SMUKfest: Children’s Hopes for 2050

Our World 2050 was invited by SMUKfest to bring children's visions of a sustainable and peaceful future to Denmark's famous beech forest music festival. Our World 2050 hosted a special session allowing young, imaginative voices on-site to showcase a peaceful look 24 years into the future.

Our World 2050 at SMUKfest

"Who wants to travel through time to the future?"

"YEEES!" shouted a wonderful group of children as we took them and their parents on a journey from Smukfest 2026 to 2050.

For a moment, we were 24 years into the future - and the children imagined a world of peace, equality, clean oceans, food and water for all, more nature and play, fewer screens and wars, flying electric cars, rubbish-collecting robots, trees on skyscrapers, and free roller skates for everyone.
They reminded us that children notice the state of the world and have plenty to say - if we ask and truly listen.

And that was perhaps our biggest learning from the day: even the youngest children, aged 5–10, have so much to share - both in terms of their ideas and the future they hope for. We simply need to listen and create formats that encourage them to think big.

At SMUKfest, we invited the children to draw the future they dream of and imagine. Together with their parents and our team, they then put words to their drawings - sharing the hopes, ideas and stories behind them.

Everything we take for granted today - from vaccines and aeroplanes to wind turbines and human rights - began in someone's imagination. The future is not predetermined. We can help create it.

Thank you to Smukfest, Science Pavilion, CERN, the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Aarhus University, our brilliant youth ambassador Malene Vistisen Faseth - and, most importantly, all the children and parents who joined us.