What does the fight against child labour look like in 2040 — when the mechanisms have shifted from factory floors to algorithms, gray zones, and climate shocks?

At the invitation of the International Labour Organization, we designed and facilitated a two-hour immersive workshop at the 6th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in Marrakesh (February 2026). Over 200 participants from governments, employers’ organizations, trade unions, and civil society explored five future scenarios — each tracing a different pathway through which child labour persists, transforms, or gets pushed deeper out of sight.

To make these futures felt rather than just analysed, we created AI-generated short films set in 2040. Each was narrated by characters living inside a different future — from a school principal in India navigating climate-driven dropout, to a former child labourer in Guatemala whose family depended on her night shifts. The voices were deliberately diverse: not only the tripartite stakeholders the ILO system knows well, but the children and families at the sharp end of change.

From inside those worlds, participants generated agenda-shaping "How might we…" questions — designed to stretch both policy and research thinking beyond today’s assumptions. Not predictions, but provocations. Not solutions, but the right questions to make solutions possible.