I’m five. The window in the door to my bedroom is covered with an old ratty curtain to keep out the light from the kitchen. On the other side, my mom is cleaning, or maybe reading at the table, but as cozy as it sounds, I am terrified. To my five year old brain hooked on its own imagination, the way the light comes through the holes in the curtain looks like monsters. Not the funny cute monsters of Sesame Street or the Muppets, but real snarling monsters with big teeth that probably want to eat me in my sleep. At first I try to stay awake to protect myself, but I can never quite manage it, so I cover my head with the blanket and slip off into sleep hoping they won’t have eaten my toes in the morning. This happens night after night, and then something shifts. I start to imagine that maybe I can befriend the monsters. A tentative friendship to be sure, because everyone knows you have to keep monsters happy, but worth a try. So I name them after my kindergarten friends. And I talk to them every night as I’m falling asleep. I tell them about my day, and ask them about theirs. I laugh at their jokes, even when they aren’t funny. It becomes a ritual and the monsters in my curtain shift – from something frightening, to a fun and magical way to end the day. 

 

This blog post could be about befriending our monsters. That would be a good one. But it’s about the power of imagination and what we can do when we break out of what we are told is possible. 

 

We tend to think that this is a skill that kids have that we eventually grow out of, but that is not true. We imagine throughout our lifetime, and we can create amazing things out of that imagining. It takes a certain kind of energy that can sometimes be hard to access when we are steeped in the mundane of the day to day, but it is also a rich ground for transformation. We create things in our minds, and then, with planning and collaboration, we can sometimes create them in real life. 

 

Why do we even want it?

 

At Big Waves, we work with a lot of organizations that are trying to address big complex problems. And big problems require big wild ideas. Like the idea that we could have an end to poverty. Or the idea that it’s possible to have a world without prisons. We can tend to forget that the things we take for granted didn’t always exist, but when we stop and think about it, everything that was purposefully created by humans (for good and bad) started at least partly from an imagined idea (combined with a whole lot of chance, fortuitous mistakes, and complex unconscious dynamics). From an invention as simple as a paperclip to a social institution as complex as a health care system, it started from an imagined possible future (of being able to temporarily hold paper together, or to keep a society healthy). 

 

We don’t have to leave it to the billionaires to imagine robot futures that involve rich people going to Mars and technological developments that continue to exploit every part of this living planet. I believe in the big, wild solutions to complex problems that come from the imaginations of people who actually care about wellbeing and justice, and that is a space we can do more to nurture. 

 

So why does it seem so hard to actually do this? 

Imagination is an amazing tool that we are always carrying around with us, and yet there are all kinds of reasons that we don’t necessarily access it when we need it. Let’s explore some of those reasons.

 

Maybe we get comfortable

You know that thing that happens when you know that the way you are doing something isn’t perfect, but you’ve been doing it that way for a long time, and it’s sort of good enough in a shruggy kind of way, and the idea of trying to do something different just feels like such a slog? We get in a rut. Or maybe we get convinced that the tried and true way is the only way, even if it’s possible that there could be something better. 

 

Let’s look at the example of nonprofit funding. When I first started working in the sector, I remember hearing people talk about how funding in Canada is more predictable than in the United States, and comes from a smaller number of funders. And people talked about that as a good thing, but also as something that keeps organizations hooked on their funding arrangements. It meant that US nonprofits were a bit more imaginative in how they got funding. They might apply for grants, but they also had to find other innovative ways of resourcing themselves for the work they needed to do, like having a membership base or donor drives. Over the last couple of decades, it has become harder for nonprofits in Canada to meet their funding needs, as the need grows but the traditional funding sources don’t, but because of the habit of applying for funding, it is sometimes hard to imagine other solutions. 

