Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

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I love MAIA’s framing of their work as ‘a rehearsal of the world we want to be’. What exists here today that prefigures the futures we dream of? What if we got better at noticing those glimmers - those fragments of hope that offer some clues about how we might need to reorder our world? What is already here, hiding in the soil, perhaps not seen unl... See more

Sophia Parker • Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

The longer I do this work, the more I understand that we need to build a stronger account of the moment we are in: a story of decline and new opportunities; of deep crisis and mind-bending possibilities. Most importantly, a time to act from hope rather than sink into fatalism. We need to confront and reckon with the existing order; to reveal it for... See more

Sophia Parker • Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

It is hard to make room for the depth this work requires when the world is burning around us .

Sophia Parker • Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

Margaret Wheatley, the brains behind the Berkana model, spoke of four essential areas of work that are needed to sustain an emerging paradigm: naming, connecting, nourishing and illuminating elements of the emerging patterns. These are how we are beginning to understand our role in this work: seeing ourselves as gardeners, or midwives, working to n

Sophia Parker • Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

Critical connections between future-builders matter more than critical mass in long-term transformative work: without these, nothing new can emerge. Networks are the lifeblood of emergence, and yet so much of the way life is organised gets in the way of pioneers connecting

Sophia Parker • Emerging Futures at JRF - Two Years In, the Story So Far

In this place of transition - a place that feels disorienting, confusing, messy - we need to be learning from each other, plural in the possibilities we generate, and willing to let go of those mental frameworks that are no longer serving us well.