From What If to What Next: Recent Episodes
Rob Hopkins
If there was ever a time for fresh thinking, for being bold, for being visionary and imaginative – for reimagining everything – this is it. Each episode, writer and Transition Movement founder, Rob Hopkins, invites cutting edge thinkers to visualise a new future. Join us as we ask What If...
And here we are. Episode 100. What a journey! Thank you so much for being a part of it with me. I could not be more delighted by today's guest, who I have wanted on this podcast since its inception. It's the wonderful writer, educator and poet Walidah Imarisha, one of my great she-roes. I really hope you are going to love the conversation that we had. And this episode starts with a couple of BIG announcements which I won't spoil, I'll leave you to dive into them.
On this, our 99th episode of ‘From What If to What Next’, we have the first episode in which both guests actually joined my physically in the studio! I was joined by Ruth Ben Tovim and Anne-Marie Culhane, both extraordinary practitioners of community arts and what they call ‘the Art of Invitation’. I have learned so much from both of these extraordinary women. The question we dive deep into is “What if invitations to participate in civic life were creative and caring?". You are going to love this one. The video Ruth mentions about the ‘Town Anywhere’ exercise is here. In two weeks time, we hit Episode 100! Don’t miss it. We have a VERY special guest, and also a big announcement or two. See you there
You're in for a bit of a treat here. In today's episode things are a little bit different: you usual Producer is your host, you usual host is a guest, we've woven some beautiful sound recordings into our episode to make it a sensory experience for you. Our other guest is Andrew Skeoch, sound recordist and author of the excellent book, Deep Listening to Nature. You can find his Listening Earth catalogue of nature soundscape albums here. This episode was such a joy to be part of, I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it, and I hope that you find yourself listening to the world around you with a deeper intensity.
Today's episode is a beauty. It brings together Dr. Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages with Nick Romeo, author of 'The Alternative', to explore 'What if there was an alternative to capitalism after all?' They bring such contrasting yet complementary perspectives for a conversation that, at times, takes the breath away. I hope you love this episode. My deepest thanks to them, and to you for your support of this podcast, and Ben Addicott, as always, for his audio pixie dust sprinkling.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Here in the UK, the Right to Roam has been pushed into the news headlines by the activities of Dartmoor landowner Alexander Darwall, who just announced that he is appealing the recent victory for campaigners who overturned the ban on wild camping that he brought in last year. His actions have triggered a beautifully colourful and well-supported campaign, and growing political support. This week we bring together Nadia Shaikh and Lewis Winks, both of whom campaign for a right to roam, to explore what it could actually be like to have a right to roam, how it would impact society, the natural world, and our collective ability to 'see things as if they could be otherwise'. It's a delightful conversation. Do excuse our not-quite-so-perfect-as-usual sound quality, our Producer Ben is away on holiday so we've had to improvise! And, as always, do let us know what you think...
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Better what, I hear you ask? You're in for a treat as I introduce you to futurist and futures designer Monika Bielskyte. She is one of the world's boldest and most adventurous futures thinkers, so you are in for a treat as we dive deep into her concept of 'Protopian' thinking, and so much more. Prepare for a super workout for your imagination!
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Season's greetings to you! Here is your special Christmas day episode, appropriately focusing on the theme of compassion. Our guests are Jared Seide and Dr Ann Seide, whose work on compassion is amazing. To find out more about Centre for Council, click here. You might also enjoy this film about their "Cops & Communities: Circling Up" program, this one about LAPD officers talking about working with "council huddles" and a presentation Jared and Ann did for a cohort of Law Enforcement leaders on compassion training for police officers. I really hope you love this episode, and thanks so much for your love and support of this podcast during 2023. Have a great festive season.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
As you'll have spotted by now, we're never ones to shy away from asking a good big bold What If question. This week we are diving into the question of how different things would be if we were to rethink the scale on which we operate, and were to root ourselves more closely in nature's own boundaries. The bioregional movement was a big thing in the 1990s and faded away a bit, but is now back with a bang, and we speak to two of its key proponents, Erika Zarate and Daniel Christian Wahl to find out more. How would bioregionalism going mainstream change the world and how we look at it? This is a fascinating deep dive, and I hope you love it. As always, do let me know what you think... thanks!
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The British Ecological Society’s REED Ecological Network (REED standing for Racial and Ethnic Equality and Diversity) was formed due to the very low levels of people of colour represented in the sector, and their feeling that "it’s easy to feel alone when working in ecology, the environment and related fields like agriculture". My two guests this week, Bushra Schuitemaker and Reuben Fakoya-Brooks are both members, and in spite of working in quite different ecological sectors, are active founder members of this network. How did it start? What does it do? And how does it actively fire the imaginations of those involved? This is a beautiful episode, I hope you love it. As always, do let us know what you think.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Jonathan Rhodes and Joanna Grover recently wrote a great book called 'The Choice Point' and work together as Imagery Coaching. They work with a wide range of organisations and individuals, building their capacity to be imaginative in a multisensory way. Naturally, their tools and their insights are highly relevant to the themes of this podcast given that, as bell hooks once put it, "what we cannot imagine cannot come into being". I hope you enjoy our conversation and that, at the end of it, your own imagination feels like it has had a good workout too! As always, thanks for listening and do let me know what you think, and thanks to Ben Addicott, Producer Supreme.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
On some of our 'decade' episodes (well, 50 and 80 anyway) we changed from our usual two guest format to an in-depth conversation with someone who represents one of the great practitioners of the radical imagination in our times. And so today, in keeping with that 'tradition', we mark Episode 90 with a one-to-one conversation with Aisha Shillingford, whose work I just love. She is Artistic Director at the fabulous Intelligent Mischief, whose work includes the fabulously-titled Secret Society of Black Utopians. She wrote a brilliant article recently in Yes! magazine which I highly recommend. What a delight and an honour to be able to sit and talk imagination with her. I hope you love it, and as always, do let me know what you think.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
This week I'm joined by Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, authors of 'How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet'. They are also co-founders of the beautifully named Good Grief Network. Aimee also DJs under the name eXis10shAL (I mention in the episode that I would spell it here as it was too time-consuming to spell it out on the podcast). We had a fascinating discussion about their 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate model, about imagination, and about the inner skills we need for the challenges ahead. I hope you love it. Do let me know what you think.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
This is a wonderful conversation. It's a deep dive into a powerful reimagining of who our energy system serves, and what it might look like. My two guests are both people who have given this a lot of thoughts. Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated, Peabody-winning, and two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. Her most recent film is the utterly brilliant 'King Coal' (see the trailer here). Rosemary Harris, from Platform, was part of the creation of the recent 'Our Power' report, which you can read here. I hope you enjoy this discussion and the possibilities it will open up in your imagination.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Welcome to one of those episodes of From What If to What Next that really gets under your skin. We are going to step out of our everyday commonplace universe and enter the parallel world of fungi that lives all around us, and really creates the world we live in. It’s a pretty wild ride. And I have two amazing guests for you, who will hold our hands on our deep dive into this fascinating world. Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, and her forthcoming book has possibly the best title I have ever heard which I’m not going to tell you so it can be a delightful surprise. And Doug Bierend is a New York based writer and author of the fab In Search of Mycotopia. I think you’re going to like this one.
As always, thanks for listening, thanks to Ben Addicott for sprinkling his audio gold dust over the whole affair, and do share your thoughts, it’s lovely to know what you think. Thanks.
This week's episode is just delightful. Meet Leah Black, currently leading the development of the new Regenerative Futures Fund for Edinburgh, and Shasta Hanif Ali is a writer, poet and anti-racism campaigner who works on racial equity and racial justice at Corra Foundation. I have to say that Shasta's time travellers' reflections from 2030 were possibly the most beautiful we've yet heard on 'From What If to What Next'.
You are in for such a treat, some real possibility-stretching reflections on how the world of philanthropy needs to adapt to the times we're in. I hope you love this conversation, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
When it comes to work that celebrates the radical imagination, Jayna Brown's recent book Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds is one of the most fascinating that I've read recently. Jayna is professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute, and for this episode she is joined by Kevin Quashie, who teaches black cultural and literary studies and is a professor in the department of English at Brown University. Together they take us on a deep dive into our What If question for this week and into many areas of discussion.
It was such an honour to be joined by Jayna and Kevin for this episode. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.
As soon as I started reading 'The Seaweed Revolution' by Vincent Doumeizel, I knew we would have to do an episode of this podcast about seaweed! It is a mind-blowing book about the many different ways in which expanding our relationship with seaweed could be good for us, our brains, our ecosystems and our climate, a book that sent my 'What If' brain racing. When we connected and planned this recording, Vincent suggested for our second guest Nancy Iraba, a marine scientist, seaweed entrepreneur, and founder of Healthy Seaweed Cafe in Tanzania. Together, let them transport you to a kelp forest somewhere and expand your mind as to the potential, promise and possibility of the seaweed revolution. And then go get yourself a copy of Vincent's book because it's incredible. And as always, do let us know what you thought of this conversation.
