Many of us have clear visions of what kind of world we don’t want to live in, but are struggling to imagine the kind of world we would live in - let alone how to build that world. We need new narratives to illuminate what’s broken in our society and hands-on solutions for a more sustainable, equal and resilient world.

There are many aspects of life that pull us in opposing directions. We need to be pessimistic enough to prepare for bad outcomes but optimistic enough to undertake new projects. We need to see people both as enmeshed in systems that push them around and as free agents shaping their own lives. It’s vital to be skeptical and ask questions, but also

Horizons have shrunk. Novelists and filmmakers seem far more at home with dystopias than with the possibility that the world might get better. The institutions that once fuelled our shared imagination have, for different reasons, given up, leaving public intellectual culture recycling old ideas, while much of politics has drifted into nostalgia.