Building futures in which all young children flourish

Healthy development in the first five years of life is not only foundational for success in school and in the workforce but is foundational for a life of flourishing.

A life of flourishing is one that which allows individuals and communities to imagine and become what they wish to be with passion, purpose, and excellence. Flourishing resists an approach to children, childhood, and early childhood development that is driven solely by a perspective that locates exclusively economic concerns as the crux of the human experience. “Flourishing” functions as a corrective to thinking about issues like high-quality early childhood education only in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Flourishing is a broader vision to the field

At Capita, we place an emphasis on investments that drive the integral development of young children and families. We believe that the vision of the field is limited by an orientation chiefly to the economic and material progress of children and families. While economic progress of people around the world is improved by investments in ECD, it isn’t the whole story. The full story of human development — beginning in the first five years of life — is expressed in art, religion, spiritual practices, culture, and our relationships with families and communities. Fighting for investments in early childhood development can’t ever just be about material progress. We need to integrate the science of early childhood development and the evidence from social science about “what works” in the field within a broader framework of knowledge, derived from the arts, humanities, and the cultural norms and traditions of communities around the world.

Next, the language that we use to advocate for young children and early childhood programs is almost entirely economic (e.g. ROI, cost-benefit, workforce development, etc.). Investing in children and families is about developing from the earliest years the sense of duty, virtue, and self-government necessary for people to govern themselves well. Early childhood should clearly articulate that it is about expanding and enlarging freedom for our children and the futures they will inhabit.

Finally, the early childhood field is woefully unprepared for the future. We are not actively seeking to understand the times and adapt practice and policy accordingly. We aim to bring the tools of strategic foresight to bear on the field’s work and to explore how the great transformations in technology, culture, society, economy, and politics affect young children and their families. Diligent and creative leaders around the world are working to ensure that young children and their families can thrive in the future. At the same time, how often do those efforts include a thorough exploration of what the future might be like? The landscape we work in is shifting: vocations are changing rapidly, trust in institutions is weakening, social connections are becoming technologically mediated, and demographics are shifting.

These changes offer warning that the future will be radically unlike the past. Yet few social sector organizations are preparing for their communities’ future realities or seeding kernels of new thinking to deal with new challenges. This is a missed opportunity and a mistake. Taking a deliberate look at changes on the horizon or strategic foresight, empowers leaders to share how we can shape the future that young children will inherit and expand our locus of control.

Transformative innovations emerge from the intersection of different disciplines and cultures. This “intersectional innovation”, to borrow a phrase from “The Medici Effect” by Frans Johansson is what made the Renaissance in Florence, Florence, such a prolific period of innovation. A break from more traditional innovations can help more children, families, and systems thrive in an age of great economic, political, social, cultural, and technological transformation.

What we do at Capita

The first step we must take towards building a future in which children and families flourish is to identify signals and trends that point us to possible futures and then move towards achieving the future we prefer for the world’s children

Capita’s “Forecast for the Futures of Young Children” with KnowledgeWorks enables leaders and innovators in the early childhood field and beyond to:

• Deepen their understanding of the drivers of change shaping the future
• Anticipate the potential impacts of those changes
• Reframe their visions and
• Identify opportunities for breakthrough change through innovative and transformative strategies, policies, programs, products, and services.

Creating “contact zones” such as the one by Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist whose annual Marathon at London’s Serpentine Gallery brings together artists, poets, philosophers, architects, and scientists around a particular theme is very effective at breaking down silos (watch out for the 2018 theme — Future of Work).

In order to create these contact zones, we’ve partnered with AIR Serenbe, the non-profit artist residency program near Atlanta, on our Childhood by Design initiative which last year convened 50 innovators from across the fields of art, architecture, design, health, and early childhood to bridge the gaps between these disciplines and fields, and to build agendas for collaborative action.

Similarly, this summer we will be hosting our first masterclass on Childhood in a Digital Age. A moderated seminar to explore how emerging technologies are reshaping culture and society- and perhaps rewiring our brains. Moderated by the philosopher and ethicist, Shannon Vallor, the masterclass will allow people from across disciplines and fields to deepen their perspectives, clarify their values, and develop new values-driven ideas and approaches in their work. This masterclass will contribute to the global dialogue about what constitutes a meaningful life in a digital age and how we can support children achieving such lives in the 21st century.

Capita is about Creativity and Innovation

Capita is an independent, non-profit startup ideas lab working at the intersection of research, public policy, social innovation, design, and the arts. We explore how changes in work, citizenship, family, and other great cultural and social transformations of our day affect young children. This is oriented to fostering new ideas to ensure a future in which children and their families flourish.

We believe in mixing creativity and innovation. Creativity is a broader term that depends upon imagination and the combination of ideas and concepts across cultures and time. Innovation, a concept largely borrowed from the business world referring to new products, services, or methods with a goal of greater efficiency and better outcomes for either the business or the customer. One is not better than the other and both are necessary for progress. We aim to weave something new and wonderful out of the threads of culture and convention to go beyond the development of new products, services, or methods, in order to push and prod us into building and shaping a culture that more deeply values the flourishing of all young children and their families. This is the task of decades, if not centuries, but we believe we must make a start at it.