One of the highlights of my summer was collecting my Totnes Passport. The whole Brexit debacle from inception to its current state of woeful ineptitude and brazen jingoism has been one entirely bereft of imagination. Neither side has presented any kind of an imaginative story, either as to the wonderful things Brexit might enable, or the wonderful possibilities that remaining in the EU might present. The whole thing has felt like an imagination vacuum. I was delighted then to hear that in my town, a local solicitor, Jonathan Cooper, had decided to start issuing passports for the ‘City State of Totnes’ – a member of the European Union, and that within just a few days, the story had spread around the world.
Just before the summer, I attended the Transition Design Symposium at Dartington, a fascinating two-day event. I was the mid-dinner speaker, and found myself sat next to Grace Turtle who says, when asked to describe herself says “I’m a design strategist, or sometimes an experience designer, depending on what I’m doing. Sometimes a design futurist”. We had such a fascinating conversation about imagination, that a couple of weeks later we followed up with an interview by Skype. Sadly the quality of the recording was so poor that I only have a transcript to share here, but it was a deeply insightful conversation.
Hi folks. I’m back. I thought I might share my summer booklist, in case you’re looking for some inspiring late-summer reading. I think this might be what they call a ‘shelfie’? So, in micro-review format, here are the books that currently lie by my bed, well-thumbed, with sand and bits of vegetation in the binding, […]
What happens when play disappears from our cities? In a report for the National Trust, Stephen Moss writes “a potential impact is that children who don’t take risks become adults who don’t take risks”. One response is the Playable City movement. It defines a Playable City as “a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and story”. It’s a movement that started in Bristol, and believes that “by encouraging public activities that actively bring joy, we can create a happier, more cohesive urban future”.
A planet that four billion years ago was a boiling orb of molten lava, and then can unfold towards Jimi Hendrix and Nina Simone, and these great exemplars of human creativity. I mean, that all came from a boiling orb of lava four billion years ago! The planet is imagination. The planet is creativity. The galaxies and the stars and the cosmos are imagination and creativity. When we tap into the most creative dimensions of ourselves, we’re tapping into some of the deepest dynamics of the universe itself.
“The thing that excites me about your project and your focus on imagination is that it is a capacity that we airily talk about as being valuable and important, kind of like poetic language. “Isn’t it nice? Imagination? Isn’t it liberating?” But imagination to me is actually a collective capacity, and the ability to think about futures is a collective capacity. It might seem individual because that’s where the thoughts appear to be happening in our own minds, but the societies that we’re in and the people we’re around are the kind of enabling or disabling container for that”.
Last week, close to my home, was the Transition Design Symposium. It brought together people from around the world interested in what design can bring to the need for an urgent societal Transition, and for 2 days its attendees basked in glorious sunshine and fascinating interactions. I managed to catch up with Michel Bauwens who was attending and speaking at the conference, and we took some time for a short chat sitting under a tree in sunshine.
Rima Staines is an artist, musician and illustrator, puppet-maker, stop-frame animator, clock-maker, theatre designer and one half of Hedgespoken with her partner Tom Hirons. Tom is a writer of poetry and prose and teller of traditional folk tales. Together they created ‘Hedgespoken’, a travelling off-grid storytelling theatre run from a 1966 Bedford RL lorry, converted to be a home and a go-anywhere stage. On one bumper it says ‘Vehicle for the Imagination’ and on the other ‘Imagination, Liberation’. They travel, present stories, share artworks, having raised the money to convert the vehicle through a crowdfunder.
Last week I was in Brussels and was the keynote speaker at the Managenergy conference. I used the talk to share some of the research I’ve been doing about imagination, some of which may be familiar to you if you are a regular reader of this blog. They very fortuitously filmed it, and so I am able to share it with you here. I hope you enjoy it.
In our last post here, Robert Macfarlane suggested that “in some ways imagination is a function of privilege”. So what are the links between trauma, anxiety, poverty and the imagination? What does prison do to the imagination? How might cultivating the imagination play a role in rehabilitating people in prison? What might more imaginative approaches to prison look like, approaches which are land-based, practical and creative? I popped along to Landworks to chat to Chris Parsons who started Landworks 5 years ago, and who still runs it. I started by asking him to give me an introduction to Landworks and what it does.
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