This is a rather special episode, our first recorded in front of an actual audience! Recorded live at the wonderful Timber Festival, this episode takes on a big question and dives deep.
Our first guest, Lucy Neal had, the previous day, presented a performance which explored how the near future would be transformed by the introduction of a Rights of Nature Act, and our second guest Paul Powlesland, a lawyer specialising in the subject, had appeared in the play and has done a lot of work on what legislation designed to protect the rights of nature might look like in practice. How would such legislation transform our relationship to the natural world, and how would it accelerate and support efforts to protect it? This is one of those episodes that opens up a beautiful What If space, helped by some great questions from the audience. I hope you love it, and I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks to the great team at Timber for making this possible.
Never let it be said on this podcast that we shy away from the big questions! I loved this conversation so much, it was one of those conversations that really opens up some expansive thinking and some new ways of looking at what might be possible.
My guests are Lisa Witter, co-founder and board member of Apolitical, and CEO and co-founder of the Apolitical Foundation, and Graça Fonseca, former Portugese Minister for Culture and much more besides. My hope is that after listening to this conversation, you will be able to look at the deeply unloveable situation with many of our political leaders in 2023 and be able to say, with great confidence, "it doesn't have to be like this".
I'd love to know what this conversation brings up for you, and thanks as always for listening, and for your support of this podcast.
This week we are exploring how we do things, rather than what we do. We are diving into the concept of 'healthy human cultures' and how to build them. What would it mean if, in the organisations and movements we're part of, we set out to create the best conditions for a shared culture in which we thrive?
Luckily we have two great people to help us unpick this one. Leila Hoballah is an organisation designer, a community builder, a facilitator and a coach, co-founder of makesense.org, one of the leaders of Boundless Roots, a collective action-inquiry investigating the enabling condition for radical changes in ways of living. She is also part of The Week.
Sophy Banks was one of the architects of the Transition movement, founder of Transition training, who does a lot of work around grief tending, and exploring Healthy Human Culture, the culmination of her life’s journey so far, which you can read more about here. Impossible to think of two better people to have this conversation with. Enjoy, and as always, do let me know what you think.
Today’s podcast was recorded live in Paris, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. As part of the wonderful ChangeNOW festival in the Grand Palais Ephémère I had the pleasure of sitting down with Otto Sharmer in the ChangeNOW podcast booth for an in depth conversation and journey into the future. Otto is the creator of the Theory U model of change, and spends much of his time teaching the model to groups around the world. The previous day he and I had both been speakers at the festival (you can see him here and me here). We also had a question from the audience from among those sitting outside the booth. My thanks to the organisers and to Otto for making this possible. I hope you enjoy it.
You’re in for a treat this week. I so enjoyed this conversation. In this episode I was joined by Laura Baldwin, British Olympic sailor, Transition and XR activist, and co-founder of Sport LOCAL for Life, and David Garrido, who is a sports broadcaster, initially on the BBC, and now on Sky, with a particular area of expertise in the crossover between sport and sustainability. How would it be if the world of sport became one of the key drivers for the great Transition that we so need to see?
Stand by for the kind of passion, the never-say-die, fight-until-the-final-whistle, we’re-all-in-this-together kind of spirit that you find at its very best with sports people. One of my favourite episodes so far.
The diversity of the natural world is declining at a rapid rate, and has been for many decades. Many people present that as being an inevitability, a trade-off to economic progress. But what if we could create a future in which we enabled the natural world to regenerate? What would that look like, and what would it do to our ability to imagine a different future? This week I am joined by Rebecca Wrigley, Chief Executive of Rewilding Britain, and by Eduard Muller, an educator who was involved in the transformation of Costa Rica, the only country in the world to almost double its forest cover. What can we learn from that experience, and what would the bounceback of nature look like in practice? A beautiful episode. I hope you enjoy it.
We're back, and boy oh boy are you in for a treat. Since Episode One there were two guests I most wanted to have on this podcast. The first, adrienne maree brown, I was fortunate enough to speak to in Episode Fifty. The second I am sharing with you today. This time there's just one guest, and it is the brilliant prison abolition activist Mariame Kaba. I've admired her work, and her writing, for years now, and it was such a delight to spend 45 minutes in conversation with her. I'm not going to say anything more, other than that I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
Recent research, entitled The Future of Consumption in an 1.5°C World, carried out by the University of Leeds, C40 Cities and Arup, powerfully shows that the world’s comfortably off need to do the most to reduce the world's carbon emissions and need to reduce the impacts of their consumption by two thirds by 2030. But this will only happen if it feels like a move towards something rather than being dragged away from something irreplaceable, if it feels thrilling, like something that spreads and becomes contagious. And, perhaps most importantly, if everyone can see that it is improving, rather than impoverishing, peoples’ lives and experience. So what might a real push to support people in reducing their individual and household carbon emissions look like?
My two guests this week are Dr. Vanessa Timmer, Executive Director of OneEarth Living, a Vancouver-based nonprofit ‘think and do tank’ advancing sustainable everyday living around the world, and Tom Bailey, one of the co-creators of Take the Jump, a new and fast growing grassroots climate movement. As you'll hear, they have both been giving this a lot of thought.
This was such a beautiful conversation to be part of, with two old friends, and a story that I play at least a small role in.
In 2015, Transition Network, an organisation I had co-founded, undertook a transition of its own, from a pretty conventional management model to a non-hierarchical structure that distributed power, using Holocracy. We had to learn how to do it, and were brilliantly supported by Université du Nous, who support and advise organisations on how to do this.
For this episode of FWIWN I am joined by Sarah McAdam, one of the key people in Transition Network who made this happen and who now supports other organisations in making such shifts, and Guillaume Dorvaux, one of UDN's trainers who trained the team.
We're never one to shy away from the big questions, and to dive deep into the remarkable and far more delightful world that could yet be created if we do so. This week we are joined by two truly great guests who help us explore the question of what our economics system and thinking could look if we were to consciously and ambitiously decolonise it. You're going to love this one.
My guests are Prof. Sunny Singh, writer, novelist, public intellectual, and a champion for decolonisation and inclusion across all aspects of society, and also Nonhlanhla Makuyana (they/them) a multidisciplinary artist, community organiser and educator, as well as co-director of the brilliant Decolonising Economics.
Such an expansive and rich conversation. I'd love to hear what you think of this one.
If you were one of those kids in school who stared out of the window most of the time, this episode is for you.
I'm joined by Kwesia X, aka City Girl in Nature (check out her many amazing videos), and by Ben Rawlence, author of three books, most recently The Treeline and founder and director of Black Mountains College.
It's a beautiful and thought-provoking conversation. Just how different could our education system be, and how would the imagination flourish if we made those changes? Classrooms? So last year.
Today's episode brings a big idea, like a really BIG idea, one that you may initially need to suspend disbelief in order to settle into but which, hopefully, by the end, you'll be fizzing with the possibilities of.
I'm joined by Della Duncan, Renegade Economist, host of the Upstream Podcast, a Right Livelihood Coach, founding member of the California Doughnut Economics Coalition, and so much more, and also by Jennifer Hinton, a systems researcher and activist in the field of sustainable economy who is currently a researcher at Lund University, in Sweden, and a senior research fellow at the Schumacher Institute.
This is a conversation that creates the space for you to really reevaluate some of the fundamental assumptions upon which our economy is built. As always, I'd love to know what you think...
This week I'm joined by two of the greatest practitioners of the imagination that I know. Dr. Penny A Hay is an artist, educator and researcher, Reader in Creative Teaching and Learning and Research Fellow Bath Spa University and Director of Research, House of Imagination. Signature projects include School Without Walls and Forest of Imagination. Ruth Sapsed is the Director of Cambridge Curiosity and Imagination (CCI), an arts and well-being charity that cultivates creative communities in Cambridgeshire and beyond. Their Artscapers report is essential reading for anyone interested in boosting the imaginations of young people, deeply inspiring.
This is a beautiful conversation, one that will open up all sorts of new thinking and insights. As always, do let me know what you think!
This episode of 'From What If to What Next' focuses on Utopianism, on our ability to imagine better futures. This is such an amazing conversation with two people who know more about Utopias than the rest of us.
Alex Zamalin's work first came to my attention through his book 'Black Utopia', which I hugely recommend, and which introduced me to so many great ideas and thinkers. And more recently, Gregory Claeys' book 'Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life after Consumerism', was similarly impactful, opening many new doors in my mind. To bring them together for a conversation? A dream come true. I hope you enjoy it. And I look forward to the podcasts of 2023 and where they might take us.
It's time for our Christmas special. We wanted to leave 2022 on a high, with a hugely inspirational story of imagination in action, of imagination going big, one that will leave your mind fizzing with possibility. Recently, Camden Council in London became the first UK local authority to offer Imagination Activist training to its staff. 32 people took part over 8 weeks in a course designed to expand their imaginations and to make them ambassadors for the imagination within the organisation. It was a huge success.
