There is a way of seeing the social movements, led by young people, and the associated community development practices in which young people's perspectives are to the fore, as moments and movements of hope. As other books in the ‘Rethinking Community Development’ series note, these moments of hope are important in that they each offer elements in counternarratives to the neoliberal hegemony of capitalist realism which insists that there is no alternative to a continuation of things as they are. A ‘prefigurative practice of hope’ which affirms that there are indeed alternatives to the current system has been understood as a necessary contribution to radical democracy (Amsler, 2015). We consider hope as a practice of imagination of something radically new and better (Amsler, 2015). Much as other editors in this series, we position hope as collective action which has the capacity to emerge out of and in spite of other emotions such as anger and fear which are all too present as we face climate catastrophe and the continued fallout from COVID-19.

In this afterword, we consider how the contents of this book show complete and partial refusals, which, rather than resulting in tyranny, enable us to open up new spaces of hope and friendship where the (im)possibility of common ground can flourish. Extending Ernst Bloch's (1986 [1958]) writing on hope, we consider on what kind of front such hopeful prefigurative practices might emerge, and in particular, in the case of this book, how we see young people at the forefront of radical democratic practice. A prefigurative practice has been thought to be one that begins in consequence of a consideration of a shared predicament and inaugurates in the here and now a way of being-in-relationship, which begins a new set of relations, which moves towards more equal and more just, freer and more caring relationships. Sheila Rowbotham (1979) classically described women's centres and help lines and other practices of self-help and mutual aid as prefigurative. More than just a new form or technique, they arise from a new consciousness of shared conditions of life, and through self-help/mutual aid, they begin to enact a change in gendered relationships. Throughout this book, chapters have given an account of how consciousness of shared conditions and differential experience of them becomes the basis for shared though differing courageous acts of citizenship by and with young people.