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But Miss, why think about the future for? the 13-year-old said.

No one had ever asked me that before.

I was visiting a class of year 7 students in Sydneys south-west with the Story Factory, a not-for-profit creative writing organisation who work with young people to draw out their skills and stories. I was there to talk about the work I do and how I think about the future, explaining the dizzying ways the world of work, communication and creativity have turned upside down in the relatively short span of my life.

These students were writing their own future-focused fiction: during quiet writing time, I imagined them flashing forward to an inspiring, sustainable world, and writing about their place in it. I thought Id done pretty well, until this kid called me over and stumped me with that startlingly simple question.

Because youll live in the future, I finally responded. In a couple of decades from now, youll be my age. And youll want clean water to drink and air to breathe. Youll need to earn money, you might want to have kids, and youll be interested in what kind of world you all live in I trailed off.

She gave me the kind of gently condescending look that 13-year-olds the world over are masters of.

Sure, miss, OK. But who cares what I think about the future? I mean, its just going to happen anyway, no matter what I think.

When you think about the future, do you feel like that kid? There are too many of us who feel that despite whatever the public protests against, or supports in opinion polls politics today doesnt reflect our values or priorities, inaction on climate change being one of the starkest examples.

Its exciting to see the rise of youth-led social change movements like Fridays for Future or the Sunrise Movement in the USA, but as this high schooler taught me, not everyone feels empowered to have their say. Since I was a teenager growing up in Sydneys western suburbs, Ive seen the opportunity gap between rich and poor grow, with policy choices that entrench disadvantage, and pool wealth and access on one side. Structural barriers exclude and limit access particularly for those in places where youre likely to earn less, spend more time to get to work, cop more heat in heatwaves and even see your life expectancy cut short. Getting by is hard enough, let alone figuring out how to have your perspective heard.

The problems we face at this moment are too vast and complex to be solved by a privileged few, and limiting access to information and limiting the voices at the table only serves to sow unease and division. When we fail to explain the systemic causes of our environmental and economic instability, conspiracies and suspicion rush in to fill the information vacuum.

But around the world, there has been a flourishing of new ways to do democracy that gives me hope amid the gloom of 2020. Bottom-up and participatory democratic processes that recognise the potential we all have to contribute; that make political engagement active and part of everyday life, something everyone can do.

Representative democracy has a lot of positive elements to it. The problem is that its not been upgraded for 100 or 200 years

I realised that the best thing I could do for those who didnt have faith in the future was share the most compelling visions Ive encountered, because more people need to hear that there are very real alternatives to the status quo. My search for civic change-agents spanned the planet and became my first book, Glimpses of Utopia.

Citizen participation through collaborative budgeting, online platforms, assemblies and juries can have a huge impact. After a series of political and financial scandals rocked Iceland and Estonia, trust levels in politicians plummeted but Robert Bjarnason and the Citizens Foundation had one thing on their side: for most people, social media has become second nature. The Citizens Foundation used an online platform to make it easy to participate in democracy between elections, from allocating resources in local communities to raising citizen-led petitions to be debated by parliament. Representative democracy has a lot of positive elements to it, Bjarnason told me, but the problem is that its not been upgraded for 100 or 200 years.

Taiwans visionary digital minister, Audrey Tang, has also taken the tools of tech to politics, engaging citizens and stakeholders to help the country regulate digital disruptors like Uber through consensus.

And in France this year, 150 citizens aged 16 to 80 selected randomly by their phone numbers took on a huge task: breaking the impasse on climate change, and deciding how the country should dramatically cut their carbon emissions.

Over the past nine months, the Citizens Convention for the Climate heard from hundreds of experts and pored through policy proposals and impact statements, then debated and selected projects to land on fair and effective climate policy. In late June President Macron accepted all but three of the Conventions 149 recommendations, pledged to take them to parliament in an omnibus bill, and budgeted an additional 15bn euros for climate action.

In late 2019, I saw a citizen jury in action at the City of Sydney: we wanted direction and feedback on our guiding plan for the next decade, and gathered more than 2,500 ideas from residents, ranging from postcards and childrens drawings to detailed submissions and surveys. Fifty Sydneysiders, randomly selected, gave up their Saturdays over several months to turn these suggestions into a grand vision. Watching them present their final report gave me goosebumps: they challenged us to create a city that isnt just sustainable but is regenerative; a city which doesnt just limit damage but that cleans the air and the water, that gives back more than it takes.

Opinion polls or the usual consultation format cant generate public participation like this. The way we do politics today underestimates the capacity of the average citizen for big-picture thinking. They need to be empowered and informed, and we need to cast the net wider than the usual suspects.

More of us might feel more hopeful about the future if we were offered better ways of helping shape it, as active and valued citizens. Imperfect Not-Yet utopias are being created by people all over the world every day, incomplete but promising. I owed it to every young girl I spoke to in that class to not only sow those seeds of potential, but to show them that a better future needs us to shape it, and that we can start to claim our place in it now.

Glimpses of Utopia by Jess Scully is out now, through Pantera Press

Jess Scully is the deputy lord mayor of Sydney

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There are new ways to do democracy that give me hope. More voices could change everything - The Guardian