Paper Short Abstract:

Challenging ageist, heteronormative, and ableist discourses about who has a stake in the future, my contribution discusses participatory methods for co-creating new narratives of the future together with older people living in places that have been labelled ‘abandoned’.

Paper Abstract:

How do older people living in places that have been labelled ‘abandoned’, characterized by depopulation, an aging population, and post-industrial decline, feel about the future? How do communities within these ‘abandoned’ places tell stories about the past, present, and future of the place they live? How is an (utopian) future imagined in later life?

Challenging ageist, heteronormative, and ableist discourses about who has a stake in the future, my contribution discusses participatory methods for co-creating new narratives of the future together with older people. Based on the ongoing research process of the European project “Waste/Land/Futures: Intergenerational relations in places of abandonment and renewal across Europe”, this contribution explores how older adults imagine the future(s) of their community in the face of post-industrial, climate, and demographic change.

To make locally produced utopian visions of the future visible and give a voice to those who are often ignored by mainstream policy decisions about the future, we use co-creative participatory methods informed by ethnographic field work, which by itself contains participatory elements. This approach allows for an ‘unwriting’ and ‘restorying’ of existing imaginative visions of the future that may be discriminatory or exclusive.

Rather than conceptualizing generations and aging as straightforward, linear concepts rooted in narratives of progress or decline, this contribution interrogates these assumptions and suggests alternatives that are not rooted in normative discourses that value youth, (re)productivity, and positivity.