Space for Imagination? Exploring the challenges of implementing art-based, metacognitive approaches for supporting imagination as a route to agency

This paper explores the implementation and evaluation of Imagination Agents, a mixed-methods case study, with young people aged 12–13, funded by a Royal Society of Arts Catalyst Award. The project was grounded in a flexible theory that imagination enables the necessary originality for creativity, enabling learners to construct personal understandings of their own learning which equate to metacognition, with this enabling the self-awareness and confidence for personal and, in turn, social/democratic agency. Life in a posthuman world necessitates the creation of new understandings, which can be produced through the application of imagination and agency, towards the conceptualisation and facilitation of positive change. Supporting learners to develop imagination and understand it metacognitively could result in personal agency which better equips them as participants within and activators of healthy environments. Based on Burns' (2024) models of cognitive/metacognitive imagination, we tried to support imagination and agency through a focus on the local environment. Implementation of the pedagogy and evaluation was very challenging in the school context. There was little space for imagination and agency. In conclusion, we consider how we might create such a space.