Atelier WeekNotes w/c 15 Jan 2024
Idea: futures projects as container for conversations we need. State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS) pilot funding now public! UCL Module: The only viable story of the future is transformation.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
Apologies for a late WeekNotes. As you will see below, professionally last week had one big piece of good news (funding for SoSS) and output (the next in the series on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business' module). Personally, I had one hospital appointment (nothing serious) and three school appointments (of various levels of serious). Result, a delay pulling the WeekNote together, and so missing some activities. But the perfect is the enemy of the good.
This week covers:
Priorities
0/DETECTING
Idea: futures projects as container for conversations we need
In the Atelier
SoSS pilot funding now public!
UCL Module's Big Claim: The only viable story of the future is transformation.
How can the Atelier of What's Next be of service to you, and your purposes? We'd love to hear from you. Perhaps you have a challenge or idea to put in the studio. Maybe one of our existing topics appeals to you. What if you love to make new things happen by being part of the studio? Or if you have feedback or comments that would improve this deck. Either click the button below or email davidbent@atelierwhatsnext.org.
Priorities
1.Offering-challenge-resourcing fit: nothing this week.
2. Organising for abundance: nothing this week
0/DETECTING
Idea: futures projects as container for conversations we need
I had three conversations this week around the possibilities (and perils) of using futures methods as containers for groups having the conversations they need.
First was with James Goodman, most recently of Local Trust and a former colelague of mine at Forum for the Future, where he was Director of Futures. He's taking a moment after a few intense years at the Local Trust (turn to him for needs around system change through community-led and/or national-scale funder and/or futures approaches).
He had an idea (and I have permission from him to share). Unpacking
WHAT'S NEEDED? Having the conversations on difficult topics which we (collectively) are avoiding.
James had some particular experiences of progressive events where mainstream actors were discussing reform but without being grounded in the realities of climate change as we understand it now (rather than as it was understood in the late 1990s).
For me, that connected with two things.
the UK media / sense-making function is just completely broken. As I type this, my twitter feed has the Conservatives trailing tax cuts on wealth, even as 1 in 5 people are living in poverty (according to Joseph Rowntree Foundation's UK Poverty 2023). That the loudest part of the UK media is cheering the prospect of tax cuts is a symptom of a deeply unhealthy situation.
Using the Depth of Change Spectrum, that the mainstream progressive position is for 'Strong Reform', which might have been OK in 1997 (but all we got then from New Labour was Soft Reform). What is needed now is cultivating action beyond reform. I think there is a space for Deep Transformation (using the insights of de-growthers, de-colonialisers and other Radical Resistors but with a generative intent -- see also this write up of my claim that the only viable story of the future is transformation).
WHAT'S READY? An intention, some principles and maybe a 'series'.
Intention: shift 'elite' change-maker discourse (so, not mass culture) from strong reform to deep adaptation.
Principles*:
Honesty about the future.
Pragmatic, in the sense of doing what we can from here (rather than an 'all or nothing' perfectionism).
A series. We started to come up with different kinds of formats:
Domain specific futures eg population/demography/immigration.
Artistic responses to future scenarios.
(*Sidebar: independently these principles are also key to the Climate Majority Project. I've just interviewed the co-founder, Rupert Read, for my Powerful Times podcast. I will be having a lot to say about this exciting intervention in the next weeks.)
Later I had a second conversation with some of the same themes, about using imagination and futures as a container for exploring more than is in current mainstream conversations. (I didn't check with that person about putting the detaisl into the WeekNotes.) That reminded me that I had compiled a list of things experimenting in that zone, which currently includes:
Joseph Rowntree Foundation has a whole strand of work on ‘emerging futures’ which has a lot on imagination.
A key person in that work is Cassie Robinson (formerly Nesta and National Lottery), who speaks about her efforts to create an imagination infrastructure here.