 

Maybe we numb out or check out

Let’s face it, life is very demanding. Everyone is exhausted. Rates of burnout are through the roof. Imagination feels amazing and energizing when we can tap into it, but it takes a certain amount of energy, space and curiosity to get the creative engines going. And the smart phone scroll sometimes feels like the only possibility in the moments between the items on the urgent to-do list, or the worn out time at the end of the day.  

Maybe we have the ideas but not the follow through

This is my biggest problem. I can have a million raging conversations about the better futures I imagine, but then I lose steam when it’s time to write it down and actually map out a strategy to make the imagined future happen. Like a dream, it gets fuzzy and indistinct, and there is no sense of even a first step from point A to point B and beyond. 

Maybe we don’t really believe anything can be different

We are swimming in the water of a social, political and economic system that works really hard to hook us and then tell us that there is no alternative. And our day-to-day lives reinforce that idea as we go to the job to make the money to pay for the shelter. But these systems came out of the imaginations of people and are created through millions of everyday actions of people (including everyone reading this blog), and that means it is possible to imagine other realities into being. This is not the way things have to be. Humans have imagined and then created all sorts of different systems, and that can continue, but only if we don’t fall into the trap of thinking the way things are is the only way. (If you want a very inspiring look at the wide range of what humans have imagined into being, take a look at The Dawn of Everything).

 

How to imagine our way out of our predicament

Let yourself feel a bit lost

Getting out of a thinking rut doesn’t always feel great. It’s a bit like being lost on a bike with rusty gears. We might feel frustrated or defensive or slow. We might notice feeling stupid or like we need to hide the fact that we don’t know what to do, that the way we habitually do things isn’t working. But just like being lost, in those moments, we can go around in circles hoping that this time this path will be the right one, getting more frustrated and tense with each repeated turn, or we can pause, slow down, and get our bearings. It is in the space of that pause that we can bring in curiosity and open up some space for imagining. Those moments when we realize that the tried and true way isn’t working can be deeply frustrating, but they are also the fuel for some of the best imagining we can do. Let go of what you think you know, and open up to what could be. 

You don’t have to start from nothing. Find the ideas that inspire you.

I have always been a big reader of speculative and futuristic fiction, and it is one of the things that moves me to imagine alternatives. Immersing ourselves in other people’s imaginations is one of the easiest ways to start to flex the imagination muscle. It also doesn’t have to be fiction. In my twenties I got involved with a group called the Prisoners’ Justice Action Committee. We organized a film festival and various political mobilizations from a perspective of prison abolition, or the big wild idea that it was possible to create a world in which prisons were not necessary. When I first joined, I had been so trained up in dominant ways of thinking about crime and punishment that I didn’t really believe that would be possible, and it was through reading books like Instead of Prisons and Are Prisons Obsolete and by talking with people who had more experience than me that I was able to imagine a path to that future. While I’m not currently directly involved in prison justice work, the inspiration of this imagined future is a large part of why I became so interested in conflict, as a part of creating the necessary social conditions to create alternatives to prison. 

 

The key is, you don’t have to start from zero, no one ever has. Find the things that inspire you, and use that as a place to build from. 

 

Give your beautiful future the time and attention it deserves

 

You probably have a sense of something you would like to change in your organisation or in the world, but if you are like most of us, the day to day rush of it all doesn’t leave much time to really deepen your idea of what it might be like for that change to have happened. This is where making time to imagine can be so important, both to inform the action needed to move toward that future, and also as a source of motivation for the work to get there. 

 

Here is one small way to start, with the understanding that big dreams will require more elaborate processes than this.

 

Bring to mind a situation or problem that you wish could be different. Maybe it’s something about your organizational culture, or a particular issue you are working to address in the world, and think about someone or a small group of people who you have some connection to who are impacted by the situation or problem. It could be you, a family member, a team member, or someone who seeks services at your organization. 

 

Now imagine that it is several (or many) years in the future, and that the problem has been miraculously solved. 