In this podcast we speak to Phoebe Tickell, of Moral Imaginations, who designed and taught the course, and Georgia Gould, Leader of Camden Council, to find out more. We explore what if every organisation did the same? I hope you're going to love this. As always, do let me know what you think.
The advertising industry is one of the key things driving the levels of consumption that are pushing us towards climate breakdown. But there are people within the advertising industry who are trying to push things in a different direction.
In this episode, we speak to Lisa Merrick-Lawless of Purpose Distruptors, and strategy director and writer Michael Hines, to enter into a future in which the advertising sector has stepped up as a key driver in the change we need to see. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts... In the podcast a couple of things are mentioned, the first is the Purpose Disruptors 'Advertised Emissions' report, and the second is their 'Good Life 2030 Documentary'.
This is not a podcast that shies away from the big and important What If questions, and today we're reaching out for one of the big ones of our time. Homelessness is one of scourges of our times, and is on the rise. But is it unavoidable and inevitable, or is it just the result of a series of decisions that could just as easily be made differently?
Our two amazing guests, Ana Rausch and Sam Tsemberis, are doing incredible work, which is already showing great results, using the 'Housing First' model. By the end of this podcast, you'll not only believe we can eradicate homelessness, but you'll also know how we can do that.
You're in for such a treat. Today's episode is about beavers, and what the future would look like if we allowed them to reshape the world in the way they are so incredibly good at. During the summer I went to Cornwall and fell in love with beavers, which inspired this episode. My two guests are Chris Jones, whose farm I visited to see the beavers, and Eva Bishop, whose work with the Beaver Trust is about promoting their wider re-introduction. This is such a beautiful conversation, and I challenge you not to also fall in love with beavers by the end of this episode.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Today's episode was recorded live at the BTS Centre's Convocation 2022, an online event with the theme of 'Imagination and Collective Liberation for a Climate-Changed World'. It was recorded before a live (online) audience.
This was an event which set out to explore “what it means to nourish our imaginations toward a world of joyful possibility and embodied hope, while also holding space for the difficult realities we are facing”. We fitted right in.
We were joined by Dr. Keisha E. McKenzie, Senior Vice President for Programs at Auburn Seminary, and Shanon Shah, Director of Faith for the Climate and Senior Deputy Editor of Critical Muslim. This was such a delightful discussion, and my deepest thanks to everyone who made it possible, especially Nicole Diroff and everyone at BTS. As always, I'd love to hear what you think of this episode and the issues it raises....
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This week's episode is such a treat. Over the summer I devoured Ekow Eshun's amazing book 'In the Black Fantastic', the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name at the Hayward Gallery which, sadly, I didn't get to see. But even just the book was an incredible feast for the imagination, as was his concept of the Black Fantastic. If you enjoyed our podcast on Afrofuturism, you're going to love this one. It was such an honour to chat with Ekow, and I think you are really going to enjoy this journey into the Black Fantastic. As always, do let me know what you think!
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I think you are really going to enjoy this one. My reading over the summer holidays was Shayda Kafai’s brilliant book ‘Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid’ (which I notice in the podcast I call 'Crip Wisdom' - sorry!), and as soon as I finished it I knew I had to ask Shayda to come onto the podcast to discuss her ideas. I asked her who her dream fellow guest would be, and she suggested Zena Sharman, author of The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health. And so this episode was born. And what a delightful, deep and amazing discussion we had. You’re going to love it. Do let me know what you think, I hope this episode provokes a lot of discussion and reflection.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Just 1% of the population own half the land in England, and citizens have a Right to Roam over only 8% of its surface. This deliberate exclusion has many bad side effects, not least its impact on our collective imagination. But it's only like this because some people imagined it like this. What if we were to reimagine this arrangement so that, like in Scotland, our Right to Roam actually enabled us to, er, roam?
For this episode I'm joined by Kate Swade of Shared Assets and Guy Shrubsole, campaigner and author of 'Who Owns England?' and 'The Lost Rainforests of Britain'. I loved this conversation. Do let me know what you think...
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Today’s podcast is something a little different. We’re departing from our usual format a little to spend some time in deeper conversation with one of the great guardians of the collective imagination, Cyril Dion.
If you’ve ever seen the film ‘Demain’ (‘Tomorrow’), or his more recent film ‘Animal’, you’ll know him, and his amazing work. He’s also a poet, a collaborator with musicians, a writer, a journalist and much more. And his current work is focused on the need to tell positive stories about the future.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Today's episode is really rather beautiful, with Chloe Naldrett and David Micklem exploring the role of theatre in the great transition that lies ahead of us. I hope you love it. Do let me know what you think.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
It's hardly a surprise that we struggle to hold onto hope and optimism given that the news we receive every day is filled with so much misery, appalling human behaviour, despots, narcissists and hopelessness. So what if instead we lived in a world in which the majority of the news we encountered was positive news? Stories of change going in the right way? That's our question for exploration today, and my two guests, Sean Wood, CEO of Positive News, the online and print magazine for good journalism about what’s going right, and Eliza Marshall, musician and champion for deep change, have been giving it a lot of thought. So lose yourself in what that future will be like. It's a treat.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
I'm posting this on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK. If we ever needed imaginative thinking about how to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, we needed it 30 years ago, but the second best time would be now.
Today's episode brings together two people who believe that vital to the refiring of the collective imagination is the availability of life-long learning. We're joined by André Anderson who is Headmaster of Freedom & Balance, an art college for the artist in everyone, and Zahra Davidson is Chief Exec & Design Director at Huddlecraft: an ecosystem of support for peer-to-peer learning and action. Zahra started Huddlecraft to reimagine lifelong learning. It's a deep and fascinating conversation, I hope you love it, that it cools you down a little (!) and that you'll let me know any thoughts it stimulates
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As the cost of living crisis impacts more and more people, and energy security becomes something far more widely discussed than it was 10 years ago, here is a vital conversation with two leading pioneers of the notion of community energy. Community energy is a movement that is spreading in spite of, rather than because of, government actions, but its potential is huge. What if by 2030 it was the norm? What might it unlock beyond simply kilowatt hours?
I'm joined by Leila Fortunato and Agamemnon Otero to explore this, and you are in for such a treat... thanks as always for listening, and do let me know your thoughts on this episode.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
In the light of the UK government's recent appalling proposed deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda and their new policy to electronically tag everyone who arrives on our shores, as well as the massive growth in what we might call the 'immigration industrial complex' around the world, this week we are asking a vital, and rarely asked question, what if we just got rid of the idea of borders altogether?
I'm joined by the brilliant Nandita Sharma and by Todd Miller, who have both been giving this a lot of thought for a long time. I think this is one of our most thought-provoking and mind-expanding episodes yet. I'd love to hear what you think. My thanks to you for listening, and to Ben Addicott as always for producing it.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
An odd question perhaps... yet in the hands of our guests, Belina Raffy and Sam Knights, a powerful and pertinent one. What if we were to harness the power of humour as a tool in the fight to engage people in the climate emergency? What can humour allow and enable us to do that other approaches don't?
We had a lot of fun making this episode, and I hope you will have as much fun listening to it. As always, do let me know what you think, we love to hear your thoughts on these episodes.
Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.
Welcome to our 54th episode, our 54th journey into the future that is still possible, just. But before I tell you more, a suggestion, as you'll hear in the episode, that this episode will be a lot more enjoyable, and a fuller experience, if you listen to it in a space with fresh bread being baked. So if you've never made bread before, here is a link with an easy-to-make recipe. Good luck!
And so to our episode. It's all about bread, and the role that good, nutritious bread, made from wheat grown well, could play in transforming the world around us. Our guests are Andrew Whitley and Catriona Milligan. They share with us a vision of a future that is delicious in so many ways. I hope you love this episode and do let me know what you thought, and what imaginings it inspired for you.
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Here at 'From What If to What Next' we don't shy away from the big questions of our times! Today we are diving deep into the question of what we eat.
Rather than debating whether veganism is a good thing or not, today we are stepping, with the help of our guests Tomi Makanjola (aka The Vegan Nigerian) and Dr. Melanie Joy, Founding President of Beyond Carnism, into that world that has already become vegan. What would it be like? How might it impact our imagination? How might it improve society in other ways. So today, do join me on a journey to a vegan 2030. It may surprise you. And I would love to hear your thoughts on today's episode .. do let me know.
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Welcome to Episode 52, different from the episode we advertised, a bit of a mix up at What If Towers, but it means some of you now know the subject of our next episode. Oh well. But this week's is such a treat.
Meet Dr Rupa Marya and Rhiannon Osborne (many thanks to her, as this episode was her idea), who bring a delightful and fresh inroad into what society could look like if it were to prioritise health in the full meaning of the word. It's a discussion that is both grounded and hugely aspirational, just like we like it here.
I hope you love this episode. My thanks to both my guests because they were both amazing, and to Ben Addicott as always for making it sound so amazing.
