I think it's so important to constantly highlight the ecosystem, the ecology that we exist in. What we've been doing with Camden has been to build a deep demonstrator or an incubator within Camden but rippling out into the borough. So what we've done so far is train 32 council offices within Camden with the tools and practices and skills of what we call imagination activism. But you could also say moral imagination and that includes collective imagination as well.
How do we unlock the inherent creativity of people?
Imagination activist, Phoebe Tickell, founded Moral Imaginations to provide an imagination-based approach to systems change. A “renegade scientist”, Phoebe has spent the past year training the London borough of Camden in imagination activism. You can read their Phase One report here as they prepare for Phase Two of the project.
Phoebe joins me to discuss the role of imagination in activism, the universality of values in human culture, and the crisis of imagination within the current system. She details the Camden Imagines Project, explaining how 32 officers were trained in moral imagining and the startling impact this has had on the organisation and the borough, revealing some of the fascinating ideas councillors had once their imagination was unleashed.
“Human beings can operate in ways that are deeply loving, collaborative, imaginative, And our big challenge, I think right now, is that we've created an entire mega-structure of institutions, and ways of working, and policies and frameworks, and regulations that actually stop us from responding to the alive sense of what is needed and what we should do: what's needed, what we should do, what's possible. That's what moral imagination gestures at.”
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