The ‘E Se’ (‘What If’) Tour in Portugal: a report

This is a write-up of the tour we just finished around Portugal, which I hope captures how it was. It was quite an adventure! May it leave a legacy of renewed energy and momentum and some new tools and practices, as well as new connections between people.

As dedicated non-flyers, my wife Emma and I travelled from Plymouth on a thankfully very smooth crossing to Santander, slept incredibly well and sunbathed on the deck.  Our ship arrived late into Santander, meaning we had a couple of hours to wander around, sit in a bar, visit the wonderful Mercado Del Esperanza (the Market of Hope), grab some food and then get our train to Valledolid, a train that broke down several times, finally arriving an hour late. Next day we were up early for the bus to Viseu in Portugal, on a packed BlaBlaCar bus, heading through Portugese landscapes blackened by wildfires.

Viseu

We were met in Viseu by Filipa Pimentel, tour organiser, Transition Network Lead Link and so much more besides, and having dropped our bags where we’re staying, set off for a walk around this beautiful town. We found a vegan restaurant for a delicious supper.

Next day we spent out in a beautiful forest outside Viseu. Story is that the land was slated to be turned into a new bypass of the town and cleared for the development of new houses, and a couple called Humberto and Susana and others mobilised to buy this gorgeous wild forest to protect it for future generations. It is now home to a home-schooling project, and a large rewilding/conservation initiative.

On that first day there, the forest was home to a day of activities, some beautiful interactive structures, including swinging bathtubs and armchairs in the trees, percussion structures and creative making spaces, food and music. It was also my first sight of the Portugese edition of ‘From What Is to What If’, entitled ‘E SE…Libertássemos a nossa Imaginação para criar o Futuro que desejamos’, the first that actually uses my drawings which is rather delightful.

In the evening I gave a talk in the forest, at the end of which the organisers showed a really sweet film of some of the kids from the place passing a copy of my book in a relay before then actually appearing to present me with a copy that everyone had written in and drawn on.

Next day I was to lead a workshop on ‘How to Fall in Love with the Future’. The initial signs were not auspicious. It was absolutely pouring down, rain of Biblical proportions, monsoon-like, meaning we needed to rethink on the hoof how and where this was going to happen. Water was coming in the roof and down the walls and it was all pretty wild, like designing a workshop on a ship in the middle of a hurricane at sea. But it all worked out fine.

About 40 people came and we had great fun, a deep dive into the power of the radical imagination and how to harness it, why time travel is a great tool for activists, we made ‘Scents of the Future’, created collages of the future, took a wet and windy ‘Walk of What If’. Thanks to everyone who came and their resilience in sticking around until the end!

In the evening, Emma, Filipa and I ate in a restaurant in Viseu where the owner felt the need to very loudly introduce every table to diners to the whole restaurant, to introduce his whole team, and to sing us songs in several languages, accompanying himself on the keyboard. It was all a little bit much when you’re tired and just want to eat and chat, but it was at least a story to tell our grandchildren.

Lisbon

After a day off, we headed to Lisbon, and that evening Filipa and I gave a talk at Culturgest. The event was full, and a beautiful, fun and dynamic evening we had. Thanks to the quantum device we had brought with us, we were able to transform the theatre room we were in into a time portal, the first known recorded act of time travel in Lisbon’s history. A delightful audience who engaged beautifully, an evening to treasure, ended off with signing books and a delicious meal out with the organisers.

Biovilla

Next day we headed out by train from Lisbon to Setúbal (we are doing as much of the tour by public transport as possible) and then by taxi to the gorgeous Biovilla Sustentabilidade in the heart of the Arrábida National Park. Absolutely beautiful, a real bit of untouched Portugese wilderness. Biovilla is a sustainability centre that hosts a wide variety of trainings and courses, a demonstration centre for sustainability in practice. And the food they serve is amazing!

Emma and I set off to climb what we called a mountain but which was really a big hill, but the view from the top was absolutely beautiful, well worth getting a bit lost on the way up. From one side we could see Setubal and the sea, on the other the land stretching out into the distance. Just beautiful.