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We are joined by two amazing guests to discuss a vitally important issue. Ben Hurst of Beyond Equality and Graham Goulden of Cultivating Minds UK join me to explore what a future in which men work with each other to rapidly deescalate male violence in the world would look like and feel like. It's a powerful and vital discussion. My deepest thanks to them both and, as always, to producer Ben Addicott for making them sound so good. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode.
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Episode 50. That's something worth celebrating! And what a beautiful way to celebrate it, by interviewing the person I've wanted on this podcast since it began, adrienne maree brown. One of the great thinkers and imagineers of our time, it was an honour to finally meet her and to record this episode. I hope you love it. It's been hard keeping this a secret for so long.
I'd like to thank everyone who has made it possible for us to get this far, especially everyone who has subscribed to the podcast, and to all our amazing guests. Next week's 'Ministry of Imagination' episode, in a change to our usual format, will feature myself and producer Ben Addicott visiting the Ministry and answering your questions. Don't miss it! Thank you, and here's to the next 50...
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Today's episode is one of my favourites so far, with two amazing guests. It was inspired by one of our guests, Jon Alexander's new book 'Citizens: why the key to fixing everything is all of us', which is just released and highly recommended. He is joined by the delightful Baratunde Thurston, author of 'How to be Black' and presenter of one of my favourite TED Talks. You are going to love this exploration of what it would mean to live in a world which genuinely valued and empowered us as citizens.
I would LOVE to know what you thought of this episode, and I really hope you love it. And stand by for Episode 50. We have a beautiful conversation lined up with a very special surprise guest. You're going to love it.
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When it comes to building food security, biodiversity, employment, spaces that are good for mental health, and so much more besides, we are missing a huge opportunity. Our cities contain many square kilometres of flat roof spaces, currently visited by a few pigeons and that's about it. But what if they were transformed into vibrant vegetable gardens, public spaces for events, places for communities to meet? And what would creating a vibrant network of such gardens unlock? I'm fascinated by the idea that comes up in this podcast of a network of bridges connecting them, a whole new way to get around a city.
So meet my guests, Paola Krug (here is a link to the guidebook she co-wrote) and Katrien Ligt (you can follow her Hamburg work on Instagram here), both of whom are doing amazing work transforming rooftops. You'll never look at a flat roof in the same way ever again. Enjoy. And do let us know what you thought of this episode.
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You're going to enjoy this one. This week we're talking about mental health, and how different the world would be if we were to take a very different approach to it. I'm joined by Jo Hunter from 64 Million Artists, and by Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu of Project LETS. It's one of those episodes that requires a walk afterwards to really digest what you've heard. My thanks to Jo and Stefanie for their vulnerability and openness in this discussion. I hope you find it useful and inspiring. Thanks as always to Ben Addicott for his production, and to you for listening.
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This week this podcast joins you with printing ink on its hands and under its fingernails . We're talking about printmaking and its potential to unleash social change. I have a vested interest here, I love printmaking. And I love social change! So discussing this gives me the opportunity to bring together two amazing printmakers.
Sarah Gillespie makes the most amazing mezzotint prints of moths, ghostly, stunning, and heartbreaking. Katie Gilmartin uses lino printing to engage young gay and trans people in learning the stories of other gay and trans people throughout history. It's a conversation that goes in many different directions and which I hope you'll really love. And I hope it also makes you fall in love with the joy of printmaking! Thanks for listening and see you next time.
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Meet Tim Gill and Alice Ferguson of Playing Out, brilliant guests for a vital discussion. Today we're talking about kids, and play and about the places where we live. Kids have almost entirely vanished from our streets. Retreating indoors in the face of the car’s domination of our city spaces, and a perception of the lack of safety, kids are all too often starved of play. ‘No ball games here’ signs. Horrible noises only audible to teenagers to chase them away from sitting near certain buildings, The privatisation of public space. Cities are increasingly being designed around the needs of adults and capital rather than kids. So what might we do about it? Some beautiful visions of the future from our Time Machine adventure this week. I hope you love it.
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We start this year with a fantastic episode and a really important question. What if we were to implement every solution that we already know exists in order to tackle the climate crisis with the sense of urgency that an emergency should inspire? After the damp squib of COP26, it's a vitally important question. Can we do it? Is there still time? And most importantly, what would it feel like to live in a time when that was actually happening, when all around us, all hands were applied to this most momentous of tasks? It's not a question we ask often enough.
And it is a big question. Joining me are Clover Hogan and Paul Hawken, both brilliant thinkers on this question. Paul's book. 'Regeneration', which we refer to throughout the podcast, can be bought at many independent booksellers (never Amazon). Do let me know what you think of this episode, of thoughts for future What If questions it raises for you, or anything else it inspires in you.
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Although not planned as some kind of 'Christmas Special', that's kind of what this episode is, so hopefully it will give you the opportunity to treat your imagination to something very special over the festive season. This episode will introduce you to Flora Collingwood-Norris and to Orsola de Castro, cofounder and Global Creative Director of Fashion Revolution.
Please consider buying Flora's book 'Visible Creative Mending for Knitwear' and Orsola's book 'Loved Clothes last: How the Joy of Rewearing and Repairing Your Clothes Can Be a Revolutionary Act' at your favourite independent bookshop (never Amazon, never Amazon...). I hope episode this inspires much stitching and loving repairing
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The IPCC report that came out in mid-2021 said “unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5 degrees, or even 2 degrees, will be beyond reach”. “Immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions”. Let’s imagine we were able to actually do that in the time available to us.
It would mean the complete reimagining of food, travel, housing, the economy. A retooled education system. A new sense of shared and collective purpose. It would feel like living through a revolution of the imagination. But what would it actually feel like to live through a revolution of the imagination? It's a question that leads us to our question for today’s episode – what if we are standing on the cusp of an Imagination Age? It was a question inspired by this article I read that one of our guests had written about the second guest.
Gabriel A. Silva, who wrote it, is a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering in the Jacobs School of Engineering and the Department of Neurosciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California San Diego. He holds a Jacobs Family Scholar in Engineering Endowed Chair, is the Founding Director of the Center for Engineered Natural Intelligence, and Associate Director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind. In addition to his academic work, he is a regular contributor to Medium and Forbes.
And Rita J. King, who it's about, believes in Applied Imagination for creative, pragmatic problem solving in the Imagination Age. King is EVP for Business Development at Science House, a strategic consultancy in Manhattan. She is a writer, researcher, speaker, designer and artist. As a Futurist at the National Academy of Sciences Science and Entertainment Exchange, she invents novel technologies, characters and stories for film and TV projects. She is a Resident Research Fellow at the Center for Engineered Natural Intelligence at UC San Diego.
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Powerful psychology is used to convince us, often subliminally, that we want and need things we previously never knew even existed. This is especially dangerous at a time when we need to urgently cut consumption of high carbon-generating products and lifestyle choices. It is estimated that in the UK companies spend over £23bn a year on advertising. Research shows that the more advertising we are exposed to, the more unhappy we feel, the more materialistic, the less we engage in positive social activities and the less we care about the environment. Advertising, in other words, is incompatible with the decarbonisation we so urgently need. There is a very real, and dangerous, link between living in cities overrun with cars and the fact that we are surrounded by billboards and newspaper stuffed with seductive car ads. What if instead those spaces presented us with different messages, messages celebrating more inclusive cities with far less cars, cities with clean air, cities rich with biodiversity - messages that told different stories? Our What If question for today then is … “What if we reclaimed our public spaces from advertising?”
My two guests on this episode bring a huge amount to this conversations. Rosa ter Kuile is Campaigns and Communications manager at Rising Arts Agency. and is part of the Bristol Womxns Mural Collective. Robbie Gillett works part-time from Bristol on Possible’s Badvertising campaign and at Adfree Cities. I hope this episode will help you to see the spaces around you differently, to reimagine what your corner of the world would look like without adverts, and how that might impact your imagination.
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I'm not going to say much about this episode, other than that it's incredible. We are exploring Afrofuturism, which has been variously described as “speculative fiction from the African diaspora”, “a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens” and “an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation”. It has so much to teach us about imagination and how to keep What If questions alive over time. You will also hear the story of the Zambian Space Programme (a new one on me) which is just amazing.
My guests are both amazing. Dr. Priscilla Layne is Associate Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her book, White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture, was published in 2018 by the University of Michigan Press. She has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk and film. She recently translated Olivia Wenzel's debut novel, 1000 Serpentinen Angst, which will be out next year. And she is currently finishing a manuscript on Afro German Afrofuturism.
Dr. Dennis Chester is Professor of African American Literature at California State University East Bay (CSUEB) in Hayward CA. His interests include all manner of topics related to African American literature and culture with specialties in the Harlem Renaissance and in contemporary genre studies. Dr. Chester's recent activities include published articles on African American crime fiction and presentations on Afrofuturism and the characteristics of Black speculative fiction. A recent Fulbright fellow, Dr. Chester is also very interested in the diasporic aspects of contemporary Black writing and exploring the ways that Black literature and Black people move within and across national borders.
