How Do We Start Practicing Collective Imagination?

In the last newsletter, we opened up with the question: “when did we stop imagining together?” and explored what happens when we do: we get pulled into survival states. We stop asking anyone else what they think. Or we retreat behind a screen entirely, and let a machine do the thinking. Or…we stop noticing the signals altogether. At the end, I asked you a question, and some of you may have sat with it, some of you might have felt overwhelmed by it.

I’m sure since then, many of you have been thinking, well “how do I even start, Laila?”.

Well, first of all, I would like to acknowledge that if you’re feeling overwhelmed you’re not alone.

To give you a starting point I’m sharing a few practices developed by researchers, designers, facilitators who’ve developed practices to help us come together and imagine together. I suggest reading through them and seeing which “speaks to you”. Next, I suggest deciding who you’re going to imagine with. Your team? Your friends? Your partner? People you play tennis with every Tuesday? Someone you’ve only met once at a dinner party? Then you’ll want to pick a date, time and location and most importantly: be present (which is arguably the hardest part for many of us).

1. Objects from the Future: a free web tool built by researcher Lore Oxford and design engineer Maxim McNair, adapted from The Thing from the Future. It works the same way, generates a prompt, then describes the object that fits it, but builds each prompt from five things instead of four: what kind of future, how many years away it is, what part of life it touches, what kind of object it is, and what human need it meets.
2. Human Layer Meditation: developed by Ella Saltmarshe at The Long Time Project, inspired by the deep ecologist Joanna Macy. A guided standing or walking meditation, fifteen minutes to an hour, done alone, in pairs, or in a group. You physically step backwards to picture someone you love at their ninth birthday party, sometime in the early twentieth century, then forward again into the present, then further forward into a child or grandchild's ninetieth birthday, roughly a century from now, where they raise a toast thanking you for something you did that helped shape their world for the better. It closes with a short reflection, alone or talked through with whoever you did it with.
3. Bold Visions for Beautiful Futures: a thirty-minute guided audio journey made by Iris Andrews and Jo Barratt at New Constellations, featuring several voices including Rob Hopkins. Works solo or as a group, played through headphones or on a speaker for a room. With a pen and several sheets of paper, you're walked through picturing a thriving 2030 for a child you love, a community you're part of, a place in nature, yourself, and finally all life on Earth.
4. Council of All Beings: created by Joanna Macy and John Seed in 1985, out of the movement to protect Australia's rainforests. Each person in a group chooses another life form, a river, a fox, a reef, sometimes making a simple mask for it, then speaks in council about what they need from the humans in the room. The full ritual runs half a day or longer and needs a group.
5. Unpacking, Expanding, and Imagining Shifting Narratives: built by Sarah Joynt-Bowe at Healing Justice London, thirty minutes to two hours, solo or in a group, with a free downloadable worksheet. Pick a story that keeps replaying in your work or your life, then work through it in four steps: who it centres and who it leaves out, who benefits and who's harmed, what the people harmed by it actually need, and what other story becomes possible once you centre justice, safety, dignity, or belonging instead.
6. Creaturely Portals: Embodied Imaginings for Uncertain Times: a thirty-minute guided audio practice by Vanessa Reid, solo or in a pair. With pen and paper, you picture a landscape of great uncertainty, then imagine the creature or ally that would thrive there, and take on its posture in your own body. Less about the future than the others here, more about facing whatever's uncertain in your life or work right now,

And don't forget, in Knowledge Mindfulness, hope grows in the connection between self and togetherness.

Knowledge Mindfulness is a living, lifelong strategy and practice, and there are several ways to go deeper. To begin, follow along here on LinkedIn for monthly newsletters, where each edition explores how Knowing, Being, and Doing show up in the real complexity of learning, leading, and living. Listen to the Porch, a podcast for thoughtful conversation with multidimensional leaders, thinkers, and practitioners. And if you're wondering "What is Knowledge Mindfulness, Anyway?" we wrote an article that may answer your question.

I also take on a limited number of 1:1 mentees each year. Organisations and founders can contact me about developing programmes for your team. Reach out at laila@knowledgemindfulness.com

With care for “ALL”, Dr. Laila Marouf and the KMD Team