From What If to What Next

Today's episode was recorded live at the BTS Centre's Convocation 2022, an online event with the theme of 'Imagination and Collective Liberation for a Climate-Changed World'. It was recorded before a live (online) audience.

This was an event which set out to explore "what it means to nourish our imaginations toward a world of joyful possibility and embodied hope, while also holding space for the difficult realities we are facing". We fitted right in.

We were joined by Dr. Keisha E. McKenzie, Senior Vice President for Programs at Auburn Seminary, and Shanon Shah, Director of Faith for the Climate and Senior Deputy Editor of Critical Muslim. This was such a delightful discussion, and my deepest thanks to everyone who made it possible, especially Nicole Diroff and everyone at BTS. As always, I'd love to hear what you think of this episode and the issues it raises....

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This week's episode is such a treat. Over the summer I devoured Ekow Eshun's amazing book 'In the Black Fantastic', the catalogue of the exhibition of the same name at the Hayward Gallery which, sadly, I didn't get to see. But even just the book was an incredible feast for the imagination, as was his concept of the Black Fantastic. If you enjoyed our podcast on Afrofuturism, you're going to love this one. It was such an honour to chat with Ekow, and I think you are really going to enjoy this journey into the Black Fantastic. As always, do let me know what you think!

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I think you are really going to enjoy this one. My reading over the summer holidays was Shayda Kafai's brilliant book 'Crip Kinship: The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid' (which I notice in the podcast I call 'Crip Wisdom' - sorry!), and as soon as I finished it I knew I had to ask Shayda to come onto the podcast to discuss her ideas. I asked her who her dream fellow guest would be, and she suggested Zena Sharman, author of The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health. And so this episode was born. And what a delightful, deep and amazing discussion we had. You're going to love it. Do let me know what you think, I hope this episode provokes a lot of discussion and reflection.

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Just 1% of the population own half the land in England, and citizens have a Right to Roam over only 8% of its surface. This deliberate exclusion has many bad side effects, not least its impact on our collective imagination. But it's only like this because some people imagined it like this. What if we were to reimagine this arrangement so that, like in Scotland, our Right to Roam actually enabled us to, er, roam?

For this episode I'm joined by Kate Swade of Shared Assets and Guy Shrubsole, campaigner and author of 'Who Owns England?' and 'The Lost Rainforests of Britain'. I loved this conversation. Do let me know what you think...

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Today's podcast is something a little different. We're departing from our usual format a little to spend some time in deeper conversation with one of the great guardians of the collective imagination, Cyril Dion.

If you've ever seen the film 'Demain' ('Tomorrow'), or his more recent film 'Animal', you'll know him, and his amazing work. He's also a poet, a collaborator with musicians, a writer, a journalist and much more. And his current work is focused on the need to tell positive stories about the future.

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Today's episode is really rather beautiful, with Chloe Naldrett and David Micklem exploring the role of theatre in the great transition that lies ahead of us. I hope you love it. Do let me know what you think.

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It's hardly a surprise that we struggle to hold onto hope and optimism given that the news we receive every day is filled with so much misery, appalling human behaviour, despots, narcissists and hopelessness. So what if instead we lived in a world in which the majority of the news we encountered was positive news? Stories of change going in the right way? That's our question for exploration today, and my two guests, Sean Wood, CEO of Positive News, the online and print magazine for good journalism about what's going right, and Eliza Marshall, musician and champion for deep change, have been giving it a lot of thought. So lose yourself in what that future will be like. It's a treat.

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I'm posting this on the hottest day ever recorded in the UK. If we ever needed imaginative thinking about how to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, we needed it 30 years ago, but the second best time would be now.

Today's episode brings together two people who believe that vital to the refiring of the collective imagination is the availability of life-long learning. We're joined by André Anderson who is Headmaster of Freedom & Balance, an art college for the artist in everyone, and Zahra Davidson is Chief Exec & Design Director at Huddlecraft: an ecosystem of support for peer-to-peer learning and action. Zahra started Huddlecraft to reimagine lifelong learning. It's a deep and fascinating conversation, I hope you love it, that it cools you down a little (!) and that you'll let me know any thoughts it stimulates

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As the cost of living crisis impacts more and more people, and energy security becomes something far more widely discussed than it was 10 years ago, here is a vital conversation with two leading pioneers of the notion of community energy. Community energy is a movement that is spreading in spite of, rather than because of, government actions, but its potential is huge. What if by 2030 it was the norm? What might it unlock beyond simply kilowatt hours?

I'm joined by Leila Fortunato and Agamemnon Otero to explore this, and you are in for such a treat... thanks as always for listening, and do let me know your thoughts on this episode.

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In the light of the UK government's recent appalling proposed deportation of asylum seekers to Rwanda and their new policy to electronically tag everyone who arrives on our shores, as well as the massive growth in what we might call the 'immigration industrial complex' around the world, this week we are asking a vital, and rarely asked question, what if we just got rid of the idea of borders altogether?

I'm joined by the brilliant Nandita Sharma and by Todd Miller, who have both been giving this a lot of thought for a long time. I think this is one of our most thought-provoking and mind-expanding episodes yet. I'd love to hear what you think. My thanks to you for listening, and to Ben Addicott as always for producing it.

Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.