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The world’s governments will be coming together for 2 weeks to, hopefully, reach some kind of binding agreement that might give the world at least a fighting chance of preventing runaway climate change. There’s one problem though...
On a planet where over half the population is female, the leadership team put together by the UK government, who are hosting these talks, is almost exclusively male. Yes, you heard that right. And yet, climate change is an issue that impacts women more than men. It disproportionately impacts their livelihoods, the levels of violence they face, their educational opportunities and much more.
Yet we know that involving the diversity of a population in making big decisions that affect them can lead to far greater public support, not to mention better ideas. Research also shows that women understand climate change better than men, are more open to change and to big ideas, and bring a more compassionate approach to decisionmaking.
I'm joined to explore this by the fabulous Nameerah Hameed and by Bianca Pitt, both of, among other things, #SheChangesClimate. I hope you love our conversation as much as we did. Please let us know what you think. And do share the link with your friends and do sign She Changes Climate's Open Letter. And see you in two weeks, for a fascinating episode to mark our 40th episode.
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Everywhere, where you live included, has a patchwork of organisations of different sizes who are doing business and making things happen in a way that is not solely about the generation of profit, but about serving a larger social purpose. They might be called social enterprises, or socially-trading organisations, or all sorts of other things.
Today’s episode asks what if they got together and designed how better they might join up and work in a more connected way? What if they offered peer to peer support between each other? What if the Mayor of the city got behind this new network, and saw it as an opportunity to invest and support the emergence of a new economy? What if that investment was then, as each enterprise found its feet and generated surpluses, reinvested back on a pay-it-forward basis to help other emerging enterprises? And what if this skilful support for a new economy spread and spread and became the default model for how to regenerate the economies of towns and cities across the land?
Sounds good doesn’t it? Well stand by. You’re about to hear a story of how this is actually happening, one you won’t have read about in the papers or seen on TV, but it’s very much a reality. I am joined by two amazing guests who have played an active role in making this happen.
Danielle Cohen joined Power to Change, the independent trust that supports community businesses in England, in 2018. She works in cities and regions to enable the community business sector to flourish as part of the local economy. Her work has included partnering on the development of Kindred, a social investment vehicle owned and led by the social economy in Liverpool City Region, backed by the city region’s Combined Authority and Power to Change. Before joining Power to Change, Danielle worked in urban regeneration, community engagement and corporate responsibility, including as deputy CEO of a central London BID. She believes passionately in building a regenerative economy which nurtures people and planet.
Erika Rushton has 35 years of experience in supporting and investing in communities and creative enterprises to create, grow, occupy and reinvent their own economies. She has worked with homes, workplaces, towns, whole cities, industry sectors and communities of interest at a regional, national and international level.
She is the Director of Creative Economist whose current contracts include Islington Mill Arts Club to deliver The Other City – an Artist led £7 million redevelopment of heritage and modern buildings accommodating 150+ creative enterprises; Women In Space a network of 25+ creative women from across the UK who have taken over unwanted land and buildings, creating value and giving places new purpose; and Kindred, which you’ll hear more about shortly. She mentors creative women leaders nationally and internationally; lectures internationally; and works voluntarily to address intersectional gender discrimination in the UK.
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The decline of insect populations around the world has been nothing short of terrifying. Last year I visited a school in an intensive wine-producing region in France, and suggested to the kids that they might build an insect hotel, only to be told by the head teacher "we don't have any insects here". It has stayed with me ever since. So in today's episode, we are exploring how it would feel to live through a time when insect population, and biodiversity in general, bounced back? If we did everything we possibly could to create the conditions for that? How incredible would that be?
My guests are Vicki Hird, who runs Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food, and is the author of the just-published 'Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things that Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – And Why We Need to Love Them More', and Matt Shardlow is CEO of Buglife, "the only organisation in Europe devoted to the conservation of all invertebrates". Do join them and support their work.
Thanks as ever to Ben Addicott for sound production and theme music, and for our taste this week of what my Time Machine sounds like... Do let me know what you thought of this episode.
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Today we bring together Anthea Lawson, author of the fabulous new book 'The Entangled Activist' and Alastair McIntosh, author of 'Soul and Soil' and 'Riders on the Storm'. I usually try to constrain the conversations we have here to around 45 minutes, but this one was so fascinating that we just kept rolling, and just kept chatting, and so this one actually comes in at an hour and a quarter! But you'll love it I promise, and you'll wish we'd kept going. I'm not going to tell you anything else, just that you will love it, and I so look forward to your reflections and comments.
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Today’s episode of From What If to What Next is about care. Care has been very much on our minds of recent. COVID has highlighted how vitally important care is and yet how undervalued it is. It is so often seen as being the domain of women, and around the world it is often either underpaid, or unpaid work. As the populations of the Global North live longer and longer, and as young people are unable to afford, often, to leave home, it tends to often fall to women to care for both the younger and the older generations simultaneously, what is sometimes called the ‘Sandwich Generation’.
Many people are happy to stand on their doorsteps and clap for those who provide the care in our society, but not to really value care, not to campaign for it to be truly valued. These days of COVID have the potential to be a real watershed moment. So in today's episode, with two extraordinary women, we're asking "what if care work was valued?” This is an episode that might very well lead to inner paradigm shifts...
Kavita Ramdas is a recognized global advocate for intersectional gender equity and justice. She currently serves as the Director of the Women’s Rights Program at the Open Society Foundations. She also serves on a few select non-profit advisory boards, the board of trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the board of directors of GRIST, a publicly supported journalism non-profit focused on climate justice.
Ai-jen Poo is an award-winning organizer, author, and a leading voice in the women’s movement. She is the Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Director of Caring Across Generations, Co-Founder of SuperMajority, Co-Host of Sunstorm podcast and a Trustee of the Ford Foundation. Ai-jen is a nationally recognized expert on elder and family care, the future of work, and what’s at stake for women of color. She is the author of the celebrated book, The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.
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You are in for such a treat. This is one of the most thought-provoking and inspiring episodes of this podcast yet. It was my huge honour to be joined by Yumna Hussen and Lottie Cooke to discuss what a reimagined education system would be like. Honestly, spending an hour in the company of these two remarkable young people, so articulate and well informed, was just a joy.
Lottie and Yumna are part of an organisation called Pupil Power which is "committed to educating, engaging and transforming young minds around the issues impacting our experience of school". "So", they add, "we're demanding an entire transformation in education". And this conversation will inspire you that such a transformation is not only possible, and thrilling, but also long overdue. If one of these two young people isn't Prime Minister within 20 years I will be most disappointed.
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Here is the perfect accompaniment to the long summer days. Or the deluge. Or perhaps a bit of both. Today we are talking about travel. As many cities begin to actively take steps away from the dominance of cars, we are asking what might it be like if that had already happened? What might it be like to live in a city in which more travel now takes place on food or on two wheels? And how are electric vehicles transforming that? It's a brilliant discussion with two amazing guests. As always, do let me know what you think, feedback is much appreciated.
Carson Brown is a Co-founder and Head of Product at TAUR an electric scooter brand. Having spent the majority of his career dedicated to developing micromobility products. He is a strong advocate for greener, more efficient cities, and enabling people to change their lifestyle through considered design.
Melissa Bruntlett is a urban mobility advocate specializing in communications and engagement. She is also the co-author of Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality and the newly released Curbing Traffic: The human case for fewer cars in our lives. Melissa focuses on urban mobility and sustainable cities, and believes it is imperative to build cities that work for every citizen, using her experience as a writer, marketer, and media producer to share the human perspective of multi-modal transport to a mainstream audience. Professionally, Melissa supports knowledge sharing and capacity building to create more equitable mobility environments, working with and advising public and private partners in Europe, North America and Australasia to develop effective and compelling communications and engagement plans and strategies. She is a Canadian living in the Netherlands with her husband Chris and their two children
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Firstly, sorry I'm late posting this. I was on a clifftop in Cornwall and the sun was shining and so it took me a while to get home! But, I must say that this episode is absolutely worth the wait. One of my favourites so far. This week we are exploring the black imagination, with two amazing guests.
Natasha Marin is an antiracism consultant based in Seattle, specialising in communications, community building, and digital engagement. She is the curator of Black Imagination: Black Voices on Black Futures and a conceptual artist whose people-centred projects have circled the globe since 2012 and have been recognised and widely acknowledged. BLACK IMAGINATION—a series of conceptual exhibitions—amplifying, centring, and holding sacred a diverse sample of voices including LGBTQIA+ black youth, incarcerated black women, black folks with disabilities, unsheltered black folks, and black children was her bravest work thus far. Her viral web-based project, Reparations, engaged a quarter of a million people worldwide in the practice of “leveraging privilege,” and earned Marin, a mother of two, death threats by the dozens.
