Rob Hopkins

Let’s imagine, and this takes quite a leap in Britain in 2021 I’ll grant you, but stay with me, that we had a government who recognised that we are living through a time of imaginative contraction alongside a climate and ecological emergency, a social justice emergency and so much more. Let’s imagine that they were able to recognise this as the crisis it is, that allowing a population’s imagination to contract is profoundly dangerous. 

My story of how the Transition: Bounce Forward What Next Summit unfolded, with videos of the sessions and some reflections.

I have a theory. It is rooted in a lot of experience with many different groups. I have an exercise I call the ‘Time Machine’. I tell people that I have a Time Machine, and that I am inviting them to travel with me to 2030. The 2030 we travel to, and this is very […]

When was the last time you read a book cover to cover? And if you are still able to do this, do you feel you read in the same way you did, say, 20 years ago? How is the decline in our collective attention span affecting our ability to read and, by extension, our collective capacity for knowledge, wisdom and art? What do we lose when we lose our ability to focus? This was such a fascinating conversation, with two people who have given this question a great deal of thought.

Here is Episode Two of the videos I’ve been working on with Temujen Gunawardena and Badj Whipple animating some of the best bits from guests’ 2030 imaginings in Episodes 1-9 of ‘From What If to What Next’. This episode features Ariane Conrad, Marie Godard, Marieke van Dooninck, David Holmgren and Masum Momaya. I hope you love it. 

Welcome to Episode 23 of our journey together into the imagination and into the powers of What If. Today we are looking at street art. Street art has stood alongside the fight for climate justice, the Black Lives Matter revolution, and pretty much every mass uprising for change through history. But is it just decoration? Or does it have the power to deeply shift a culture? To fire the collective imagination? And what if it was everywhere?

Welcome to Episode 22 of ‘From What If to What Next’. This week we are exploring failure. More precisely, what if we were able to create a culture in which failure is embraced, celebrated even, rather than feared, avoided or ridiculed? What would society look like if we embraced failure in politics, education, economics and everyday life, indeed if we learned from a young age that failure was just as important as success? There’s a great What If question to stretch your imagination.

I am very happy to be able to share this with you. For the last few months I have been working with animators Temujen Gunawardena and Badj Whipple to create three short videos, of which this is the first. They take excerpts from my ‘From What If to What Next’ podcast, in this case from Kate […]

It was recently announced that Chuck Feeney, the Irish American former airport duty free shopping entrepreneur who was worth $8bn, had, at the age of 89, succeeded in his goal of giving away all of his money to initiatives working to make the world a better place. Every cent. He suggested that to give away a huge fortune was far more fun than holding onto it. He once wrote “to those wondering about giving while living .. try it, you’ll like it”.

Welcome to Episode 20 of From What If to What Next. This feels like a bit of a landmark for us, our twentieth episode! Thank you for joining me on this journey. Do tell your friends to come join us… Any reflections on how you’re finding the journey so far are most welcome. Seems like a good moment for that. The good news is that we have saved one of the very finest episodes to mark this moment.