Article
Savannah Vize
Falay Transition Design and Savannah Vize Design, Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
What is the role of studying and imagining possible climate futures beyond the utopia/dystopia binary? This essay explores the pervasiveness of extreme future narratives within the current climate futures discourse, and how these dominant narratives inhibit imagination action. From a design practitioner’s perspective, the potential of the creative disciplines for democratising futures studies is then explored, with emphasis on how creative practice can bring more diverse and plural understandings of futures into climate work.
Keywords
Possible Futures, Creative Practice, Democratising Futures, Imagination
Introduction
Imagining climate futures quickly leads to glistening green utopias, juxtaposed with smog-ridden desolate dystopian landscapes. But as local and global climate emergencies populate news feeds, dystopia feels closest to reality, whilst utopia creeps beyond reach. Eco-anxiety and climate burnout are growing issues that highlight the debilitating effects of engaging with these extreme future visions and environmentalism. In turn, many people – especially young people – are struggling with helplessness and overwhelm as they navigate climate and social injustices. (Pihkala, 2020) But sitting between these extremes lie an infinite number of other possibilities – a plurality of mostly unexplored possible climate futures existing in their millions. These futures can be better than our present, but in recognising the need for adaptation and compromise, they offer attainable and realistically optimistic imaginaries. Understanding climate futures in plural and ‘possible’ terms gives space to explore what a just and sustainable future means for different beings, cultures, communities, perspectives and priorities. By shifting our collective imagination of the future to include these voices, we can catalyse futures that decentre damaging mainstream priorities and work for earth as a whole.
However, whilst imagination is a muscle we all have, futures studies and tools are far from mainstream outside academia and foresight work. For diverse perspectives to push our collective imagination of the future, I argue that it is crucial for us to build both literacy and access to working with futures beyond these established environments. My professional background lies between design, sustainability and research. With my experience working with transition design approaches, futures tools, systems thinking and community engagement, I recognise the potential of creative practice to negotiate this space. Given future studies’ intrinsic relationship with imagination, creative disciplines are a natural (and historical) mediator between the academic field and its practice in organisations, communities and building of new cultural imaginaries.
Beyond the Utopia/Dystopia binary
Our climate’s uncertainty inherently connects sustainability dialogues with futures studies. The societal imagination of climate futures, however, is clouded by two dominant visions: utopia and dystopia. Creative fields have played a significant role in creating highly aesthetic and captivating narratives that are pervasive across film, tv and literature, where catastrophic narratives compete with unattainable technological dreamscapes. Beyond fiction, our news coverage and social media mirror these extremities, where climate disasters and glossy innovations compete for coverage. Utopias are credited with presenting an imperative to imagine alternatives which push the boundaries of existing science or technology, whilst dystopias provide a cautionary tale to envisage life beyond and through disaster (Yusoff & Gabrys, 2011).
But as seductive and even entertaining as these narratives can be, their ability to catalyse action is contestable. Dystopias are criticised for being little more than fear-based entertainment, or as having genuine capacity to plunge us into helplessness, eco-anxiety and climate grief (Moo, 2015; Pihkala, 2020). Utopias contrarily risk the opposite by presenting worlds so perfect they become little more than “escapist daydreams” (Pepper, 2005). This utopian elusiveness alongside our current crises, only adds to the feeling that dystopia is our most realistic trajectory. Another issue is the utopian tendency to focus on a subjective ‘perfect’ rather than a world that justly serves all, drawing on limited pathways that often centre the neoliberal, technophilic ideals shaping our present (Goode & Godhe, 2017). This is especially notable in the exclusionary and eerily colonial nature of many mainstream utopias (Bielskyte, 2021), which though perfect to some privileged groups, brazenly ignore the needs of everyone else – non-humans included. Though critical utopias exist that challenge our societal imperfections and look for futures that serve all, many of our mainstream utopian ideas fall into one or both of these traps, presenting futures which are idealistic, reductionist or essentially impossible. The pervasiveness of these imaginaries alongside a lack of compelling alternatives is manifesting as a crisis of imagination and a societal “malaise” blocking societal transformation (Milkoreit, 2017, Mulgan et al., 2020). Our limited opportunities and abilities to imagine climate futures that pursue alternative values, systems and structures, is leading us to chase futures that maintain the ideals historically and presently contributing to the earth crisis – keeping us in “imaginative lock-ins” (Dark Matter Labs, 2023).
