From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want

As English artist Ryan Gander puts it, ‘Art is the source of creative citizenship and art education makes innovative thinkers that filter into every part of our society.’

What would it look like if rather than protesting about the things that are wrong, dysfunctional and broken, we set out to give ourselves what futurist Stuart Candy calls ‘visceral tastes’ of the future, experiences of a positive, delightful future, that transform our sense of what’s possible the way The Sultan’s Elephant did? As the anthropologist

We see a lot of this kind of imaginative thinking in the context of sometimes self-imposed constraints – and it pushes innovation forward in remarkable ways. The craft beer movement has boomed as small place-based breweries using local ingredients have proved they can make far better beer than vast commercial breweries.

When people experience awe – being immersed in the raw power of nature, gazing up at a feat of architecture such as Chartres Cathedral, witnessing a selfless act of heroism or bravery, seeing a musical, artistic or athletic virtuoso, being present for an era-defining political shift, standing in the crowd while a charismatic leader delivers a momen

a good what-if question needs to assume that nothing is unmovable.

Designer and futurist Grace Turtle argues that ‘play is a political instrument’.39 She also says, ‘If we’re making political decisions around how we want to exist in the world, then we need to think about the impossible.… Play opens us up to unknowability.’

This nurturing of the whole person calls to mind a Japanese concept called ikigai, which means ‘reason for being’. Ikigai is whatever it is that gives your life value and meaning. It is the intersection between what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs and what you can be paid for. Those who manage to find this sweet spot are, repute

imagination is resilient. If we can put to one side the factors that are suppressing it, it will re-emerge, blinking into the light, because it is our natural state. It’s a fundamental part of being human. When the right conditions are present, imagination flourishes. It’s the natural order of things, in the same way that land, left to its own devi

One of my favourite interviews was with performing artist, author, activist and educator Dominique Christina, who told me how, in her opinion, all too often, when we are exploring how to address a problem, we become fixated on that problem: ‘The problem is now in the centre of the room’, she told me. ‘Whatever is not working, or whatever is dysfunc