Shared Futures: A Long-Term Multiform Artistic Collaboration that Invites People to Imagine Futures

Abstract

Artists Emma Fält and Anna Väisänen initiated Shared Futures project, a long-term multiform artistic collaboration that invites people to imagine futures. The group has explored the urban spaces and living environments in weekly workshops for people over 60 years old. The artists also invited different audiences to imagine the future 100 years from now together with the older adults group. The project is based on an artwork concept by the artists Fält and Väisänen who invited Roberto Fusco to join the project in 2022. Shared Futures project supported the maintenance of wellbeing and functional capacity among older adults through a process founded on the participants’ needs and based on being present, listening and respecting their boundaries. This article describes the projects background, considers the relationship to sociology research and discusses the artistic practices with which the project engaged, offering the materials provided along with the article. The working group aims to find and develop new artistic tools for the imagination of political utopias. While the project has been an artistic one, the topic, its depth and length have given rise to practices that could be beneficial to other fields too. The project is situated between participatory and community arts, working actively with an open community of older adults, as well as sharing and inviting all audience to participate in the work in public performances. The initiating artists are practitioners, who facilitate, spaces and invite different groups to discuss alternative ways of knowing and understanding the reality.