Critical Futures Studies (CFS) invites a pluralistic and multidisciplinary approach to futures work, aiming to “defamiliarise unquestioned, sedimented or ‘common sense’ discourses of the future…to broaden the field of possibility” (Goode & Godhe, 2017; also see Fischer & Mehnert, 2021). By recognising that plural futures can and will happen simultaneously, this mindset rejects the subjectivity and exclusivity of mainstream utopian thinking and its singular value sets. In climate futures, this looks like disrupting the dystopia/utopia binary to explore the infinite possible futures between these unattainable, undesirable extremes. Yusoff and Gabrys (2011) argue that imagining climate futures is a socio-political act which opens new spaces and adaptation for dealing with uncertain futures. Thus, actively imagining a plurality of climate futures cannot only inspire new narratives, innovation and developments, but also helps us to understand how to live with forthcoming changes.
This study of ‘in-between’ is not a new idea, but across academic literature and practice-led work, there is no one widely accepted term defining these more moderate futures. Futurist Kevin Kelly’s original ‘Protopia’ describes progressively bettering the world over a long period of time – but still latches onto technological advancement as a prerequisite for progress (Needelman, 2023). Monika Bielskyte’s contemporary framing of ‘Protopia Futures’ detaches this technological component to imagine positive plural futures that highlight socio-cultural futures, ethics, and marginalised voices, and calls for multidisciplinarity to bring the complexities of futures thinking to more people (Bielskyte, 2021). Across urban and food studies, and the International Panel on Climate Change’s lexicon, ‘Liveable Futures’ is a term growing in popularity to describe safe and equitable futures in policy and strategy (IPCC, 2023). Speculative and science-fiction communities and writing practices too are awash with different terms, from neutropia to altopia to visionary futures, sitting somewhere along this spectrum (Nichols, 2011).
Fig. 1: A Possitopian understanding of the futures cone framework (McKenzie 2020, adapted from Voros 2017)
Futures thinker Bridget McKenzie proposes ‘Possitopia’, as in possible futures. Building on Voros’ futures cone (2017), Possitopia takes an alternative view of the probable, possible and preferable futures cross-section that highlights the plural, fractal nature of futures, rather than as a binary or 2×2 matrix. This explores climate futures by centring imagination, but without promoting blind positivity or only “probable” futures by our current standards. Another crucial element of McKenzie’s approach is that it accepts our futures will be impacted by a changing climate, regardless of our actions. This is a freeing realisation which allows us to move past mitigation or picture-perfect utopias towards adaptation and resilience-building. Compared to apathy or helplessness, this acceptance creates agency knowing our individual actions directly impact the futures we envisage. (McKenzie, 2020)
To summarise, possible futures are attainable, stem from our present reality, and embrace our current faults, failures and changing climate. By adopting pluralism, we encourage imagination beyond only probable futures, to stretch our understanding of possibilities. A key element of this is critically engaging with futures to reject dominant narratives’ blind optimism or debilitating pessimism. Where imagining the future has genuine capacity to affect the future we are societally steering towards (Goode & Godhe, 2017), opening the utopia/dystopia binary becomes a radical and disruptive form of imagination that can question the systems, dynamics and structures which have led to our current crises. As a precursor to the tangible interventions needed for regenerative futures, critical futures thinking therefore holds huge transformational and agency-building power by redirecting something we all have at our disposal: imagination.
