Inclusive Destination Futures: Reimagining Accessible and Child-Friendly Places

Navigating Turbulent Times: Children and Families and the Hopeful Possibilities of Connection in Place

In a period of growing social, environmental and political uncertainty, children and families are navigating increasingly complex experiences of mobility, belonging and connection. While climate change, economic precarity, conflict and widening inequalities can fragment relationships between people and places, children and families continue to create meaningful connections that foster hope, care and collective wellbeing.

This roundtable invites discussion of how child-led, co-designed and place-based approaches can deepen understanding of children's and families' experiences of tourism, travel and (im)mobilities in turbulent times. We are particularly interested in work that centres children's perspectives and agency, exploring how they make meaning of movement, create connections across difference, and contribute to the places in which they live, learn, play and travel.

We welcome empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions, as well as reflections from practice and policy. Alongside examples of innovative and participatory research, we also invite critical engagement with the assumptions, challenges and limitations of child-centred and co-designed approaches. How do place-based methodologies reveal both connection and fragmentation? What forms of exclusion, immobility or inequality remain hidden? How might children and families help us imagine more just, sustainable and caring futures?

The session aims to foster dialogue across disciplines and contexts, exploring both the hopeful possibilities and enduring tensions that shape children's and families' relationships with place, mobility and belonging