Next day I ran an afternoon workshop, for about 20 people, many of them from The Wave Project, an Erasmus programme for young people. In the beautiful sunshine we time travelled, played different games, dived deep into why our activism needs to help people fall in love with the future, and much more. A really special and touching day.

Then in the evening I did a talk to a larger group which was about ‘From What Is to What If’ (a while since I did that talk!) to mark its Portuguese manifestation. Again, a really lovely evening, it feels like this work around imagination and time really touches people very deeply which is very precious to see.

Back to Lisbon

On Sunday 13th, we headed back to Lisbon. Filipa, Emma and I headed through the Metro to Telheiras, a suburb on the edge of the city that is home to one of the first Transition initiatives in Portugal way back when. Their story is fascinating. When doing Transition in the ‘traditional’ model began to run out of steam, they instead professionalised it, made a partnership with the local municipality and other key local organisations, and now it runs as a funded organisation that is a key part of making things happen, from community renewables pilots to an annual festival and much more besides. We were met by Luis Keel, one of the group’s founders and now its co-ordinator, who showed us round the neighbourhood and told us the project’s story.

When we got back to the community centre where we had first met, about 40 people from the neighbourhood and different parts of Lisbon arrived for a potluck picnic and get together in the sunshine. Once appetites were satisfied and conversations had been had, most of us set off on a Critical Mass-style bike ride through the city to the venue for the afternoon’s ‘How to Fall in Love with the Future’ workshop. Our home was the basement of a community centre and food cooperative in the heart of the city.

Subscriptions for the workshop ended up being way above what was expected, and we ended up with about 80 people crammed into a windowless basement. From such unpromising beginnings, a rather beautiful 6 hour workshop emerged, with a magical bit of time travelling, illuminated only by my pink time machine light, some gorgeous collage-making as people set out to capture the 2030s they had dreamt of, and a beautiful moment where groups doing their ‘Walk of What If’ exercise huddled in circles in the street in the evening light. Such a gorgeous and enthusiastic bunch.

Porto

Next day we set off for Porto on the train (we were trying to do as much of the tour as possible by public transport, not easy in a country whose public transport could, at best, be described as ‘patchy’.  That evening I was a speaker at the Universidade do Porto, in a beautiful old meeting room with a painted ceiling, in an event that was also streamed live online.

I started, as I had in Copenhagen a few weeks before, keeping everyone out of the room and explaining to them that I had succeeded in turning the room into a time portal, and that when I let them in, they would be stepping into 2030. It was rather lovely, and after this intro, people filed in in silence and the evening began. It was a delightful space in which to take people to the future, and we had a great Q&A at the end. It was also great to meet so many people afterwards and to sign lots of copies of ‘E Se’.

Povoa de Varzim

Next morning we headed off to Povoa de Varzim, about 20 minutes from Porto, to run an all-day workshop hosted by Centro do Clima, a brilliant organisation in the town run by old friend and Transition activist Pedro Macedo. Filipa and I were running an all-day workshop in the town, in a large, bright and airy room that was a welcome change from our Lisbon cave! It had been promoted with a rather lovely video in which the town filled up with ‘What If’ questions…

We were joined by about 50 people for a deep dive into the imagination, with the best ‘Making Scents of the Future’ exercise I’ve yet been part of. Having imagined the 2030 they long for, I give them each a paper cup and ask them to make in it a cocktail of smells that best captures the future they long for. They have to give it a name like a real cocktail would have. I then mark out an area with chairs and tell them that they have been invited to a very exclusive cocktail party in a small Porto flat and that they need to get round the room and smell as many of the different offerings as possibly. I put some party music on and off they go. Such a delight to move among them all smelling all the different glimpses of the future we could still, just about, create.

We finished at about 4, and set off into the town centre to the town’s theatre where Filipa and I were speaking that evening. The idea was that I speak first about the Transition approach to local economies, after which Sara from Centro do Clima and Filipa spoke about new economy projects in Portugal and Brazil, and I then gave an overview of ‘From What Is to What If’, it’s key elements and arguments. It was rather lovely, and the evening ended with book signings and a very nice risotto with some of the organisers, delightful conversations while Portugal ground out an uninspiring 0-0 draw with Scotland on the TV screen above our heads (TV screens seem to be an integral part of most restaurants here). After such a full day, both Filipa and I were so so tired! Quite a marathon.