Possible futures in practice
Yet with the cultural and societal dominance of the utopia/dystopia binary in climate futures, imagining and studying within the possible space is not easy, nor widely accessible. Some argue that futures studies and social imagination has fizzled out of spaces like politics or think-tanks (Mulgan et al., 2020), whilst others believe it is only available to those in high-level strategic positions (Milkoreit, 2017). A possible futures approach intends to disrupt existing damaging visions through pluralising and enriching our imagination of what could be – but if the very practice of futures studies is disproportionately accessible outside the immediate field, limited expert viewpoints will continue to dominate and steer societal future directions. CFS highlights this need for democratisation to incorporate diverse and multidisciplinary perspectives of desirable futures, stating that “as citizens we can intervene and work against powerful interests narrowing and monopolising our futural imagination” (Goode & Godhe, 2017).
Given how creative disciplines have contributed to the existing dystopia/utopia binary of climate futures, it stands to reason that we hold some cards for building futures literacy and shifting collective imagination. The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies’ 2021 Scenario report states “If we allow them to coalesce and complement one another, the arts and futures literacy can let us engage with unexplored futures in powerful new ways and start imagining them into existence”. Design, art, theatre, fiction writing, and other creative disciplines’ proficiency in using imagination positions them to translate futures studies into accessible practice. As such, the arts have a propensity to bring futures thinking to a crucially wide audience where creative practitioners with futures capabilities can help make sense of its abstract discourse, acting as a mediator between futures studies and its applications in “real life”.
Visionary Fiction is a long-standing, accessible format for imagining alternative worlds. In their book Emergent Strategy (2017), adrienne maree brown explores its role, with particular attention to science fiction, in pushing our imaginary boundaries of the future. Within Afrofuturist traditions, they describe how “Reclaiming the right to dream the future, strengthening the muscle together as black people is a revolutionary, decolonising activity”. This highlights the role that creative authors can and have played in futures literacy and agency building, with regard to strengthening marginalised voices and rallying dreamers behind more just future visions. Worldbuilding is a method for structuring these imaginative fictional works that echoes a strategic futures studies approach. Popular in science fiction and game design, worldbuilding creates coherent imaginary worlds on which to build a story (see Zaidi, 2019; Mulgan et al., 2020). A key component is designing around a set of contextual constraints that enable “coherent geographic, social, cultural” environments (Zaidi, 2019). This systemic approach embeds realism or possibility to the imagined environment, allowing us to explore cause and effect within socio-cultural, economic and environmental layers (Fischer & Mehnert, 2021). Used in futures studies and creative practice alike, the diverse application of worldbuilding demonstrates its ability to connect outside core futures disciplines.
On account of their mutual interest in systemically imagining better futures, worldbuilding is also one of many methods used in the relatively new field of transition design (Zaidi, 2019). A growing area of design for sustainability, transitions design proposes that “the transition to sustainable futures is a design process that requires a vision, the integration of knowledge, and the need to think and act at different levels of scale” (Irwin, 2015). Much of my work as a member of the Falay Transition Design collective uses transition design methods built on futures studies approaches like backcasting, visioning, horizon scanning and identifying weak signals. Many of these identify causal relationships between the past, present and future, creating desirable future visions that are contextually informed and thus rooted in possibility. With this, we work with communities, organisations and individuals to identify interventions for sustainable transformations that can be initiated today, whilst actively pluralising and democratising possible futures imaginaries.
Fig. 2: Transitions design worldbuilding and weak signals canvases (Falay Transition Design, 2023)
Futures studies and creative practice are also frequently combined in place-based work, where local residents and communities are invited to co-create new future imaginaries of their local place. McKenzie, for example, has been putting this into practice with Climate Museum UK’s ongoing project Possitopia Norwich. The project advocates for “creative and motivating ways to tackle future anxiety, to increase voice[s]and sense of agency” (Possitopia Norwich, n.d., para. 4), and centres the exploration of possible futures in Norwich, UK. The creative practitioners involved build on several tools from different disciplines, including many from futures studies, such as scenario building and backcasting. This applied example brings futures studies to a multidisciplinary community, instilling agency in new voices to generate alternative contextual future imaginaries.
