individual organisations and to society as a whole? 

Kids want to be more involved, they want to be making and creating, and not just watching.”

Vanessa Ford, Super Sema

“What would it look like if young people reimagined education as a system that is so incredibly linked to everything and so fundamental to building a better world?”

Ila Gregory, YouthXYouth

Innovators Interviews

Futures literacy matters because envisioning possible futures creates space for imagination, engagement, and action. We’ll be hearing from innovators who are bringing children’s voices into foresight processes and working with children to develop critical thinking and futures literacy skills:

• Vanessa Ford, producer of Super Sema, the first animated superhero TV series to feature African characters and have a focus on science and technology, on why it’s important to develop a relationship of reciprocity with your audience, and why representation matters

• Ila Gregory, facilitator and continually curious being with YouthXYouth, on why young people come immediately to mind when it comes to foresight processes

• Alex Newson, Chief Curator, Young V&A, on how climate and everyday joys are top of mind for young people 

• Bo Stjerne Thomsen, VP of Learning through Play, LEGO Foundation, on why it’s so important to include perspectives from children of all ages and backgrounds, in both product development and in policymaking

• Max Girardeau, Director, The Visionaries, on why young people’s views should be considered organisational assets, and how to bring them into your work
  

Future seasons will explore topics such as:

• Awe in the Everyday.
  Awe – “the feeling we get in the presence of something vast that challenges our understanding of the world”^[1] - is a fundamental human emotion, experienced in every culture around the world. In adults, feeling awe has been shown to benefit the body and mind and to link to more altruistic and prosocial behaviours in adults. Researchers at Berkeley are starting to look at what does awe look like in children? And how might we support more experiences for children to feel awe?  
   

• Interspecies Living.
  We’ll challenge the human-centric viewpoint and take inspiration from how other species live, play, and raise offspring. For example, we know it takes a village to raise a child – yet public policies in many countries are designed around a two-parent “nuclear household”, living and caregiving as an isolated unit. What might policymakers learn from the rules evolved by the cooperatively breeding fishes of Lake Tanganyika, where some fishes are the biological parents and raise offspring with the help of other fish?
  

• Regenerative Family.
  We’ll explore the emerging model of the “regenerative family” - ways of living that honour our connection as humans to the generations who came before us and who will come after us, as well as to the natural world.

We’re so excited to invite you into this dialogue, and we can’t wait to go on this journey together. 

We’d love to hear from you. What questions do you want us to tackle? What ideas are inspiring you in your work for kids and families?

Let us know at signals@famstudio.co

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^[1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/awe/definition