Next morning I did an interview with one of the national papers, and Emma and I went with Pedro for a tour of Povoa, visiting what will soon be the new HQ for Centro do Clima and seeing some of the sights of the town. The Camina de Santiago passes through the town, so I can now claim to have at least walked about 10m of the Santiago. Not very impressive I know, but hey. After a delicious lunch and saying farewell to Ana and Pedro, who hosted us so wonderfully, Emma and I set off for Sintra.

Sintra

It was time for a much-needed day off after several very full days. We were in Sintra, a gorgeous place up in the hills overlooking the sea, which when we arrived in torrential rain on Wednesday night seemed quite quiet, but by Thursday morning we could see what people means when they described Sintra as “quite touristy”. It’s been a while since I was in a place that is home to so much mass tourism, to huge coaches trying to get down narrow roads that were not designed to accommodate them.

The ‘historic centre’ of Sintra is beautiful but is rammed with international tourists (including us, after all “don’t rail at the traffic jam you’re in, you are the traffic jam”). We walked up the hill to visit the old Moorish castle (as in it was built by the Muslim empires that ran Spain and Portugal for about 500 years from the 700s, not as in “well this castle is very more-ish”. We then headed to the nearby extraordinary Pena Palace, a Romantic-period castle that for a while was home for the Portuguese Royal family, before the revolution. We didn’t pay to go in as the crowds were huge, but we instead walked around in the gardens and woods surrounding it, high above Sintra, just gorgeous.

Colares

Next stop was Colares, about two thirds of the way between Sintra and the sea. We were hosted in the village hall there, and joined by about 60 people for a 6 hour workshop on imagination that was a lot of fun. We did all the usual things, and the ‘Making Scents of the Future’ cocktail party was a joy and a delight. The workshop finished late, and after some shared food, Emma and I stayed the night with Luis and Milena in their gorgeous house in overlooking the sea.

Portalegre

Saturday morning we were up early and off to Portalegre. Our intended lift had to be cancelled at the last minute when, just after we had piled all our stuff into the back, the car got a puncture. Instead we had to change into a taxi, arriving in Portalegre just in time. We were guests of Nave Mãe, a wholefood shop and space for therapies and workshops. In the garden out the back of the shop I gave a talk about ‘From What Is to What If’, the key ideas in it and some of the stories. About 40 people came, it was delightful. After a shared lunch with some of the co-ordinating team and our host, we headed off to drive to Beirã.

Beirã

Our venue for the afternoon’s workshop was a former railway station. The line it was on, which ran from Spain to Portugal, was closed in 2012. In its heyday, before the removal of passport controls as part of the Schengen Agreement, it was the passport stop for people travelling for Portugal to Spain. Now one of the station buildings has been turned into a hub for environmental and social projects, and the other into a hotel and social space. Here we did a 4 hour workshop with about 30 people, trying to cram as many things into a shorter-than-usual time window, but it worked beautifully. A really creative bunch, we shared some delightful time travelling adventures and other exercises.

In the evening, in the hotel part of the station, the last event for the day was a conversation with about 35 local activists and people from the municipality about what’s already happening and how everyone might work better together. It was very inspiring to hear about so much potential for deep transformation here, and so many people really committed to making that happen. The day’s final visit was to the nearby vegan restaurant Borboleta Verde serving ‘vegan soulfood’, for a delightful evening with some of the organising team, amazing food and an actually ‘more-ish’ local beer.

Sunday morning started with a trip on the ‘rail bike’, a really fun way of using the now unused railway lines through Beirã station. Each one seats 2 people and they mean you can pedal along the train tracks. Our host took us 8km up the derelict train lines, through olive groves, rocky landscapes, cork oaks, with views of distant villages. Just beautiful, and a good workout in the morning!

A great way to use old train tracks. Final thing before some Sunday downtime was a visit to the Beirã market, recently revived by the community and the municipality working together, home to different local crafts and produce. Filipa and I were part of a conversation about how the wide variety of local projects and initiatives here might work together better, all rounded off with some paella and a beer. Very nice. And now an afternoon and then a day off. Much needed at this point! Deepest thanks to all our hosts and to everyone who has joined us for different events.

