"We are living inside of someone else's imagination for how the world would work and we need to exercise our own imaginations in order to come to a different way of structuring the world."
—adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategist
The future isn't fixed. Who gets to imagine it matters.
When we expand who gets to dream about tomorrow, we unlock the collective wisdom needed to create the world we all deserve.
Discover what happens when communities have the time, space, and resources to imagine futures that uplift everyone.
The Future We Want Starts with Imagination
But who gets to imagine our collective futures? And whose visions shape the world we're building?
This report shares what we learned about why we must democratize the imagination of the future from seven years of funding futuring practitioners—artists, organizers, social workers, youth leaders, and visionaries—who are expanding who gets to imagine what's possible.
"Historically the most marginalized communities—their visions of the future, because it implied their own freedom—actually has brought about the biggest transformations in society for the better of all."
—Aisha Shillingford, experiential futurist and artistic director
What We've Learned About the Future
The Future Is Ours to Make
To influence the future, we must develop a healthy relationship with it. We must not turn away from possible futures that worry or frighten us but turn toward futures we want. Fighting oppression and inequity in the present is vital; spending time in the future we're fighting for fuels the work. The alternative is to continue to inhabit futures that others assert for us.
The Future Can Help Connect Us
Unleashing imagination and working together to dream healthy futures can be a path toward talking across differences. Speculative visioning creates distance—a safer place for questioning assumptions and hearing others. When we are together in an imagined future, the stakes are not as high, and we may be more willing to play.
The Future Can Offer Hope and Healing
Engaging with the future in a critical and imaginative way can be refreshing and regenerative. It can connect us with our childhood selves—the time when we could imagine freely without judgment. Spending time in a liberatory future can be part of a healing journey for traumas caused by structural bias.
The Future Shines a Light on Our Present
When we spend time imagining futures where everyone thrives, we see our present inequities in stark relief. Looking back from even a short visit to a liberatory future can reveal the ways dominant narratives control or limit imagination.
The Future Needs Our Love
If we want to get to a sustainable future, we have to be in a meaningful relationship with it. We, individually and collectively, have to fall in love with the futures we want to emerge. When we do, we'll want to take loving action today to keep that future alive and on track.
See the Full Story
Meet 13 futuring practitioners whose work is expanding who gets to imagine what's possible. Explore their methods, hear their insights, and discover how this work is transforming individuals, communities, and entire fields.
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