Natalie Creary is the Programme Delivery Director for Black Thrive Lambeth. The cross-sector partnership works to dismantle the structural barriers that create and sustain mental health inequalities for Black African and African-Caribbean communities in Lambeth. She has a long-standing interest in approaches that tackle the root causes of inequality and push conventional boundaries. Her interest lies in working with communities and grassroots organisations to decolonise knowledge and to create opportunities for communities to have ownership of their stories and the solutions they deliver to address the social challenges they may face. Her work and research explore how race, age, class, gender and sexuality intersect to shape the health and wellbeing experiences of Black and mixed race communities. She has also completed postgraduate studies in Health Psychology and lectures on health inequality, quality improvement methodologies and health promotion for Middlesex University’s MSc Public Health. She is also on the editorial board of the Lancet Psychiatry.
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This is such an incredible episode. One of those ones I had to go off and sit under a tree afterwards to absorb. Today we talk about gender. I grew up in a society that thought in terms of two genders, you were male or you were female. This was accompanied by expectations that men behaved in ways that were ‘masculine’, and women in ways seen as being ‘feminine’. If you were someone who didn’t identify as either, or someone who challenged society’s expectations of what being masculine or feminine meant, it was a bleak time. And in many cultures, far bleaker still, indeed very dangerous.
Some cultures recognise a ‘third’ gender, but what would it be like if we were to see gender instead as a spectrum, and where you choose to place yourself on that spectrum is up to you, and can change as often as you like? What if society accommodated, supported, nurtured even, such a degree of fluidity? What if everyone could be who they wanted to be, to define themselves however they wanted to, and the kind of abuse so many LGBTQI+ people experience was instead replaced by a culture that valued people wherever they are across the spectrum. What wonders might such an approach unlock in our culture?
Syd Yang is the Senior Advisor for Healing Justice and Wellness at Movement Voter Project. Syd's work finds its resonance in the stories we each hold at the intersection of memory, body, sexuality and mental health. Syd works primarily with queer and trans BIPOC individuals as well as regularly leads workshops, community healing circles and has been a group facilitator for over two decades, with a specific focus on grief, healing ancestral trauma, sexuality + spirituality, body liberation and eating disorder recovery.
Mahfam Malek has held many roles in justice movements over the years, including facilitator, somatic coach, non-profit staff of many stripes, social justice-oriented stand-up comic, direct-action and cultural organiser, environmental educator, and more. In addition to training, facilitating, and coaching, they write, organise with a group of abolitionist diasporic Iranians, hang out with their dog, and chat on the phone nearly daily about absolutely nothing with their parents. They are also the Training and Operations Director at the Chicago Torture Justice Center.
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Episode Thirty. Wow. Whoever thought we'd get this far? Thank you so much for your support in making that possible. We have a delicious episode to mark this moment.
Farzana Khan is a writer, director, cultural producer and award-winning Arts educator. She is the co-founder and Director of Healing Justice London. She has a background in Youth and Community work particularly focused on arts based education projects both in the UK and internationally. She was also the former creative and strategic director at Voices that Shake and is currently a Fellow at the International Curatorial Forum. Farzana was recently awarded Writer in Residence at Toynbee Hall, working on ‘All Water Has a Perfect Memory’ a screenplay exploring trauma, poverty, womanhood and bodily dignity amidst gentrified East London and ecologically violent times.
Looby Macnamara has been teaching permaculture for nearly 20 years. During this time she has been a pioneer of personal and social permaculture, authoring the first book globally to focus on the peoplecare ethic People & Permaculture. Looby is also author of 7 Ways to Think Differently and Strands of Infinity. Her latest book, Cultural Emergence shares a pioneering toolkit for regeneration and transformation. She runs Applewood Permaculture Centre in the UK with her partner Chris Evans. She is also one of the partners of the European Mother Nature project, empowering mothers. Looby has been an active member of the permaculture community, and was a chairperson of the Permaculture Association and is a senior diploma tutor.
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If you had a Time Machine, which year would you set the dial to? This episode is about time travel. More specifically, it is about using imaginary time travel, or futurism, or deep dreaming, or whatever you want to call it, in our activism. Why is it so powerful to invite people to imagine the future? What does it do to us to step into an imaginary future? And what tips of the trade can help us to really bring it alive for people?
In this episode we are joined by Anab Jain of Superflux and by Johannes Stripple of Lund University, both fantastic exponents of the art of time travel. Essential listening for anyone who wants to bring a bit of the future into their lives and is wondering the most skilful way to do so. Enjoy the journey!
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The time for imagining that change happens in small, incremental steps is now way behind us. As Naomi Klein says, "there are no non-radical solutions left". Today we are thinking big. Really big. With big thinkers. While some of our episodes focus on what if questions that are quite specific and focused, in this episode, Episode Twenty-Eight, we are thinking big, so hang on to your hats. Luckily we have two guests for you who are brilliant at thinking big.
Atossa Soltani has been a global campaigner for tropical rainforests and indigenous rights, for going on three decades. She is founder and board president of Amazon Watch and served as the organisation’s first executive director for eighteen years. Currently she is the director of global strategy for Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative working in alliance with 30 indigenous nations to protect 86 million acres in the most biologically diverse ecosystem on Earth. She is the Hillary Institute 2013 Global Laureate for Climate Leadership and is a producer of The Flow, a feature-length documentary currently in production on learning from nature’s genius.
Jeremy Lent is an author and speaker whose work investigates the underlying causes of our civilisation’s existential crisis, and explores pathways toward a life-affirming future. His award-winning book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, examines the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day. His upcoming book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, will be published in June this year. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the Earth, and he writes topical articles exploring the deeper patterns of political and cultural developments at the blog Patterns of Meaning.
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This new episode, one of my favourite so far, comes with a challenge. Can you listen to it and not reimagine your own relationship with flying or, as one of our guests puts it, being "twanged around in an aluminium sausage"?
I stopped flying in 2006. I travel to the far reaches of Europe on the train, travelling to Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Mallorca, as the extent of my reach. I long one day to take the Trans-Siberian express. Yes, there are now places in the world I probably will never reach, but that’s OK. I can honestly say that not flying has not diminished my quality of life at all. I travel slower, I see more. As we reach a time where airlines and travel companies are falling over themselves to tempt you back onto airplanes to head off on holiday, we are taking a pause, a breath, to ask a question that once felt heretical, but which now feels rather exciting… “what if we all stopped flying?”
Anna Hughes is an author and flight-free adventurer, and hasn’t been on a plane for more than a decade. She is the director of Flight Free UK, a campaign that asks people to give up flying for a year in order to break a habit and try different ways of travelling. With a background in sustainable transport campaigning and behaviour change, Anna is passionate about how our individual choices can change the world.
Ed Gillespie describes himself as a ‘recovering sustainability consultant’ . He is a Director of Greenpeace UK, a facilitator at the Forward Institute on responsible leadership and is an investor/mentor of numerous ethical environmental start-ups. You may also be enjoying him on the ‘Jon Richardson and the Futurenauts’ podcasts, or even have seen him compering the wonderful Imaginarium tent at the equally wonderful, but sadly postponed, for this year, Shambhala Festival.
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These days of COVID have shown us that extraordinary profound reimagining of many aspects of society are entirely possible. Might this be the time to forever do away with the idea that the only way to measure our progress, cultural, social, spiritual, economic, is purely by how much bigger our economy is than it was last year?
It’s a weird metric… imagine if that was the only way we assessed the growth and evolution of our children? Sure, some growth at the start might be useful, but as they mature, we want to be able to measure their growth and their defining qualities in other ways than just their becoming ever more enormous… And what might the world look like if we did replace this idea of growth with something else?
We are joined for this episode of 'From What If to What Next' by two amazing guests. Kate Soper is Emerita Professor of Philosophy and a former researcher with the Institute for the Study of European Transformations at London Metropolitan University. She is the author, and co-author, of many books, and was lead researcher in the research project on ‘Alternative Hedonism, and the theory and politics of consumption’ between 2004 and 2006. Her latest book Post-Growth Living: for an Alternative Hedonism was published in 2020.
Our second guest is Tim Jackson, is an ecological economist and writer. Since 2016 he has been Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) at the University of Surrey in the UK, where he is also Professor of Sustainable Development. His book Prosperity without Growth has been translated into 17 foreign languages. His latest book Post Growth – life after capitalism was published by Polity Press in 2021. In 2016, Tim was awarded the Hillary Laureate for exceptional international leadership in sustainability.
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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. And let us also imagine that they decided that they needed to put in place an infrastructure of policy, resourcing, approaches, economics, and so on, that created the best possible conditions for the imagination to flourish.
What might that look like? How would it be to live in a world where that infrastructure was in place?
Panthea Lee is a strategist, curator, organizer, and facilitator working for structural justice and collective liberation.
Cassie Robinson is Deputy Director of Funding Strategy at The National Lottery Community Fund where she’s responsible for Innovation, Policy and Practice, and oversees the Climate Action Fund, the Digital Fund and the Emerging Futures Fund amongst others.
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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.
Maryanne Wolf is a scholar, a teacher, and an advocate for children and literacy around the world. She is the Director of the newly created Centre for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Previously she was the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and Director of the Centre for Reading and Language Research in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. She is the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Dyslexia, Fluency, and the Brain Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century and most recently of the brilliant Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World.
