What If

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so

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well hello this is rob hopkins here and

i’m really thrilled to have been asked

to be part of this event and

what i want to talk to you about today

is about imagination

which feels vital in the scope of

everything else that you’re going to be

talking about today

the great canadian activist and writer

naomi klein once said

there are no non-radical solutions left

we’ve left it far far far too late

for anything other than big bold radical

ideas

the idea that we can just move forward

in little tiny little steps

little tweaks to this into that is

really not appropriate anymore

this is a time for reimagining and

rebuilding

absolutely everything because we are in

the time of the climate

and ecological emergency and the cuts

and the changes that we need to make

are huge and profound and we can either

see that as being something terrible

or we can see that as a huge opportunity

for imagination and for brilliance

and for working together and i think the

thing with imagination is that if we are

to create

a world in which we can thrive and

survive

we have to be able to imagine it first

and that capacity for being able to

imagine the future in different ways i

think is

really declining very sharply in our

culture there was research

that suggested that actually imagination

iq

rose together till the mid 1990s at

which point iq kept rising

imagination went into what they called a

steady and persistent decline

and we have in many ways created a

perfect storm of factors

that are causing our shared collective

imagination to shrink

we know that anxiety and stress and

trauma caused the

part of our brain where imagination

fires from to shrink to visibly shrink

we know that systemic racism and

colonization and social exclusion

and the wider the gap of inequality gets

our imagination shrinks we know that um

if if our basic needs for food and

shelter and security aren’t met

it’s very hard to live an imaginative

life in many ways you could argue that

imagination

is a function of privilege and this is a

time when we absolutely

need to be building our collective

imaginative

muscle so that we are in a position to

do the work that we need to do

so i want to talk to you today about two

words which i think are the two most

important words in our language in 2020

which are what if

and i want to start by telling you a

little story so just before the lockdown

i was invited to germany near munich

by an international company who make

outdoor clothing and who are widely

hailed as being one of the most

sustainable

companies in the world they do much that

is amazing but they invited me because

they were having a

um taking their team away to think about

uh yes we might be very sustainable but

do we act

in everything that we do as if this was

a climate and ecological emergency

no absolutely we don’t so i did a

workshop with them on the

on the evening and the next morning we

did an exercise we called the walk of

what if

the idea with the walk of what if was

that we had an overarching what if

question

which was what if this company in

everything that it did

acted as if this were a climate an

ecological emergency

so the invitation was to go for a walk

and to come up with their own what if

questions

within that that was the framing for the

for their questioning

but i said there are two rules only two

but they’re really important

the first one is that you should not be

constrained by current thinking so don’t

think

oh but will this fit in with our current

budget plans will this fit in with our

five-year

development strategy no no no none of

that clean slate

big ideas the second uh one

was that when somebody asks a what if

question

nobody is allowed to respond by saying

yes but

yes but is banned not allowed anymore

yes

and you can only respond by saying yes

and which is something

i learned from studying improvisational

theater

the idea that somebody will suggest

something and then someone else has to

say

yes and and to build on that hey we

could go to paris

yes and i could wear my nice hat yes and

when we get there we could go up the

eiffel tower with your hat and we could

fly your hat off the top you know you

build off each other in that way so

they went out for an hour they came back

after an hour

in a in a kind of an altered state of

consciousness

it was amazing with loads and loads and

loads of what-if questions

so i said okay write them all down on a

piece of paper

imagine that end of the room is really

really really urgent

that end of the room is not quite so

urgent in conversation with each other

arrange your what if questions

along this line and then we all gathered

up at the end with the most urgent ones

and we and then we took the ones that we

liked the most and we worked them up

into ideas

so by the end of the day there were six

projects that they could implement

tomorrow

it was fantastic and it gave me a real

taste of the power

of really good what if questions and

i’ve loved seeing like this

example in in northern ireland where

community groups are now using

what if as the as the question around

which to organize

how they reimagine things you start with

an exercise of

imagining that you’re stepping forward

into the future a future where we’ve

done everything we can possibly do

have a walk around in it what does it

smell like feel like sound like tastes

like what’s your experience

uh in that future and then what are the

what if questions that then

arise from that in terms of how we might

actually get there

what were the what if questions they

asked 10 years ago

that opened up the possibilities that

meant we were able to move forward to

this place now

and when i was researching the book i

spoke to ruth ben tovim

who is an incredible community arts

practitioner

and i said to her what for you were

there are the ingredients of a good

what-if question she said there are

three

the first one is that the person or the

people who are

asking that question have to be

genuinely curious as to what the answer

is going to be they’re not

just doing it as a formality they’re

genuinely curious

the second is it has to be a question

that is answerable in many many

different ways

so not like in school where we get given

a problem to which there is one solution

a what if question can be answered in

many many many varied ways

and the third one is that it should

offer a kind of a moment of pause

and that within the question is the is

the opportunity to see things

in a different way to give people a

glimpse

of something different that they could

step into so within the question

is that is that kind of taste of