We had a rare day off on Monday 21st. We headed off to visit two key local towns, Castelo de Vide and Marväo. Both were medieval hilltop towns, absolutely beautiful. Marväo was the jewel of the two though, its medieval castle is the highest point in the region, and climbing to the top of the castle gives a spectacular 360° view for many miles. It was a clear sunny day and it almost felt like viewing the Earth from an aeroplane or something. Really spectacular and a very restorative day.

Odemira

Odemira is a beautiful town, the regional capital, and we arrived in the evening for a talk in a new bookshop – Mirabolante. The idea had been that the shop would be opening, even that our talk might be the opening event for the shop, but work had taken longer than planned, so the talk took place in an almost ready bookshop, also still a construction site.

About 40 people squeezed into the bookshop for a talk about ‘From What Is to What If’ followed by questions, after which we went to the home of the bookshop’s owners for a beautiful meal and some delicious local wine.

São Luís

Our host in São Luís was André Vizinho, an amazing activist for regenerative land use and forestry, as well as a facilitator and one of the earliest Transition activists in Portugal. His place is beautiful and we were made very welcome. Our first day there was a day off, so Emma and I headed towards the nearby coast. First stop was Praia do Malhão, a beautiful long beach on the wild Atlantic coast, one where swimming wasn’t really an option, instead being thrown around by the waves was more the offer.

Then, hunger suggesting we change locations, we headed to Vila Nova de Milfontes, a nearby town where the estuary meets the sea. A beautiful place, really unusual, where the estuary itself if dead calm but you can also see those wild Atlantic waves at the mouth of the estuary. We ate in a beautiful café on the beach and hung out there until heading back to São Luís.

Next day we were the guests of Co•Re, a new Rural Learning Centre in the middle of São Luís  (the name coming from ‘CO.learning to Re.generate’), which runs a series of trainings on rural regenerative empowerment. Filipa and I were leading a day long workshop for about 45 people who were on Day 4 of a 5 day workshop on regenerative rural communities, some from the local area, and some from projects across Europe.

In the beautiful large meeting room upstairs we ran our ‘Falling in Love with the Future’ workshop, with a beautiful time travel activity, a delightful cocktail of smells of the future and many great project ideas by the end of the day. The organisers of the training try to integrate them into the community as much as possible, to spread the benefits and impacts around as much as they can.

That evening all the participants were invited to supper in the homes of different members of the community, and so Emma and I joined Filipa, André, imagination activist Ora who had been travelling with us and a couple of other people in the home of Rita and her two sons, for a beautiful meal, conversation and music.

São Luís is very close to the famous intentional community of Tamera, somewhere I had always wanted to visit, and it turned out the next morning I had some free time, and Liza, a colleague from Transition Network who lives near São Luís offered to give me a lift there. We had an hour being shown around by Peter Koll, one of the community’s founders. It’s a fascinating place. Just about to celebrate 30 years since its founding, Tamera is a project rooted in the exploration of peace, of free approaches to love and sexuality, and of ecological restoration. It’s on about 150 hectares of land, and they’ve done an incredible job of working with water in innovative ways.

In a very dry region, they built a system of swales, of new forests, of lakes and ponds, which make sure that every drop of water on the place is captured and absorbed as much as possible. Over the years, their work has led to the replenishing of what was a depleting aquifer, with benefits felt to the land much further afield. We visited their amazing Assembly Hall, the largest strawbale structure on the Iberian peninsula, where they hold community meetings and big events. We also saw some of the ‘villages’ the residents live in, shared areas, and places people work too. Beautiful place. My deepest thanks to Peter for the tour, and to Liza for the lift there.

That afternoon, back at in São Luís at Co.Re, was a big event to which the course participants and the wider community were invited. In the courtyard at the back of the centre, about 180 people crammed in for an evening beneath the orange trees. First there was a beautiful short presentation designed to celebrate what had already happened in the village, the pioneers of community activism, in the form of the baking of an imaginary cake, the Transition town group for example bringing the eggs, another group the flour and so on, before the mix was taken indoors and an amazing cake was brought out and distributed to everyone present.