London’s Camden Council is also using imaginative futures work to actively shape the borough’s future with local residents, enabled by Phoebe Tickell/Moral Imaginations’ ‘Imagination Activism’. This movement is again opening collective climate futures imagination to a much wider and diverse audience, positing that the climate and ecological movement must be “powered by imagination and vision, rather than guilt and despair” (Tickell, 2022, What is Imagination Activism? section, para. 1). Coining the term, Tickell explains that ‘Imagination Activists’ are equipped with tools to bring this practice to others and work towards a just and sustainable future for all. One of the concept’s key pillars is its connection to the future and future generations, but especially in terms of shifting societal understandings of what possible could mean. This specifically means to use creative approaches (such as storytelling and worldbuilding) to move beyond our current view of futures heavily shaped by media, consumption culture and the political discourse, to “create pockets of the future by bringing new possibilities into the present” (Moral Imaginations, n.d., para. 2). As such, Imagination Activism takes a creative, possible-centred approach with the objective of building futures literacy and agency by broadening the reach of futures tools and conversations.
As an active member of the Collective Imagination Practice Community, I am also experiencing the value of creative approaches for possible-futures exploration first hand. With my colleague Andrea Gilly, I hosted a peer-to-peer learning journey (a “Huddle”, Huddlecraft 2023), where we discussed, imagined and created more hopeful climate visions, alongside our fellow eight participants. A non-hierarchically organised group, the Huddle was an emergent space where all participants were able to bring different collective imagination techniques, tools and experiments. With our group’s diverse set of backgrounds, this format saw a miscellany of different creative practices ignite dreaming around coral futures, resilience, rituals, positive disruptions and more. Our shared intention with these experimental gatherings was to co-create hopefulness, and in turn breathe life back into our sense of agency. The engaging and often playful breadth of methods that the group brought forward from design, fiction writing, arts and research, undoubtedly facilitated this goal.
In addition to these examples, other forms of artistic and creative practice are being used to bridge this space. In 2021, the Danish School of Performing Arts began an artistic research collaboration with the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies that equipped students with futures skills for creating new stories for societal transformations (Larsen et al., 2021). From the theatrical side of artistic work, roleplay is sensorially immersing players in possible futures. Projects like Climate Museum UK’s Possitopia Norwich and The Sarkar Game (Inayatullah, 2013b) that draw on role-playing principles allow participants to engage with possible worlds in an embodied and affecting way, turning abstract futures into experimental yet concrete experiences (Fischer & Marquardt, 2022). Similarly, there is a growing portfolio of games playfully opening possible futures exploration to new audiences, ranging from mainstream franchises like The Sims 4’s Eco Lifestyle expansion, to more niche and independent games like the Half-Earth Socialism Game.
There are hundreds more creative practices and projects that should be included into this essay (having not even touched on the incredible imaginative futures work happening at Dark Matter Labs or Superflux) – but these examples hopefully demonstrate the extensive ways that creative work can democratise futures studies and open this vital field of research to those who do not speak its academic language.
Conclusion
This reflective essay explores the need to disrupt the utopia/dystopia binary of climate futures. I begin by explaining the limitations of unattainable and/or undesirable extreme narratives in maintaining engagement and posit the need to explore the ‘in-betweens’ of possible futures. Given the highly academic and strategic traditions of futures studies, however, I then discuss the need for democratising this field to create diverse and plural climate imaginaries. Finally, I demonstrate the natural capabilities of creative fields to mediate this space and make futures more accessible and comprehensible to a broader audience.
For me, democratising futures studies means enabling contributions from every field of work, community and individual. Simply put, how can we imagine futures that are just and regenerative for all humans and non-humans, if those voices are not included in futures discourse? Providing these avenues within which to engage with futures is therefore imperative. By doing so we can build futures literacy that would embed more systemic, intersectional, pluralised and radical imaginations into decision making areas across policy, healthcare, education, built environment, conservation and more. These expert environments are clear touchpoints for transformation, but also at societal and community levels, futures literacy can create an antidote to despair by fostering a better understanding of our roles in affecting climate futures.