 

• What is different in the life of the person or people you are thinking about?
• What is an average day like for them? 
• What is different about their routine? How do they spend their time?
• Imagine a particular moment where they are feeling happy or content. Describe it in detail. What are they doing, feeling, seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling?
• Who are the people or other beings they are connected to? How are those other people or beings impacted by this change that has happened? 
• What feels meaningful or important to them now that the problem has been addressed? What draws their attention?
• What might have happened in their lives over the time it has taken to solve the problem?
• What comes up for you emotionally as you imagine this person (possibly yourself) or people in this imagined future?

How did that go? It might have been easy and inspiring, or it might have felt hard or impossible. Either way, that is totally fine. Keep reading.

 

You don’t have to do it alone. Imagine with other people. 

In 2021, I was invited by How We Thrive to co-facilitate a beautiful and imaginative scenario planning process called The Future of Food, in which 25 people who worked in food security and sustainability from across the provinces of Atlantic Canada came together to create imagined scenarios of what might happen to local food systems in the face of climate change. Over five sessions, we collectively imagined four different scenarios and turned them into radio dramas. 

 

The process was amazing and inspiring. People brought a wide range of experiences related to food and met, connected, learned from each other, inspired each other, and dreamed together. People described imagining together as an experience of facing up to their fears about the future and exploring uncertainty, and talking about possibilities, without needing to numb out and look away or get overwhelmed. 

 

While we weren’t able to find the time or funding to take the process to the next level of action planning, many of the relationships that came out of the process continued, and several new initiatives came out of it, including a regional food conference that continues to grow new possibilities. 

 

Imagining together is powerful and necessary. We can make changes more effectively together than we can alone, and imagination is an essential part of that. If you are wondering where to start building a collectively imagined future, check out this wonderful resource, the Collective Imagination Practices Toolkit.  

 

Connect the imagining with strategy and organizing 

 

And of course nothing comes to reality just by imagining. As Ruha Benjamin says in her book Imagination: A Manifesto, 

 

“When we work to cultivate a collective vision for transforming the world, we must be careful not to fetishize imagination as somehow operating magically and independently from other powerful ingredients, like strategizing and organizing, to make our vision a reality.”

 

So what we really need to do is imagine the future we want, whether that be in our organization or in the world, and then we figure out what strategies we can use to help us get there, and who the people are who need to be involved. For changes within your organization, this will likely be part of a strategic plan or specific project. For big global problems, the scale might be beyond our capacity to do alone, and so then the strategy might focus on one piece of the imagined future that we can impact, in connection to a broader movement that together has the capacity to make changes.

 

Let’s go back to the Prisoners’ Justice Film Festival as an example. The festival was a way of spreading the imagined future of a global prison abolition movement by sharing it with artists, activists, filmmakers, former prisoners, people working in prison solidarity, and people who had never considered that it might be possible to get rid of prisons. It was an opportunity to learn about current conditions and dream of a future without prisons (imagination), and also to build connections (organizing). It was building on and inspired by a series of abolitionist strategies such as decarceration, decriminalization, and building transformative justice alternatives. and people who were working to enact those strategies to move toward that future by creating restorative/transformative ways of addressing the root causes of crime, advocate for prisoners’ rights, campaigns to decrease the number of people in prison for minor crimes, and so on. 

 

This is the sort of imagined future that takes generations to create, and faces many challenges and setbacks along the way. Sometimes it feels like one step forward, two steps backward. For example, over the years since I first got involved with the film festival, there have been wins like the decriminalization of cannabis in Canada and many parts of the US, which used to send many people to jail for small drug crimes, and there has been at the same time, new tough on crime legislation and increased policing and surveillance. At the community level, people have come up with new ways to address the roots of crime through mutual aid and community justice approaches, even while roots such as poverty and housing access become worse. 

 

This makes it even more important that people find inspiration in the big wild beautiful goal they have imagined together, remembering that this is about a beautiful imagined future helps to stay motivated in the difficult moments.