Rob Hopkins

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.

The metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility.  The ways that we represent each to each other, or the human and more-than-human world, are incredibly powerful and determining, in the ways we then go on and behave towards those other entities.  So the cornerstone, the keystone, of my as-it-were language project, is diversity.  That, in another form, the form of biodiversity, is the keystone of modern conservation, I guess.

Finding creative, playful ways to get people thinking about ecological issues is one of the things that always fires my curiosity.  So, when I was in Brussels recently, I was intrigued to be invited to attend the final dress rehearsal of a musical called ‘Urinetown’ put on by Brussels Light Opera Company (BLOC).  Yes, odd title, but it makes sense in the context of the play, and was inspired when its writer Greg Kotis was travelling in Europe and, for the first time in his life, encountered a toilet that you had to pay for.  He teamed up with composer Mark Hollmann, and they wrote the play which went on to win 3 Tony awards and to be put on around the world.  Before the show, I spoke to Director Emanuelle Vergier, BLOC Chairman Diana Morton-Hooper and musical director, and permaculturist (his programme notes encourage the reader to plant fruit and nut trees, among other water-saving strategies), and started by asking them, “why ‘Urinetown”?

Sally Weintrobe is a psychoanalyst and a founder member of the Climate Psychology Alliance.  Her work is driven, in part, by a fascination with denial around climate change, and around neoliberalism and its culture.  For Sally, you can’t understand psychological reactions to climate change without getting a handle first on the culture neoliberalism has created, and in which we are all, to a greater or lesser extent, implicated. I have been intrigued by her work and her thinking for some time. She has written about what she calls ‘the new imagination’, thinking that clearly overlaps with the explorations we’ve been having here.

Today we’re talking about technology and the fragmentation of attention with Maggie Jackson. After an early career as a foreign correspondent, Maggie returned to the US and began writing about workplace and worklife issues. She began noticing the impact of early technologies such as laptops and cellphones on people. At that time, the tone of the national conversation was quite utopian and, Maggie felt, naive. “I call it the gee-whiz factor”, she told me, “many people truly thought that technologies were going to solve our problems, connect us, teach us, transport us, magically and painlessly”. Voicing any concerns or pointing out downsides easily had one labelled as a Luddite.

Delighted to unveil, on the The Very Good Network ‘Spare Ideas’ podcast, my 3 potentially world-changing inventions which should also, ideally, make me unimaginably wealthy. They are CatNav™, Jesus and Mary Choon™ and Empathy Twister™. Prepare to be wowed. Thanks guys, that was fun. Hear the whole show, which also features my son as one of the presenters, here. 

“I’m working with people who have worked with these ideas for 30 years, for example now in the US, coming to me and saying, “I’m completely disillusioned” and then feeling that disillusionment as a problem.  I generally say disillusionment is not a problem, it’s a good thing.  It’s disillusion and you don’t want to be believing in an illusion.  How do we see this as a productive moment?”

David Sax is a journalist living in Toronto, Canada, and he is the author of the book The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. I found David’s book fascinating, with its suggestion that the current revival of vinyl, books, photographers using real film, physical notebooks, all speak to something deeper that is happening in the world around us. How, I wondered, does analog interact with our imaginations in a way that digital can’t? Do real, tangible, actual things provide more for our imaginations to connect to, to be sparked by, to colonise?

I am increasingly fascinated by two words I think are vital to our future, but which I see declining in the world around us, “what if?” Navigating a way to a safe, nurturing and liveable future requires our coming together to create What If spaces, places and events where we can come together with others to ask those questions. The Transition movement, for me, has always been one of those spaces, the invitation for people to join up with others to look at their place through what if lenses.