‘Twas the night before Pop Up Tomorrow…
Next morning we had a final planning meeting in a café round the corner from Battersea Arts Centre, our venue for the day, and then, as soon as the doors opened, we were in and sorting. Moving chairs and tables. Setting up sound systems and visuals. Laying out blackboards and creating upright blackboards. Getting the food ready for lunchtime. Setting up reception.

At 11, people started to arrive, and by 11.30, the circular entrance hall with its beautiful stained glass roof was packed. After a welcome and an introduction, the doors of BAC’s spectacular Great Hall were opened and people filed in in silence. Ruth Ben Tovim and Lucy, both from Encounters Arts, were our hosts for the day, and they welcomed us into a small strip of the hall, separated from the rest of it by a red ribbon that ran from side to side.

We were invited to look forward into the rest of the hall. That’s 2030, we were told. In 2030, anything is possible. We are going to create it. We are going to create a future that was the result of our doing everything we could possibly have done. After a while, we counted forward to 2030, and then when we reached it, the ribbon was lowered and we were invited, slowly and in silence, to spread out into the hall, into 2030, and to find our place there. That moment, symbolically, of stepping into the future, was very powerful.

We were invited to reflect on one thing we love and value in our lives, to write it on a blackboard and to then go around the hall seeing what other people had written. Then we connected to someone close to us, and each chose a subject, from the stickers on the back of the blackboard that we had affixed the previous evening, for them to tell us a story about.

Having heard the stories, we then captured ‘I was told a story about’ on our blackboards, and again we went round the hall reading the stories. Some of my favourites included “I was told a story about losing a panda”, “I was told a story about eating earth”, “I heard a story about listening properly to a homeless man about his life. He didn’t want money and thanked me for talking to him”, and “I heard a story about a primary school disco”. And the perplexing “I heard a story about trees enacting the Battle of the Nile”…

Each group then expanded to 8 people, and we discussed when we might do together as a ‘street’, what learnings and skills we had that we might contribute in 2030. This was again captured on our blackboards.

Then, around the room, were large vertical blackboards (actually upright trestle tables with black paper stuck on them), each of which offered a different topic. These were:

  • Food (growing, sourcing, selling, cooking, sharing)
  • Goods and services (sourcing, selling, sharing)
  • Energy, water, transport infrastructure
  • Community finance (money as flow and exchange)
  • Green, blue, public and play spaces, connectivity (transport)
  • Communications, civic networks
  • Formal and informal learning (Education, skills)
  • Celebrating, rituals, ceremonies
  • Creativity, design and making
  • Health, caring, well-being
  • Governance, law, justice and community decision-making.

We were invited to write on the boards what we felt were the key components our imaginary Town Centre Anywhere would need. We then chose something in particular that we would most like to be involved in creating, and gathered around the relevant topic to chat with others and see what we could co-create. Once groups had decided a project (over lunch), they then came to me, as the Town Centre Manager, who listened to their concept, and allocated them a site in our town.

Once they had a site, then they set to work, building it in three dimensions using cardboard from the local Sainsburys, willow from a local park, sticky tape, pens, and anything else that came to hand. People were totally engrossed, especially the group of boys who built a sustainably-powered tram, complete with roof and chairs. They were unimpressed when I suggested it might be powered by their farts.

Once the town was pretty much built, there was a moment of ceremony where the town was declared open by the Mayor (a participant chosen at random), and then everyone was invited to explore the town, explore potential connections, relationships, possibilities, opportunities. Some people stayed behind as hosts to explain what they had created, and others went out to network and connect.

The hall filled with laughter and conversation, with people exploring what a world like this, modelled on these values and this creativity, might actually be like. To immerse themselves in it. It was very powerful and could have  gone on for some time.

But eventually, we were invited to bid farewell to the world we had created, and to count ourselves back to 2019, back behind the ribbon, and to look forward into the future that could be, into the possible. Lastly there was a period of reflection where people were invited to write onto postcards their reflections on the day, in the form of a postcard to themselves from the future, capturing their most important learnings and insights from the day. We then heard some of those before closing, including the thoughts of Kate Raworth, author of ‘Doughnut Economics’.

The last time I did this exercise, indeed pretty much the last time this activity was performed, was in 2012 at the Transition Network conference in the same room. It had a profound impact on me. It brought the future alive in a way nothing previously had. It immersed over 300 adults in the magic of play, finding themselves lost in it, suspending their disbelief, in a way that was very powerful. On that day I ‘played’ creating a bakery, a brewery and a mill in the same building, what we called ‘the Yeast Collective’. Now, 7 years later, that is becoming a reality that will be open and trading next year. This stuff works. And when people ask how I know that putting a brewery and a bakery together will work I say “because I played it”.

Lucy Neal looking back into 2030.
This event creates what researchers Jackie Andrade and Jon May call ‘memories of the future’. It gives people a deep, rich, multi-sensory imaginary picture of how the future could be, one that will hopefully be able to nudge in front of dystopias, pessimism, despair and resignation. I hope we get to do it many more times, and I salute the genius of the Encounters team who came up with it.

Some thanks… to the whole team at Encounters especially to Lucy and Ruth, Transition Network and the whole team, the amazing Richard Couldrey, Persephone and the rest of the team at Battersea Arts Centre, Hilary, Dermot, Miranda, Simon, Shazira, Xanthe, Rob, Emma, Yaz, Sarah, Joe, the Chelsea Green team, everyone at the Furzedown Project for the lend of some of the technical equipment, Be Enriched for the vegware cutlery, to Ravenstone Primary in Balham, Dr Iain Bolton for the willow from Clapham Common, all the London Transition groups, and everyone who came and played so beautifully.