possibility when i run workshops

like this one and we get people to work

together and to do that visioning and

come up with questions

the what if questions that emerge from

that are often just extraordinary

and really really powerful and one of my

favorite examples from the transition

movement is from liege

in belgium where liaison transition five

or six years ago came up with a what if

question

they said what if in a generation’s time

the majority of food

eaten in liege came from the land

closest to liege

beautiful so there’s a kind of a vision

within that question

of of that being the case

so i went to an event they ran where

they invited chefs and farmers and

baristas and all kinds of different

people who cared about food

four years later i went back and in that

time they had started 21

25 sorry new cooperatives they’d raised

five million euros of investment

from local people not from banks in

making those all a reality they had

a farm two vineyards a brewery four

shops in the center of the city

a local currency it’s now the vehicle

that is working with the municipality to

reimagine how the hospitals the schools

universities feed themselves i met the

mayor of the city who said

we used to say we wanted to be a smart

city now we want to be a transition city

this is now the story of our city

it’s amazing to see this kind of

reimagining of the food economy of a

city

for me it was really emotional as

someone who has spent the last

12 13 years with the transition movement

with this vision in my head of how the

future could be

trying to inspire people with it to go

to the engine and it exists

i’m having my lunch in it i’m meeting

people who are employed by it it was

just

magical but it started with people like

you

in communities like where you live

coming up with a really

really smart uh what if question that

then unlocked so many possibilities so i

want to offer a little something

to this event which i hope you might

find useful which is my attempt

to uh we’re together with a colleague

rob shorter to come up with

an answer to the question of if we want

to expand the imagination of the play of

the organizations we work in

the community where we live whatever how

do we do that

and i think there are four things this

is a thing that we call the imagination

sundial which tries to set out what

those four things are

first one is space we have to create

space

in our lives in our organizations for

the imagination

albert einstein always said his best

ideas came to him when he rode his

bicycle in the forest

we have to look at strategies like a

universal basic income

a four day working week as being

national

imagination strategies as much as

anything because they create more space

for what if questions and imagination so

the second one is place

and by place i mean places that we visit

that are either permanent or ephemeral

or or that move around or whatever that

we go to

and they give us a different experience

that mean that afterwards

we look at the world in a very different

place my one of my favorite examples is

in london where extinction rebellion

last year

took over waterloo bridge normally full

of cars and traffic and horrible air

pollution

and they planted trees down the middle

they blocked it with people they

filled it with food and space and

so many people for those two weeks who

cross that bridge every day

got to live and experience what it would

be like to live

with that bridge being a forest it was

really powerful and once you’ve had that

experience

it’s very hard to go backwards third one

is practices

things we do together which expand our

imagination

whether uh so and uh the ability to ask

really good what if questions

is is one of those and the transitional

movement is full of of things like that

and then the last one is pacts which is

that when we invite people to be

imaginative

because so often our experience from

being five and six years old at school

onwards

is that our imagination on the rare

occasions when it’s invited

is then sort of sidelined and maybe

humiliated a bit and not really welcomed

and just kind of ignored

and marginalized and how different it

would be

if when we came together and and

imagined

whoever the people above us would say

great idea let’s meet you in the middle

we’ll make a pact

and there are places now where that’s

starting to happen where we if we invite

people to be imaginative

we have to meet them in the middle so

that’s the sundial which i’d love to

hear if it’s something that you find

useful as a tool

for how we expand this and the last

thing i want to

to share with you is this and i don’t

show you this as a graph i show you this

as a story because it’s

really important for pulling together

what i’ve been talking about

in 2020 we stand on top of this mountain

and we have views more spectacular than

anyone has ever had before

and beneath our feet is more carbon more

debt

more inequality more anxiety more

plastic

than anyone has ever stood on top of

before and the guides at our side who

know this mountain really well

are saying we need to get down off this

mountain really really quickly look

there’s a storm coming in

for some people that’s enough that’s

enough to make us go oh

okay all right then let’s go down it

doesn’t work for a lot of people

and i feel like the one of the ways in

which imagination is

fundamental to this is that we need to

be able to bring to life for people

the welcome that awaits us on the

lowland

slopes uh of this mountain the

the food that awaits us the the love the

the carnival the the amazing beer and

wine that awaits us when we get there

the comfortable beds once we get there

if we can do that

and we can bring to life in people’s

imagination what that future would be

like

in a multi-sensory way then we create

the most powerful thing

that we need in 2020 which is longing we

create a deep

deep longing for that future and once

you’ve created a longing it becomes

inevitable

that you will get there without that

longing all the facts the figures the

research papers

all of that is completely meaningless we

have to create longing

we have to create memories of the future

and the what if questions that we

formulate now

as we stand on top of the mountain will

will be

fundamentally important to how we design

and navigate our way down off that

mountain and

within them also they offer us a taste

of what those lowland valleys and the

beautiful

warm safe welcome that awaits us there

will be like

so enjoy the rest of the of ted thank

you so much for inviting me

and i look forward to hearing all the

what if questions that you will generate

and share thank you so much

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