Expanding the Present. Collaborative creativity and Imagination in workplaces to design “the Near Future” of Family-School-Service Collaboration

Creating interprofessional spaces involves more than just exchanging information; it requires a mutual commitment to co-constructing knowledge and identifying shared goals and practices. In this process, imagination plays a fundamental role. When understood as an 'expansion' of experience and possibility, realistic imagination stimulates reflection on systematic practices and the representations, contradictions and desired changes of professionals. This paper presents a case study conducted with an interprofessional group working with children and families in Italy within the P.I.P.P.I. programme (Programme of Intervention for Preventing Institutionalisation), a national programme supporting vulnerable children and families. The presentation focuses on an exercise in which professionals are asked to write creatively and collaboratively about the near future of schoolfamily- service collaboration. This narrative approach enables us to understand the proximal experience of professionals in their context, from analysing the future to addressing the challenges of the present.