Leisure for change: Shaping the future through leisure together with students

This article was written for Uncover magazine - Meaningful Leisure Experiences. 

Author: Niki Hendriks is a lecturer of Leisure & Events Management at Breda University of Applied Sciences.

Leadership through real-world learning
At LEM-GEN, leadership means the ability to navigate complexity, embrace change, and act with purpose. We foster this through a curriculum grounded in core knowledge of subjects like marketing, stakeholder management, experience design, and change management, paired with real-world client projects. These challenges push students to apply theory in meaningful contexts, sharpening their critical thinking mindset, decision-making and leadership skills.

For example, in the Experience Design and Marketing course, students designed inclusive activities. One group organised ‘Heel Breda Bakt’, a baking event inspired by ‘The Great British Bake Off’, blending their love for baking with community-building. They learned to lead with authenticity and empathy. In the Stakeholder Management course, students addressed alcohol-free experiences for under-18s during Carnival. They developed strategies to help young people enjoy festivities without peer pressure, targeting parents, entrepreneurs, and teens. This project highlighted the complexity of alcohol policy and the importance of listening, researching, and responding to real-life issues. A student describes: “I’ve never realised how many people are involved in alcohol policy: schools, parents, supermarkets, even festival organisers. It’s way more complex than just telling teenagers not to drink. This project really opens eyes to the bigger picture.” 

Personal development as a foundation
Beyond project work, at LEM-GEN we invest in personal growth. We guide students to align their values with their professional ambitions through mentorship, coaching, and reflection. In workshops with partners like Young Impact, students explore their strengths and aspirations, culminating in a personal compass for their future. Our international study trips add another dimension to this journey. Students conduct ‘Human Portraits’ by informally interviewing locals, gaining new perspectives and practising empathy and intercultural communication. These moments often spark deep self-awareness, helping them grow into reflective professionals and compassionate leaders.

The future: Leisure for Change
LEM-GEN’s educational vision comes to life in our Leisure for Change course. This third-year course invites students to apply everything they have learned to create meaningful, lasting impact within the sector by creating their own business or organisation. One of the most important elements of the course is Futures Literacy, based on the paper Leisure Futures: A Hybrid Approach Integrating Generative AI and Design Futures (Bevolo, 2025), as well as research by Bevolo & Draeger (2025). Developed in collaboration with the UK-based firm Shaping Tomorrow, a leader in automated foresight since the early 2000s, the course introduces students to the understanding that there is not one fixed future, but many possible ones.

Through scenario development and trend analysis, students cultivate a proactive mindset - learning not just to anticipate the future, but to actively shape it. At the very start of the project, with no prior context, students were asked one bold question (It is the year 2050 and your business changed the world; what problem did you solve?) and their responses revealed what truly matters to them and what challenges they feel are most urgent (see Figure 1). This powerful moment served as the foundation for their journey: to design ideas that go beyond theory, and tackle real-world issues they genuinely care about.

Envisioning multiple futures
The next step in the journey is for students to envision a 'preferable future' to inspire positive impact through leisure. They explore probable, possible, and preferable futures, gaining the confidence to act rather than react. Leadership is crucial: with strong leadership and future design skills, students can create something amazing. The course is grounded in 'societal resilience,' as defined by the new professorship in Leisure in a Social Context at BUas. It is about how individuals, cultures, and communities anticipate challenges and build networks to strengthen society and create resilience.

Once students lay the foundation of their dreams, they learn to use AI to explore and broaden their ideas. Through ‘scaffolding’ in prompting, they generate future ‘signals’ on GEN-AI Leisure Signal Cards, inspired by the Shaping Tomorrow format. Each card offers a glimpse into potential trends, highlighting optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, uncertainties, and possible actions. These cards are plotted on the Futures Quadrant, helping students cluster signals into trends and map out coherent future scenarios. See the two elaborated examples presented as an illustration. This exercise helps them critically assess how to move forward towards a resilient, preferable future, influencing their professional ambitions and personal choices. Leisure for Change prepares them to create future-proof, socially valuable enterprises and make a difference in the world.

In conclusion
By combining academic rigour with creativity, community engagement, and personal reflection, LEM-GEN prepares students not just for the leisure industry, but for reshaping it and navigating its complexities. By accelerating their talents and equipping them with the necessary tools, we empower our students to use leisure as a force for positive change, ultimately contributing to a better world.

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Emotional Gyms for boys
Inspired by themes from Adolescence, the manosphere and concerns around toxic masculinity, this student group explores how leisure can become a catalyst for gender equality and emotional intelligence. Their foresight work identifies two emerging Signal Trends focused on structured emotional development in youth, especially boys aged 12 to 25.

Signal Trend 1: Active emotion regulation as a learning format
Young people (aged 12 to 25) are not only encouraged to feel their emotions but are taught to actively and consciously regulate them. This happens through structured methods that combine self-observation with behavioural boundaries. Emotion regulation becomes a learned skill - much like sport, music, or language. This trend represents emotionally structured personal growth with a growth mindset. Awareness and behavioural guidance form the foundation of mental resilience.

Signal Trend 2: Emotional self-discipline in gym-like settings
Especially targeted at boys, this concept envisions emotional gyms - mental fitness spaces where emotional awareness is trained with the same intensity and structure as physical workouts. These gyms integrate personal reflection with rules and routines that help build self-control and inner strength. This trend shifts the focus from ‘feel whatever you want’ to ‘learn how you feel, and what to do with it’. Discipline is not a restriction - it is the framework within which resilience can grow.

The key question that these students now have is:
“How do we turn self-awareness into a collective, appealing ritual for boys - without losing its depth and authenticity?”