Who gets to imagine the future?

The role of imagination for thriving and prosperous communities. 

As we emerge from the pandemic there is a collective opportunity to rethink and to create bold, community-led practices that can steer us towards a better future. This is the time for imagining radical initiatives that match the size and complexity of the challenges we face.

The government’s overarching aim to ‘level up’ speaks to the need for community and social infrastructure to underpin recovery. Communities across the UK share common desires for the future and an appetite and ambition for change in the long term. Imaginative thinking is vital to help communities realise these ambitions and to prosper and thrive, but in the current crisis it can be hard for communities to find the capacity and capability for strategic foresight, leaving the act of imagining our collective futures to those in positions of privilege and power.

So what will it take to resource and nurture community capacity to imagine better futures? How can we build the social, political, economic and cultural conditions that ensure communities have agency in shaping their futures? What can local authorities and communities themselves do to translate these visions into action? And what might the potential be of opening up this space?

With a panel of leading voices and an original poem performed by Inua Ellams, this event explores the possibilities of futures thinking and the role of imagination for thriving and prosperous communities.

Produced in partnership with the Emerging Futures Fund. The Emerging Futures Fund is a The National Lottery Community Fund funding programme investing in our collective imaginations by equipping communities with the capacity, skills and resources required to anticipate and shape the future.

#RSAFutures

This conversation was part of a webinar that took place on the 28th September 2021 . Join us at: www.thersa.org