By breaking free from the utopia/dystopia binary, we additionally enable radical imagination of alternative futures that decentre the broken systems reflected in current crises – a collective critical engagement with futures thinking can creatively expand our shared understanding of possibility. In a futures-triangle framing, this democratisation can strengthen the pull of a more just and desirable future, rather than reinforcing the push of the broken present (Inayatullah, 2013a). As such, I believe creatively enabling futures literacy supports a paradigm shift, the highest of all leverage points for transformation (Meadows, 1999), by prompting activist, inclusive, equitable, disruptive and just movements towards better, possible climate futures.
References
Bielskyte, M. (2023, January 29). PROTOPIA FUTURES [FRAMEWORK] – Protopia Futures. Medium
Brown, A. M. (2017). Emergent strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.
Dark Matter Labs. (2023, September 26). Radicle Civics — Building proofs of possibilities for a civic economy and society. Medium.
Fischer, N., & Mehnert, W. (2021). Building Possible Worlds: A speculation based framework to reflect on images of the future. Journal of Futures Studies, 25(3), 25–38.
Flood, S., Cradock-Henry, N. A., Blackett, P., & Edwards, P. (2018). Adaptive and interactive climate futures: systematic review of ‘serious games’ for engagement and decision-making. Environmental Research Letters, 13(6), 063005. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aac1c6
Goode, L., & Godhe, M. (2017). Beyond Capitalist Realism – Why we need critical future studies. Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 9(1), 108–129. https://doi.org/10.3384/cu.2000.1525.1790615
Hopkins, R. (2019). From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want. Chelsea Green Publishing
Huddlecraft (2023). Huddles. Retrieved 10 September 2023 from https://www.huddlecraft.com/huddles
Imagination activism — moral imaginations. (n.d.). Moral Imaginations.
IPCC. (2023, March 20). Urgent climate action can secure a liveable future for all. https://www.ipcc.ch/2023/03/20/press-release-ar6-synthesis-report/
Inayatullah, S. (2013a). Futures Studies. Theories and Methods. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281595208_Futures_Studies_Theories_and_Methods
Inayatullah, S. (2013b). Using Gaming to Understand the Patterns of the Future – The Sarkar Game in Action. Journal of Future Studies, 18(1).
Irwin, T. (2015). Transition Design: a proposal for a new area of design practice, study, and research. Design and Culture, 7(2), 229–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2015.1051829
Gafni, M. (2018, January 22). Crisis of imagination – Thrive global. Medium.
Larsen, N., Overgaard M., Pedersen, K.K., Snell, T., Baron. C., Morgensen, K.Æ., Geuken, T. & Petersen, C.S., (2021). Futures shaping art/art shaping futures. Scenario Reports. Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
McKenzie, B. (2020). Explaining Possitopia. Climate Museum UK.
Meadows, D. (1999). Leverage points. Places to Intervene in a System, 19, 28.
Mecartney Sarah. (2022). Futures and The Power of Imagination for Transformation. Journal of Futures Studies.
Milkoreit, M. (2017). Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future. Elementa, 5. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.249
Moo, J. A. (2015). CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE APOCALYPTIC IMAGINATION: SCIENCE, FAITH, AND ECOLOGICAL RESPONSIBILITY. Zygon, 50(4), 937–948. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12222
Mulgan, G., UCL STEaPP, & Demos Helsinki. (2020). The Imaginary Crisis (And how we might quicken social and public imagination). UCL Science, Technology, Engineering & Public Policy Working Paper Series.
Nichols, M. (2011, July 9). What is between dystopian and utopian? [Online forum post]. English Language & Usage. Stack Exchange.
Pepper, D. (2005). Utopianism and environmentalism. Environmental Politics, 14(1), 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/0964401042000310150
Pihkala, P. P. (2020). Anxiety and the Ecological Crisis: An analysis of Eco-Anxiety and Climate Anxiety. Sustainability, 12(19), 7836. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197836
Possitopia Norwich – Activating Norwich for a green future. (n.d.).
Tickell, P. (2022). Imagination activism. Phoebe Tickell.
Zaidi, L. (2019). Worldbuilding in Science Fiction, Foresight and Design. Journal of Futures Studies, 23(4), 15–26.