Preferred Futures 2020: Are Students Interested in Sustainable Futures?

This article begins by comparing public awareness and interest in sustainability with the views of experts in this field. Attention is then drawn to the need for people to be able to imagine their preferable futures before they can begin to work towards them. Futures workshops are cited as a means to this end and a pilot study is described which used this procedure to enable participants to identify the key elements of their desired futures. A preliminary assessment is made of the effectiveness of such a process and the saliency of sustainability in these images of preferred futures.