Young People and the Future of Scotland: participatory horizon scanning engagement

Part 3: Implications and Next Steps

This part of the report reflects on the implications of the engagement and proposes avenues for further exploration. In Part 1 we set out a carefully co-created participatory approach for eliciting young people’s perspectives on Scotland’s future and involving young people as co-creators of how these perspectives are gained. The approach encouraged participants to articulate priorities, tensions and aspirations in ways that were both accessible and substantive. In particular, the active involvement of the Investigation Team in co-creating and co-facilitating the engagement stands out as a key strength and an expression of democratic engagement with young people in Scotland. This peer-led dynamic contributed to a more open and relatable environment for participants and could provide a model for future foresight engagements.

Emergent directions to listen to and explore further

The insights presented in Part 2 already provide valuable indications of young people’s views, while they still must be understood as emergent directions rather than settled conclusions. The workshop involved a small but diverse group of young people; their contributions are insightful but not exhaustive. Rather than representing the full breadth of young people’s perspectives in Scotland, these insights point to promising lines of inquiry for deeper exploration and validation. Further engagement could strengthen this by engaging more young people, different demographics and identifying whether there are other perspectives held and/or validate these insights and directions with further evidence.

This first engagement also highlighted how futures engagement with young people has the potential to be empowering. Several participants expressed that the process had expanded their thinking beyond day-to-day challenges, and given them a sense of agency in shaping Scotland’s longer-term trajectory. One participant commented that “we react too much to current problems”. Another participant noted feeling nervous at first but left the day feeling able to speak up and contribute. Building young people’s capacity to express their views and develop the mindset and skills to navigate and shape complex futures is an equally important outcome of this work.

In this spirit, members of the Investigation Team reflected on their experience of co-creating and facilitating the workshop. Reflections from the Investigation Team offer additional insights into how participatory foresight processes can be structured in the future. All members of the Investigation Team reported that they had developed skills and confidence by being part of the co-creation process, and they hoped the Scottish Government would continue to build on this approach to engagement with young people going forward. One suggested, “The Government should definitely replicate this in different topics, it was very effective!” Another said, “our involvement ensures decisions reflect the needs of our generation, making the outcomes from projects like this more forward-thinking and impactful to those it will actually impact.”

Their reflections highlight the value and the challenges of supporting peers in futures conversations. For instance, one member of the Investigation Team said being part of this group was “a meaningful experience. Having the opportunity to shape and facilitate a session with the Scottish Government showed that young people’s voices were valued.” Another noted that, “having young people involved in leading activities like this is important because it allows for peer support and to develop a closer bond between them as they are similar in age it can feel easier to communicate… If the project is about young people then young people should be included at all stages, including the planning and facilitation process.”

Recognising the need for widening participation

Building on this foundation, there are several ways the Scottish Government could strengthen and extend its foresight engagement with young people.

First, while the workshop revealed broad consensus and a progressive orientation among participants, international research indicates increasing ideological polarisation between young men and women. In the UK, recent analysis by the Financial Times shows that young women aged 18–29 are now 25 percentage points more liberal than their male peers, with this gap widening sharply in recent years.^[7] Similar divides are being observed across several countries, suggesting that youth perspectives are far from homogeneous. Research often focuses on those 18-years-old and above, an older demographic than this project. However, it can still provide potential considerations to investigate whether similar patterns also occur in a younger age group.

Future foresight work in Scotland would benefit from targeting and proactively engaging groups that may not self-select for participatory processes. For example, young men in more traditional or typically more culturally conservative spaces – sports clubs, technical schools or rural communities.

This project had a short timeframe, which resulted in a short time period for recruitment of the Investigation Team and workshop participants. Whilst participants in this project represent a relatively diverse group of Scotland’s young people, it is necessary to recognise the limitations of this short project. A more long term and ongoing engagement with children and young people would ensure their participation is accessible, inclusive and meaningful. Embedding long-term and ongoing engagement with children and young people into future foresight work in Scotland would increase opportunity for participation and enable engagement with a more diverse range of views and experiences.

Exploring areas of uncertainty and nuance further

Participants demonstrated strong awareness of the need to balance climate action, fairness and economic opportunity. However, technological disruption and development – particularly the societal impact of AI – was an area where confidence gave way to uncertainty. This suggests an opportunity for focused foresight engagements to explore the positive and negative potential impact of technology, particularly on different socio-economic, geographic and educational groups. Understanding how technology may reshape labour markets and social relations, and co-designing adaptive policy responses with young people, will be crucial to ensuring inclusive future resilience and broader efforts to tackle poverty and systemic challenges to equality of outcome for young people in Scotland. Future engagements could explore the kinds of trade-offs young people are willing to make: for example, between climate action and economic stability, between technological convenience and human connection or between personal freedoms and collective security. Encouraging young people to grapple with these complex tensions could strengthen both the depth and realism of foresight exercises.

Furthermore, while the desire for well-funded public services, especially in health and education, was clear, participants often found it difficult to move beyond discussion of current challenges towards an articulation of more transformative futures. Future exercises could deliberately invite young people to envision transformative models of public service delivery. Young people could be challenged to imagine bold shifts in how learning, care and community infrastructure might evolve over the next two to three decades, and what policies or investments could make these transformations possible. Extending the time horizon beyond 2040 may also help participants step out of the immediacy of today’s pressures and into more systemic thinking about what Scotland could become.

Innovating foresight practices and embedding them within government

This effort sits within the broader challenge faced by many governments in foresight work: the ‘impact gap’ – the difficulty of translating rich insights from participatory processes into meaningful action. This first engagement represents an important step toward closing that gap by demonstrating how structured, well-facilitated foresight processes can identify clear directions and priorities. However, ensuring that these insights shape policy and decision-making will require continued effort, including stronger institutional links between foresight activities and policy design processes. For example, as well as involving young people in articulating future priorities, they can be invited to co-design policy ideas and test interventions that respond to those futures.

Embedding the capabilities and mindsets of futures thinking within government is key to making this part of government’s routine work. At the core of this, is the need to recognise the strategic necessity of futures work for ensuring government actions are oriented to steer towards desirable outcomes rather than only reacting to current problems. Ultimately, this work contributes towards the ability to realise the opportunities of the future.

There is also good potential to identify and support actors who may also want to conduct similar futures processes, including drawing lessons from Scotland’s participatory methodology. Whether within government, civil society, the private sector or another sector, there are lessons to take from the value of conducting futures work and ensuring an approach which not only gains insights but also builds agency and capabilities.

Within the UK, there is great potential to recognise and connect futures expertise, efforts and tested methodologies across governments. Looking beyond Scotland, there are well-recognised future-oriented efforts across the UK, for example, by the UK Government Office for Science. Understanding where there are shared common societal shifts, challenges and ambitions can open new avenues for learning and collaboration, while also recognising distinct regional perspectives. For example, comparison of the emerging insights of the perspectives of young people across different nations and regions of the UK, including underrepresented groups, would be highly valuable. Closer collaboration and dialogue could help identify areas of shared interest where deeper exploration would be beneficial. For Scotland, such connections could both strengthen its national foresight capabilities and contribute to broader strategic conversations about young people’s role in shaping society.

Finally, this work should be viewed not as an endpoint but as a foundation for continuous, institutionalised youth engagement in foresight processes. There is the potential for this methodology, with refinements, to become part of a standing participatory practice that regularly brings youth perspectives into strategic policy conversations, forming an established precedent within government. Over time, this could support the development of a generation that not only feels consulted but genuinely equipped and empowered to engage in the conversation about Scotland’s long-term direction – not merely reacting to the future, but helping to steer it.