Sven Birkerts defines himself as an essayist, a teacher of writing, and the editor of a literary journal at Boston University called AGNI. He started out as a book reviewer, which led him into becoming a writer of essays and memoirs. In 1994 he wrote ‘The Guthenberg Elegies’, which explored the demise of reading and the rise of digital culture. It’s a phenomenal book. Then, in 2015, he wrote ‘Changing the Subject’, an update on his relationship with digital media, and a powerful cry for the importance of attention and imagination in a time where both appear to be waning.
More recently Sven has become, as he puts it, “kind of obsessed, both in a very literal ‘get and out and do it’ way, but also thinking about it, by taking photographs. With his phone. As he puts it, “It has become a little fixation of some sort that has me thinking a lot about how we take in the world and what we keep and what serves us, and what is artistic and what isn’t”. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts. I interviewed him previously as part of the research for 'From What Is to What If'.
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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?
I am joined today by two incredible, insightful, passionate masters of this particular artform. Ghanaian-born artist Tijay Mohammed combines his work as an artist, with numerous accolades and residencies, as well as working with the diverse communities he surrounds himself with. He lives in the Bronx, New York, and was one of the artists who created the huge Black Lives Matter mural in that city. He also maintains a studio in Ghana which serves as a sanctuary for visiting artists to interact with local residents, promoting multicultural dialogue through story circles and art workshops, a source of motivation for him in both his studio and teaching practice.
Favianna Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California. Her art and praxis address migration, gender justice, climate change, racial equity, and sexual freedom. Her practice boldly reshapes the myths, stories, and cultural practices of the present, while healing from the wounds of the past. Her work serves as a record of her human experiences as a woman of colour embracing joy, sexual pleasure and personal transformation through psychedelics as an antidote to the life-long impacts of systemic racism. She is the co-founder and president of The Centre for Cultural Power, a national organisation igniting change at the intersection of art, culture and social justice.
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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...
My two guests have so many great insights into failure and its importance. Social visionary, entrepreneur and thought leader Simon Cohen strives to make the world a happier and more fulfilled place—he is uniquely placed as the individual who gave away his £1m company, Global Tolerance. A champion for media ethics, social justice and values, he expounds his wisdom as an international keynote speaker. He is also the first person in the UK to place an entire company on a one year sabbatical.
And Carlos Zimbrón is the Co-founder and CEO of Fuckup Inc. He is also the Co-founder of WE ARE TODOS (cultural space), architect, art and history lover, who describes himself as “always curious” and was described by the Economic Times of India as “Not glamorising failure, just embracing it”.
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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”.
In today's podcast we are exploring how it would be if Feeney's thinking were to be embraced by those holding the vast reserves of money that the world needs to address its complex problems right now. What if they shifted and recognised the need to let go of what they're holding onto? And how would it feel to do so?
Dr Wanda Wyporska is Executive Director at The Equality Trust, the national charity that campaigns to reduce social and economic inequality. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of York, a trustee of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, Redthread Youth, and Equally Ours, as well as Governor of a primary school.
Chuck Collins is the Director for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is author of the seminal book, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good and co-author of Wealth and Our Commonwealth, a case for taxing inherited fortunes. His new book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, is about the wealth defence industry and will be published in the UK in February 2021 and US in March 2021 by Polity Press.
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Today we are exploring the question of trauma, and I must confess that recording this conversation rather blew my mind, as it will no doubt blow yours. I had to lie down afterward and digest it for a while. I am joined by two amazing thinkers for this conversation. I hope you love it.
Susan Raffo is a bodyworker, cultural worker and writer. For the last 15 years she has focused her work through the lens of healing justice with a particular interest in supporting individual and collective practices of safety and wellness. This also means attending to how generational and historical trauma shapes the present moment , including both internalised and systemic supremacy. She spent her first seven years of adulthood living in Bristol, England, particularly shaped by the anti-imperialism and sustainability movements of the 1980s (the protests at Greenham Common being an especially life-shaping experience). She has lived in south Minneapolis in the US for 30 years with her awesome partner, Rocki, and their daughter, Luca.
Staci K. Haines is a national leader in the field of Somatics, specialising in intersecting personal and social change. Staci is the co-founder of generative somatics, a multiracial social justice organisation bringing somatics to social and climate justice leaders and organisations. She specialises in somatics and trauma, and leads programs for healers, therapists, and social change leaders to transform the impact of individual and social trauma and violence. Her new book The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice (North Atlantic Press 2019) is based on that work. She is the founder of generationFIVE, a community based organisation whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within five generations.
As mentioned in the podcast, Staci and Susan sent in the list of recommended readings, which are available at https://bit.ly/3eoPRdT
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By now, in this journey into 'From What If to What Next', it is clear that one of the key things in our world in 2021 that needs reimagining is our education system. In this episode, we explore how it might be if at the heart of that reimagining were permaculture principles. How would the underpinning of the National Curriculum with permaculture principles affect both what is taught, and how it is taught? Imagine a generation leaving school skilled in a diversity of practical sustainability skills, as well as being instinctive systems thinkers. After you've heard this conversation, anything less just won't do.
This wonderful conversation is only possible thanks to my two wonderful guests. Lusi Alderslowe is the author of 'Earth Care, People Care and Fair Share in Education: The Children in Permaculture Manual' and has been engaging children in permaculture in formal, non-formal and informal settings around Scotland since 2005. She's a mother of two, a Forest School Leader, a human ecologist and co-founder and coordinator of the Children in Permaculture project for the Permaculture Association and Gatehouse School. A certified Children in Permaculture trainer, she teaches online courses in Engaging Children in Permaculture with students from Australia to Austria, Kenya to Costa Rica.
From 2013-2018, Matt Willer was a full time humanities teacher at Reepham High School & College. It was during this time at this school that Matt decided to attempt to create a school allotment to inspire his students. After five years of non-stop work, and with the help of many amazing people, 'The Allotment Project' became a nationally recognised and celebrated secondary school allotment which subsequently won multiple awards.
In 2019, Matt left full-time teaching to set up The Papillon Project, which is now a registered charity. The 'Allotment Project' at Reepham High School & College, in many respects, was the 'accidental pilot' project that inspired Matt to create 'The Papillon Project' so he, and others, can help other secondary schools and colleges in Norfolk to also inspire children and young people to lead more sustainable lives too.
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Our far-reaching conversation, which could have gone on for hours, explores our relationship with land, and how a reimagining of that could unlock so much. My thanks to both of my guests for their generosity and wisdom.
Josina Calliste is a health professional, community organiser, and one of the co-founders of Land in Our Names (LION), a black-led collective addressing land inequalities affecting black people and people of colour's ability to farm and grow food in Britain.
Chris Smaje is author of the book 'A Small Farm Future' and the brilliant blog of the same name.
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Of all the 17 episodes of this podcast so far, this is the one that I had to go off somewhere quiet afterwards for a while to digest. It is a very powerful and fascinating discussion. My two guests are extraordinary, and I feel so blessed that they could make the time to join me in this wonderful What If exploration.
Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset (She Who Brings the Light)) is an attorney, an activist, an advisor, a speaker and so so so much more, including author of ‘Sacred Instructions: indigenous wisdom for living spirit-based change’. She was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation.
Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne. His recent book, Sand Talk: how indigenous thinking can save the world, is deeply wonderful and I am very much enjoying it right now.
Our discussion focused around the question ‘what if indigenous wisdom could save the world?’, and I hope it blows your mind as much as it did mine. I would recommend taking some time after you’ve listened to it to go for a walk and digest it. It worked for me.
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Play is a devalued aspect of both childhood and adulthood which has been declining now for decades, and its decline has had many knock-on effects across society. What would it be like if we decided to give it a huge boost, to create the ideal conditions for a re-emergence of play across education, economics, planning, and so much more? What might that look like?
I am joined in this episode by two of the most amazing guests to dive deep into this act of imagining. Ash Perrin is the founder and CEO of The Flying Seagull Project, a UK-based charity that works around the world to bring happiness to children who are marginalised or suffering. His small, highly-skilled team of around twenty professional entertainers use music, arts, dance and clowning to spread smiles to more than 140,000 children in hospitals, orphanages and refugee camps around the world. His TEDx talk from last year is a must-watch.
Ben Tawil is a play consultant and researcher. Working together with his colleague Mike Barclay as Ludicology, they have over 40 years’ experience of working with and on behalf of playing children. Their work includes play sufficiency assessments, research and action planning with municipalities and national organisations, consultancy on neighbourhood regeneration, developing evidence-based design recommendations, and working with schools and arts and cultural organisations to develop playful practices.
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During the first Coronavirus lockdown in the UK, a strange phenomenon was seen in towns and cities across the country. As councils became unable, or unwilling, to maintain their usual programmes of spraying weeds and cutting grass, pavements began to feature what had previously been dismissed as 'weeds'. In response, and using a hashtag #MoreThanWeeds, people began using chalk to circle them and to write their names, both common and Latin.
