No.249 — ‘If You Win the Popular Imagination, You Change the Game’: Why We Need New Stories on Climate ⊗ Imagination Infrastructures ⊗ AI and the Big Five

Faced with climate change and other interconnected existential crises in the twenty-first century, it is quickly becoming a cliché to say that there is a strong need to “imagine better futures.” But such a statement hides many questions and challenges. Who gets to imagine these futures? Who feels safe and supported enough, economically, politically... See more

In the end, lack of imagination is only a tiny part of why we don’t see more change; the more significant aspect is the friction between the status quo and those alternative futures. We need to understand those sources of friction in great detail and be articulate and convincing when discussing why they are causing friction and why they can be diff... See more

Too often today, the only narratives that matter are personal ones, and many have seen a widening gulf between their individual hopes and dreams and those of the world around them. Too often, as well, people feel like powerless observers of forces and trends they cannot control. The rekindling of social imagination is one aspect of taking back cont

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Often, hope works best alongside tools for proactively tackling future challenges. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise and act upon that imagination, then that’s powerful, and for me, this is a slow form of critical activism.

emblematic ideas to take forward could include: * resilient and diverse communities as essential foundations; * the value of trust in government and civic institutions; * recognising the agility and capability latent within the public sector; * and the enormous value of inefficiency and redundancy in systems; * an understanding that there are essen... See more