Sharing and building power: the power of imagination
The topic discussed was how to unlock the power of imagination in order to share and build power. The first opening speaker was Phoebe Tickell who spoke about her work at Moral Imaginations and the use of metaphors and storytelling to stimulate the collective imagination of a different future, including the Impossible Train story which she narrates here.
The second speaker was Athol Halle who talked about what he had learnt when he was CEO of Groundswell, and subsequently, including Groundswell’s use of forum theatre, where homeless people work with the audience to imagine different stragegies for their life, as explained here.
Key points made by the speakers and participants included:
Techniques to unlock the imagination may to some feel a step too far from the current emphasis on the art of possible, evidence based policy-making and the rational rather than emotional, though everyone in the discussion was positive about the possibilities.
Indeed this could be seen as the only way forward: the wrong place to start, given the scale of challenges we face, is from existing bureaucracies and systems and incremental change. Many of the people who have stimulated widescale changes have been motivated by a ‘dream’. Hope, fear, hate and love are powerful drivers of change, not just rational forces.
There is a systematic lack of imagination in society, and it is too often suppressed in our children through the educational system. We need to recover our ‘inner child’ and use playful techniques to unlock the imagination.
We need to create new spaces and activities, which allow us to collectively imagine a better future, including retreats and awaydays.
It’s important this is not just seen as an elite activity and that power imbalances are addressed. Many people feel disempowered and feel unable or unwilling to engage in imagining change. Creating enjoyable activities, eg walking, or fishing, in which people can meet and forge new relationships and shift power, though this is often a long process.
Civil society is itself a strong resource for imagining, dreaming and for visionaries but its skill in innovation and disruption needs to be better understood and valued.