What if time and space are not what they are commonly thought to be? What if there are landscapes, realms of the imagination, that underpin the ‘actual’ world, so that what we do there, what we make there, may change reality as we know it?
At this crucial time in human-ecological history we see around us misuse of the imagination. Films, television, conversation and private rumination; we are surrounded by depictions of terror and apocalypse. Such stories of the future can be a useful warning, but many are made with the purpose of manipulating and making money, while others are the understandable but helpless slide into horror and dread, a paralysis even thinking about the bare facts we are increasingly faced with.
And yet we do not have to fall before the facts. There are a number of ways we can meet them. We are not suggesting delusion and denial of the evidence, quite the opposite, we are proposing using the greatest resource we have to actively meet these challenges, our imaginations. Each person can use their unique perspectives and gifts to create visions of what might be possible, horizons to look for in the morning, futures worthy of orienting ourselves to. Not utopias that can never be but narratives of possibility to head towards, even if we’re not quite sure yet how to get there. As the poet Machado wrote, ‘se hace camino al andar', 'the path is made by walking’.
Imaginal Futures, the deliberate and artful imagining of the future. What future would you like to see - could you communicate it as if it had already happened in the near future, or through the eyes of your great, great grandchild? Could you write it as a story, draw it as a picture or diagram? We invite you to imagine well, bravely, kindly, wisely. The times demand nothing less. Be specific.
There are histories and different cultures that exemplify realities created by deep and beautiful imagining. There are these to be inspired by, as well as art, science, our own existence and that of the Earth itself. Also of course there is all the destruction, horror and beauty of what is now, to meet and respond to.
In ancient times the oracle put her ear to the earth and listened. What would happen if each of us in our own way did the same? This is a kind of radical dreaming, a dream-cobbling of the future before we get clobbered by others’ nightmares. Here we make a treasure trove of our visions.
“The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary… We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom.”
- Ursula Le Guin
Imaginal Futures is a not-for-profit community. We create and gather visions of beauty that might actually be possible so that we move towards them at this pivotal moment in human history.