Collective Imagination Huddle: Our Hopeful Climate Futures
A co-creative journey of imagination to find realistic optimism in climate uncertainty
🔮 Summary
Our Hopeful Climate Futures is a 3-month peer-to-peer learning journey of imagination that will hold space for our climate grief and anxiety, whilst collectively building realistic optimism around our futures.
The Huddle will be a peer led group of 12, where we will discuss these complex emotions and the entangled eco-social issues that are causing them. Together, through conversation, reconnection, playfulness and openness, we hope to uncover futures that lie between utopia and dystopia, building a library of hopeful worlds for us to aim towards.
We aim to create a diverse space with voices from different contexts and backgrounds. We especially encourage you to apply if you come from a non-European context, and we are open to timing suggestions.
Learn more about what a Huddle is here.
📅 Practicalities
Dates: 12x weekly meet-ups on Thursdays, from September 7th to December 7th, with a 2 week break on October 26th and November 3rd.
Timing: Our suggested time is 16–18:00 GMT, but we are open to suggestions for alternative times in order to include people from diverse time zones.
Location: Online.
Time commitment: 2 hour session each week, plus ~30mins for weekly individual reflective tasks.
We ask that participants commit to a minimum of 11/12 meetups, of which the first and last session should be prioritised. Zoom recordings will be available, and participants should commit to the independent activities for all weeks.
Cost: The Huddle is FREE for participants to join, however we recognise that some may have barriers that prevent them from participating. We therefore have a small access fund to support some individuals. You can indicate your interest for this in the application form.
How to apply: Submit an application via this form, by August 20th. We have 10 spaces available to join the Huddle.
✨ Background and inspiration
To guide us in the process, we will take inspiration from The Work that Reconnects and Futures Thinking frameworks. The Work that Reconnects is a form of group work, developed by activist and scholar Joanna Macy, designed to help foster the desire and ability to take part in the healing of our world. Futures Thinking is a practice and research discipline that considers how to address, imagine and shape the future, supported through various structured tools, processes and methods.
You can find out more at joannamacy.net/work and iftf.org/insights/what-exactly-is-futures-thinking.
❔Is it for me?
This Huddle might be for you if:
- I have feelings of anxiety and/or grief around the climate crisis and its intersectional social and ecological issues.
- I seek a space to be able to acknowledge these feelings, but also want to find more moments of hopefulness.
- I can commit to most of the sessions (skip 1 max) can be there for the first and the last, and I have time to commit to the weekly tasks and submit my contribution.
- I have ideas for a specific climate issue to explore that is especially close to my heart.
❔Why should I participate?
- Do it to find crave community and solidarity to discuss, share and explore my complex feelings around the climate crisis.
- Do it to proactively imagine and build more hopeful visions of the future, to give me energy and reinvigorate my participation in the environmental movement.
- Do it to combat feelings of hopelessness by creating connections and being present in a space where I can harness optimism, while keeping it real (i.e. not falling into toxic positivity or blind optimism).
🗺️ The journey in detail
Our journey will begin with an introduction and open forum discussing the broader topics of eco-anxiety, grief and climate futures. Together we will discuss and identify different sub-themes that are of interest to the group, to focus on during our journey.
We will explore these sub-themes in more depth, with participants forming small teams to host the sub-themes. In each sub-theme we hope to go through a process of honouring our pain, finding gratitude, then seeing futures in new ways. Through our meetups, and independent tasks, we will create a library of optimistic, yet realistic and grounded futures.
Our final session will be a space for reflection on the journey itself and our co-created library. Here, we can discuss the future of the library itself — its use and legacy beyond the Huddle.
The journey will give space for our pain and grief, create agency for each other to share and bring our experiences to the conversation, and create a safety to play and imagine more hopefully. Despite our initial hopes and ambitions, the format should be fluid and open to evolution as we journey together.
👋 About the hosts
Our Hopeful Climate Futures will be hosted by Andrea Gilly and Savannah Vize. Here’s a little more about them:
Andrea: “I am a creative working in the field of sustainability, and I believe we need better stories to remind ourselves that better futures can be created by all of us. The topic in this Huddle for me is as much of a call to action, as a worry about a more and more seemingly gloomy imaginary of the future, both individual and collective. I am curious about how practices of empathy, play and creativity can create spaces that counteract this reality.”
Savannah: “Hi! I’m a designer-researcher exploring different ways that creative skills can contribute to just and sustainable futures. I hold a lot of personal eco-anxiety around the intersecting climate and social crises, and strongly advocate for play and joy as a crucial component for engaging with these issues. I want to help build equitable spaces for this playfulness, so that everyone might be able to access it.”
💬 FAQ
Below are some general Q&As about the Huddle.
Will this experience help my eco-anxiety?
It’s important to note that we will not be sharing any professional therapeutic methods — and that we, as a group, will not be qualified to do so. Rather, this is a space for us to openly share our concerns with like minded individuals, and collectively build hope between us. We hope there will be an element of healing through this experience (through play, imagination, building community and sharing burdens), but we do not suggest that this should take the place of professional support, if that is what you are seeking.
What can I expect to learn in this Huddle?
We hope this experience is as much of a learning experience as an opportunity to share. We will not provide information as teachers, but rather this Huddle is a space for all of us to learn together, without any hierarchy. This experience requires you to be as much involved in co-creating as you can and feel comfortable with, but this is not a place for you to come and learn without giving in return.
For more information about the Huddle format, head to Huddlecraft’s information page.
How will you approach diversity, inclusion and accessibility?
We recognise the importance of diverse voices when it comes to imagining climate futures. Not only in terms of professions or cultures, but also geographies, languages, lived experiences, ages, histories and passions. We therefore want to welcome and support anyone with a strong intention to take part, and aim to ensure that your identity or background will not be a barrier.
Though there are some limitations (using English as our common language, and finding a time to suit us all), it is our ambition to make this space as inclusive and diverse as possible. We will try to achieve this through the recruitment process, looking for a set of unique rather than homogenous voices, and choosing a time that suits as many as possible, not just the few. In the application you are invited to share about yourself, as well as your access needs and preferences. We will incorporate this conversation into the group from the very first session, so that we can together co-create an inclusive space for all.
In addition, we hope the format of the Huddle itself will encourage diversity through the sub-themes chosen by the group. This will allow for different perspectives and priorities to be considered, and open the whole group up to seeing, discussing and understanding these crucially different worldviews. Our “library” of hopeful futures will reflect this, emphasising the importance of imagining plural just and fair futures that can exist simultaneously and serve us all.
❔Got more questions?
If you’re interested in applying to the Huddle, but have a few more questions or access/participation requirements you’d like to chat through then you can either
- Watch the recording of our Q&A session here.
- Get in touch with Andrea/Savannah directly at savannahvizedesign@gmail.com and andrea.gillymarquez@gmail.com
✏️ Ready to apply?
If you’re already set on applying, you can find the application here. Make sure to submit your interest before the end of the day on August 20th!
Once the application period is closed, we will review all the forms and timing suggestions. You’ll hear back from us shortly after the deadline on the 20th.
We can’t wait to hear from you! 🌻