In this podcast we explore how different the future would be if we were to cultivate a culture of better understanding and loving weeds. How would it affect the world around us, and how would it affect us? And how does the way we talk about that dazzling diversity of plants that we dismiss as 'weeds' give insights to how many people 'other' groups of people such as immigrants? What does our attitude to weeds tell us about ourselves?
For this, our fifteenth episode, we are joined by two people who have been central to this chalky-fingered rebellion. Sophie Leguil is a freelance botanical consultant, writer, translator and nature tour leader. In 2019, she created the project "More Than Weeds", which hopes to change people's perception of urban flora and inspire authorities to adopt biodiversity-friendly practices. Sophie previously worked for the charity Plant Heritage, developing initiatives to conserve the diversity of garden plants in the UK. Having lived in Brussels and London, she became interested in urban greening issues, particularly in relation to planning. Using her background in ecology and horticulture, she is advocating for better landscaping choices in cities, to create healthy streets and spaces for both humans and wildlife."
Jane Perrone is a freelance journalist, and presenter and producer of indoor gardening podcast On The Ledge. She is currently crowdfunding a book on houseplants called Legends of the Leaf. She loves growing houseplants inside and raising weird veg in her garden, and walking in the countryside with her hound Wolfie. She has a background in news journalism, spending more than 20 years working in local newspapers, then joining the Guardian as a reporter online and working her way up to an online news desk editor. In 2008 she became gardening editor at the Guardian, editing the gardens pages of Weekend magazine, making the Sow, Grow, Repeat podcast with Alys Fowler and writing features, news stories and blogposts. She left in 2017 to become fully freelance.
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One of the things we love most here at 'From What If to What Next' is stories of people bringing imagination to their activism, of impactful, thought-provoking projects that engage our imagination and our playfulness. One of the very best examples of this that we've ever seen is The Bank Job in Walthamstow, London, the work of printmaker Hilary Powell and filmmaker Dan Edelstyn, once described as "an act of generosity rare in the art world".
Following the release of the great new book 'The Bank Job' (published by Chelsea Green), and their impending new film about the project, we were thrilled to invite Dan and Hilary onto the podcast. The Bank Job eradicated £1.2 million of payday lending debt in their community and so much more besides.
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We live in a world where so much political decision-making seems to be based on short-term thinking, the next opinion poll, next quarter, next election, yet so many of the problems we face are the result of our failing to think in the long term. We use the future as a place to dump the problems we can't resolve, to dump our pollution, carbon emissions, the thorny issues we'd rather avoid. Indigenous cultures and wiser civilisations of the past planned and thought with future generations in mind, so why can't we? And how different would the world be if we did?
I am joined for this episode by Roman Krznaric, author of the recent book 'The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short Term World' and one of Britain’s leading popular philosophers, and also by Jane Davidson, author of '#futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country', Pro Vice-Chancellor Emeritus at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and former Minister for Environment and Sustainability in Wales where she proposed legislation to make sustainability the central organising principle of government - the Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act.
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In the US, as elsewhere, vast amounts of money are poured into mass incarceration and brutal and violent policing. What if instead that money was invested into the communities that bear the burnt of this approach to criminal justice, into healthcare, wellbeing, opportunity, safety?
Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant police misconduct attorney and organizer whose writing, litigation, and advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is currently Researcher in Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, where she recently launched the Interrupting Criminalization: Research in Action initiative.
Zach Norris is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, author of We Keep Us Safe: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities, and co-founder of Restore Oakland, a community advocacy and training center that will empower Bay Area community members to transform local economic and justice systems and make a safe and secure future possible for themselves and for their families.
I hope listening to this podcast moves you as much as it did to record it.
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So many of those who listen to this podcast are trying, in one way or another, to bring about change in the world. Whether it is the more confrontational activism demonstrated by groups like Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, or grassroots organising and working to build the alternative, we are all trying to understand how to be the most effective activists we can possibly be.
Which leads us to this episode’s question, one sent in by subscriber Elke Himmelmann.
Scilla Elworthy is a three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. Her most recent book is The Mighty Heart: how to transform conflict (2020).
Robert Philips founded Jericho in 2013 after a 25-year career at the top of the global communications industry. He leads its work on Responsible Tax, Good Work, Social Justice in Tech, Housing, Energy and Infrastructure. He is the chair of #JerichoConversations.
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The uprising of Black Lives Matter and other organisations have led to many calls for the decolonisation of education at every level. But what does it mean to decolonise education? As Boris Johnson dismisses such calls as a “national orgy of self-embarrassment”, does decolonising education mean simply changing the curriculum, or does it go much, much deeper than that? And what if we achieved it? What would it be like to live in a world where that had happened?
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Here is Episode Nine. Our question this time was slightly adapted from one sent in by subscriber Pamela Barnes. As the world attempts to claw its way back from the COVID19 pandemic, and as opinion polls show an overwhelming support for not ‘going back’ to how things were before, people are increasingly discussing and exploring new models for an economy that better needs the needs of the population as a whole. One of those key ideas is that of a Wellbeing Economy, an economy that delivers both human and ecological wellbeing.
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In this episode we are exploring a question sent in by subscriber Joy Cherkaoui. One of the things a future in which imagination is able to flourish will need is spaces in which imagination and creativity are invited. Intentionally. These can take many forms, but we need them. What then are the ingredients of such spaces? What makes a good one? Who gets to create them? How can we ensure that they support and reflect the diversity of the place in which they are situated?
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Doughnut Economics is rapidly moving from the fringe to the mainstream. Amsterdam in Holland was recently confirmed as the first ‘Doughnut City’, using the model to underpin its economic development strategy. Many other cities are also moving towards adopting this powerful and fascinating tool for reimagining cities and their economies. Our question in this episode, your mind-expanding piece of summer listening, is “what if every city used Doughnut Economics?’
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Allow me to present one of my very favourite episodes of ‘From What If to What Next’ thus far. The question we explore in this episode is ‘What if imagination were a universal right?’ My guests to explore this are Ariane Conrad, writer, activist and ‘book doula’ (editorial consultant and collaborative author) who tends to collaborate with authors who defend the rights of people and planet, and Dr. Masum Momaya who has worked at the intersection of arts, culture, social justice and human rights for more than 20 years as an educator, museum curator, writer and activist.
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As we start, hopefully, to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionately affected older people, many people have experienced an end to their lives that was lonely and traumatic. How different would the world feel if its priorities had changed to being one where the end of life was treated with the same love and reverence as birth? My two guests for this episode are Mike Grenville and Mary Nally.
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In our fourth episode, we bring together two of the UK's most pioneering doctors to explore what a very different future for healthcare could be like. What would it be like if doctors' surgeries were key players in the wider Transition of the community, actively stimulating a reimagining of food, energy, community and much more?
In this episode we are joined by Dr Jane Myat, doing amazing work at the Caversham Group Practice in Kentish Town, North London since 1997. She is a passionate advocate of finding alternative patient-centred approaches to long-term conditions. Inspired by pioneering GPs such as Sam Everington and by our second guest here, and assisted by Transition Kentish Town, Jane founded the Listening Space, a project centred around a community garden in the courtyard of her family practice.
Dr Michael Dixon is a Devon GP whose CV and list of roles within the NHS is glittering and includes numerous national leadership roles. To name just two, he is a Chair of the College of Medicine and Clinical Champion for Social Prescription (NHS England) and Chair of The Institute for Social Prescription.
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In this podcast, we’re talking about Universal Basic Income with Alexis Frasz, researcher and cultural strategist with Helicon Collaborative, and Phil Teer, author of ‘The Coming Age of Imagination‘.
What would it be like to live in a world in which UBI was now an integral part of everyday life? How would life, and the world around us feel different? How might we re-frame UBI as a vital strategy for rebuilding our collective imagination? All too often, UBI is discussed as being an economic issue, but might imagination provide a fresh and essential lens through which to explore the idea?
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In this third episode of 'From What If to What Next', we're talking about food. Taking a question from Patreon subscriber Tony Buck, we are asking "What If towns and cities set out to intentionally relocalise their food production?" How would it work? Where would you start? How would you involve the local government? How would you ensure that it is inclusive?
To explore this complex question, one that COVID-19 has firmly re-emphasised the importance of, we have two guests with many years of experience in this area. Dee Woods describes herself as a “food and farming action-ist and campaigner” and has been involved for many years in London, playing a role in many different projects, whilst also writing and speaking widely on issues around food insecurity, inequalities in food systems, participatory policy making, intersectionality and decolonisation.
Christian Jonet is one of the founders and co-ordinators of the brilliant Ceinture Aliment-Terre Liégeoise ( Liége Food Belt) in Belgium, one of the most remarkable examples of a citizen-led re-imagining of a city's food production.
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In this first episode, we meet singer, curator, event creator and lover of birdsong Sam Lee, speaking to us direct from a birdsong-filled woodland clearing, and Mya-Rose Craig, aka Birdgirl, who is doing amazing work promoting birdwatching among young people and promoting BME engagement with the natural world.
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