Camden Imagines: Moving from accepting ‘what is’, to imagining ‘what if’
This post is written by Benny Souto and Florence Henry, both Policy Designers on the Strategy and Design team at Camden.
How can local authorities move from accepting “what is” to imagining “what if”? Last week, Camden considered this question as we celebrated the launch of the Phase 1 Report for the Camden Imagines project, alongside Moral Imaginations. Local authorities face limited resources, and increasingly complex challenges in their communities — imagination can provide council staff with tools and techniques to navigate these challenges.
Camden Imagines saw Camden become the first UK local authority to offer Imagination Activist training to its staff. Some 32 people from across the organisation — from repairs staff to planners — took part in an 8 week course designed to expand their imaginations, give them practical tools and techniques, and make them ambassadors for the imagination within the organisation. Participants learnt how to include future generations in decision-making, future visioning, and how to make the leap from what is to what if.
Throughout this journey, they have blogged about their experience on Camden Imagines’ blog. In this post, we wanted to share some of their insights that really stood out to us. Part of the purpose of Change by Design, and the Strategy and Design team we work in at Camden, is to use imagination as a tool to activate change. Camden Imagines Phase One was packed with amazing learning about what that can look like in practice.
So what did participants discover? If you want to find out, first watch this 3-minute video for an overview of the programme and then read on for some of our highlights from the blog.
If you want to delve deeper, you can read further insights into their journey, and how their mindsets were changing along the way, in our report: Imagination Activism in Camden, Insights from the First Phase.
Making space for the future
There is an increasing movement towards formally considering future generations in policy. For example, in 2015 Wales enshrined in law the need for public bodies to do just that.
Within Camden imagines, weaving in the perspectives of future generations seemed a particularly powerful mindset for participants. Jane Murphy, Sue Sheehan, and Ododo Dafe all reflect on how it changed the way they approach their work (It changed the way I think about what I do + If we can’t imagine the future we want to see, how can we make it happen? + I’m increasingly thinking back to the past to move into the future). Ododo went as far as to imagine a future diary-entry from a resident in one of Camden’s estates:
“The discussion that Saturday on council tenants living in homes that meet their needs in a dignified way was interesting — different types of people, different perspectives, and so many ideas. It led to me becoming more involved in my community and I suppose in the big and small politics of life, of our lives. Things have been happening. The council and local people have been helping people with unused bedrooms move into smaller homes to free up homes for people living in overcrowded conditions. (…) There’s been some movement on ending homelessness — it’s by no means ended yet, but already there seems to be less people on the streets, and I heard Camden was the first Council in London to stop using expensive commercial hotels.” — So Yusuf, what are your dreams for this year?
Emma Le Blanc also wrote a great reflective blog, that shows how the three pillars of Imagination Activism — future generations, more than human world, and ancestors — have been embedded in her practice. As a result, she’s come up with lots of new ideas for how to deliver differently, turning imagination from thought to reality: “I have generated some imaginative ideas about how the Good Work Camden service can be more innovative in its service delivery for the benefit of our residents. I am proud to say that I am an Imagination Activist which means that I am learning to develop and harness my imagination for social good and transform it into constructive, empowering, and effective action.” (Moving from Imagination to Activism: generating and transforming good ideas into affirmative impactful actions).
Practical tools to unlock creativity
Other Imagination Activists found the concepts of unlocking creativity and radical imagination really transformational. Some felt especially attracted to the idea of “befriending failure” as a key mindset. For Ian Gilson, this is about balancing a radical imagining of the future, with working within the constraints of the present — “In the office we struggle with both long term hope and short term realism. We hide failures instead of learning from them and we are so bogged down with managing today, we can’t raise our heads high enough to focus on the future.” (The future can be one of hope, not fear).
Neelam Kumar and Elita Johns also found the concept of befriending failure liberating and important for bringing imagination more into everyday work (It’s not about doing things better, it’s about doing better things + If we acknowledge and name our failures we have the ability to improve).
Meanwhile, Phil Barrett reflects on the crucial role of psychological safety as a key part of organisational culture, to enable their staff to think more expansively and feel more confident in taking risks and trying out new things: “This is psychological safety in action, a self-propelling system driving personal and organisational development, driven by creativity and imagination. This example illustrates that psychological safety and imagination are inextricably linked. The ability to remove the blinkers, self-reflect, and turn to others is a skill and one which you can practise.” (With that space to think comes an improved capacity to include more perspectives in my work).
Overall, at the end of the programme the Imagination Activists reported:
- An increase in Psychological Safety (69%)
- An increase in imagination capacity (92%)
- That they had been equipped with practical tools for day-to-day work (100%)
- It helped them build new relationships (75%)
The next phase of Camden Imagines will involve rippling out into the community, building on Camden’s participation journey, which started in 2017. Camden has run 10 citizens’ assemblies so far, developed participatory grantmaking and community investment. We want to continue creating new ways of collaborating with communities and to share power and resources. The aim going forward will be to think differently, address complex challenges and shape the future of Camden together, across teams and within our community, bringing Imagination into the ethos of Camden.
We’ll share more thoughts once we’ve made progress with the next phase — we can’t wait to think more about how imagination activism can intersect with design in particular. Meanwhile, if you’d like to find out more about Camden Imagines or you’re interested in being part of what we’re building, please get in touch with us at camdenimagines@camden.gov.uk