Then Filipa and I gave a talk that went down so well, such a beautiful engaged audience, Filipa was on interpretation fire, and it was a really memorable and delightful evening. It was a little shorter than usual because I misread the time (!), but the evening had gotten very cold, and people were starting to go blue, so maybe an earlier end to the evening than planned wasn’t such a bad thing? I hope not.

The evening ended out at a nearby co-operative shop and café for an evening of food and drink and local bands and dancing, chatting with people and everybody unwinding after a very full few days. São Luís is a fascinating place, so many people there doing so many amazing things, a real epicentre of possibility I think.

Faro

Emma stayed on in Vila Nova de Milfontes for a few days while Filipa and I headed to Faro on the south coast. We arrived just in time to do an all-day workshop at Associação Recreativa e Cultural de Músicos in the heart of the city.

About 25 people joined us for the final workshop of the tour, with their handfuls of What If questions at the end being a particular highlight, which when laid out together on the floor formed the basis of the best manifesto for the town that one could imagine. Our hosts were wonderful, providing participants with snacks and drinks and a delicious lunch. The day ended with a pizza with Filipa in the centre of Faro, unwinding after a very full day in the centre of this vibrant city.

Aveiro

For our final stop, Filipa and I travelled back up north to Aveiro, a beautiful city about three-quarters of the way up the west coast of Portugal, making a long train journey from the beautiful city of Faro to get here. On the tour’s final day, we started by heading to a local school to run a 2 hour session on imagination with 100 kids between the ages of 15 and 18. Usually those words, “running a session for 2 hours with 15 to 18 year olds” provoke severe anxiety in me, but these were a dream.

Filipa, Ora and me ran a session that talked about why telling stories and rehearsing the future is so important. I told them we were actually time travellers from the future who have travelled back to tell them about it (I could see at this point some of them thinking “who let this nutcase in here?”) and then told them stories from the future.

We played Yes, But/Yes, And which they loved. Earlier in the day Ora and I had created some imaginary Instagram posts from different points during the Transition, i.e. Taylor Swift announcing her 2029 tour of Portugal will be done via her travelling by bike (her private jet long since got rid of), Cristiano Ronaldo using his vast wealth to unlock the renewable energy revolution in Portugal, and so on. We presented Ora as being the social media archivist in our time travelling team, whose role was to collect key social media posts from those years of Transition.

We then asked the kids to come up with 3 Instagram posts from points in the next 6 years. They loved it! They came up with all kinds of ideas and worked really well. What was also lovely was that all the teachers were sat at the back of the hall, and we watched them all doing all the exercises as well! Thanks to all the kids who came, and for accepting our eccentric time-travelling ways, and participating so fully.

Then we were off to the venue of the Planetiers conference, where I was to be the keynote speaker closing the first full day of the event. After a book signing thing, it was my turn. I had 30 minutes for my talk, a clock ticking down in front of me, and I’m delighted to say I ended dead on 30 minutes. Beautiful feedback afterwards which, after you’ve done so many versions of the same talk back to back for many weeks, it’s lovely to hear how people hearing it for the first time react to it.

Filipa and I went to a bar to toast the end of the tour, an amazing few weeks which feels like it has really touched lots of people and will leave lasting ripples. A tour that at times felt like a marathon, and at other times like a sprint, but which also included some beautiful restorative down time in beautiful places. Final stop of the day was a restaurant where the organisers, speakers and others gathered for a meal to celebrate the event, before a walk home through the evening streets of the beautiful city of Aveiro.

I’d like to thank Emma Hopkins for being my companion on this tour, Filipa Pimentel for working so so hard to make it all happen in spite of sometimes difficult circumstances, for interpreting and facilitating and bringing her sense of playfulness to the whole thing, to Ora Atanley, Andre, Fernando and Carla, Jose and Pedro, Ana and Sara, Luis and Milena, Rafaela, José and everyone at Co.Re, Elizabeta ZJ, Peter, Carina, Humberto and Susana, Associação Quinta Oficina, and too many others to mention, as well to all the delightful people who came on workshops and to talks. Thanks to Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian for their support of parts of the tour. Thanks to the kids in the school in Aveiro for being so nice to us.