From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want

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It allows us to “look at things as if they could be otherwise”, and Hopkins makes a compelling case for making more time for imagination in school, in work, in our personal lives and in politics. Meet the individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now and creating brighter futures for us all. We do have the capability to effect dramatic change, Hopkins argues, but we’re failing because we’ve largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. Others ideas are new to me, including a school in a circus tent in Brazil, or the Better Block movement. They even created a Civic Imagination Office to better inspire and support the imaginations of local communities, and to enable their ideas to become reality.

Transition: Bounce Forward - What If · What Next? Transition: Bounce Forward - What If · What Next?

For now, The National Lottery Community Fund are prioritising funding projects and organisations that will support communities through the Covid-19 pandemic. You can then begin to make contact with those people and groups, giving them plenty of notice to encourage their attendance. is possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but doing so would require unprecedented changes.The project will also engage Transition groups and wider sustainability and social justice networks in a larger conversation about the changes needed now, and in the future, as we respond to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Podcast – Rob Hopkins Podcast – Rob Hopkins

These personal reflections are not intended as a comprehensive statement of the agreed policies of either Oxfam or the LSE. An Ashoka Fellow, Hopkins also holds a doctorate degree from the University of Plymouth and has received two honorary doctorates from the University of the West of England and the University of Namur. Among other things, it is blunted by an economic system that prioritises profits over people, by technologies that distract us and monetise our attention, and by a political system that insists there is no alternative to inequality and austerity. In 2012 he was voted one of the Independent's top 100 environmentalists and was on Nesta and the Observer's list of Britain's 50 New Radicals. Hopkins, cofounder of the global Transition movement, reminds us that an essential ingredient to navigating the various unravelings of the coming decades isn’t just our community resilience, reskilling, and activism—but our civic imagination.

We know Transition groups are doing fantastic work responding to the challenges of climate crisis, social injustice and inequality. A scheme was recently launched where up to 10 percent of staff from any company, at any given time, are embedded in the local community, offering managerial, marketing, financial planning and project management skills to organisations that are working in various ways to support residents and make our community more resilient. As defined by social reformer John Dewey, imagination is the ability to look at things as if they could be otherwise.

From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins | Waterstones

Named one of Britain’s 50 New Radicals by The Observer, Hopkins believes that real change happens through imagination and visualization at the community level.

Rob Hopkins is a cofounder of Transition Town Totnes and Transition Network, and the author of From What Is to What If? As we face vast crises that demand imaginative and urgent responses and a reimagining of everything, we are simply not up to it. You may have seen or responded to the surveys we carried out last year with British groups that informed this funding bid. Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and author of several books including ‘ The Transition Handbook‘ and most recently, ‘ From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want’.

From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins | Waterstones From What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins | Waterstones

There is an epidemic of loneliness, an epidemic of anxiety, a mental health crisis of vast proportions, especially among young people. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the world’s temperature warmed by 1 degree Celsius over the past century.The process will help you to develop a shared vision for your community, as well as the areas/themes you would like to focus on during further community engagement.