Sense-Making in a Changing World How to be a Playful Imagination Activist with Rob Hopkins
Sep 19, 2025
Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Towns movement and author of How to Fall in Love with the Future, shares his insights on imagination activism. He discusses how imagination fuels permaculture and community resilience, emphasizing the power of cultivating longing over fear. Rob's Field Recordings from the Future project highlights sensory futuring as a tool for envisioning a vibrant future. He also dives into the importance of playfulness in activism and shares lessons learned from grassroots movements that can inspire transformative change.
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Making The Future Sound Real
- Rob met ambient artist Mr Kit in Totnes and they recorded imagined future places like a solar restaurant together.
- Their pieces mixed interviews, field sounds and music to make the future feel vividly present.
Sensual Futuring Creates Bodily Memory
- Sensual futuring uses smell, touch and sound to let the future enter people long before it arrives.
- Rob argues multi-sensory memory-making makes future possibilities stick in people's bodies and decisions.
Run A Future-Smell Cocktail Party
- Do run sensory exercises like a future-smell cocktail party to embed longing for a preferred future.
- Encourage participants to gather smells, name them and circulate to build a shared sensory vision.