Geoff Mulgan’s latest book is subtitled 'How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination’. (Though my thought is the moment Geoff writes a book on somethign you know that it has reached what Gartner Hype Cycle calls the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and is about to go into a long Trough of Disillusionment; see his books on social innovation or on collective decision-making).
There is now New Constellations, which "exists to help people imagine and create better, more beautiful futures; futures in which humanity and the planet flourish together.”
US sustainability website Grist has a climate fiction competition here called Imagine 2200.
Phoebe Tickell is working on Moral Imaginations: "We are building a movement of moral imagination: collective imagining to increase radical kinship with the human and more-than-human worlds, present, past and future."
"We are the Sci-Fi Economics Lab. Inspired by science fiction, we nurture and support new, radical ways to think about the economy and economic policy." - here. Witness - an open-source fictional world. This world is different from other fictional worlds, in that it pays a lot of attention to its economies, and makes its economies radically different from the one we live in.
US Centre for Science and Imagination "brings writers, artists and other creative thinkers into collaboration with scientists, engineers and technologists to reignite humanity’s grand ambitions for innovation and discovery".
UNTITLED (anchored by Demos Helsinki) is an alliance of social imagination and experimentation to bring out the next era from the crises.
Rob Hopkins work building on his excellent book From What Is To What If.
The third conversation was with a futures academic who was, wisely (and off-the-record), very cautious indeed about pushing difficult conversations about the situation today into being about the future. For him, that was playing the game according to the rules of the incumbent power, who have been good at instrumentalising the future. As in, (1) it is for us to use as we see fit, rather than the future having its own inhabitants who might have different concerns, plus (2) that the future unfolds from the past, and is not an barren space that is waiting for us to just build a world from scratch.
WHAT CAN WE DO? Start 2/DISCOVERING, generating divergent insight.
For instance, by writing the idea down and seeing how we, and others, react.
WHAT NEXT
If you are interested in this idea (or have some strong critique you want to share), do get in touch.
In the Atelier
SoSS pilot funding now public!
Or, method: 'Imagining transformative pathways for decision-making'.
Concept. Use the horizon-scanning and sense-making techniques being developed on the State of Sustainable Shipping for similar situations.
Latest. Step: 4/DEVELOPING
Big news: Lloyds Registry Foundation has funded the pilot stage of the State of Sustainable Shipping, announced here. This is great: first to (try and) make a difference in shipping; and second, to develop a new futures method for systemic change,
To explain, the Sustainable Shipping Initiative (‘SSI’) exists to make the shipping industry sustainable (the clue is in the name). It is member-led, and draws leading companies from across the value chain, including leading, big corporates like Maersk, Bunge and Lloyd's Register. One of the founding processes in 2008ish (led by Stephanie Draper) was a participative visioning for the industry, which resulted the Roadmap to a Sustainable Shipping Industry.
Over the last decade this has become well-respected in the industry. It is more-or-less the only attempt to describe a route from here to a sustainable industry in the round.
Two years ago I helped SSI craft a revised strategy. The basic insight: there is lots happening (and competition for funding) on mature issues with specific solutions. What's missing is organisations willing to work at the 'fuzzy front end', the messy part before it is clear who should do what, and why. (This realisation was one of the insights which lead to the concept of the Atelier of What's Next, more here.)
A major plank of activity in that strategy was something we gave the working title ‘Annual Assessment’. The concept was to use the Roadmap as a jumping off point to track and challenge the industry on progress, all to accelerate the investments and policy choices for change. It also is one of the ways SSI plays in that fuzzy front end, to point its members at what is emerging they need to pay attention to, and identifying where SSI can apply its capabilities to make more difference.
Over the two years I’ve been helping SSI to develop this, now known as the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS, though the final name might change). In the terms of the 7Ds of nurturing what’s next, we are in 4/DEVELOPING.
Broadly, we are designing something which combines the following:
-Near-horizon issue-led scanning: what is going on in this topic in this industry?
-Mezzo-scale transition theory: how far along a transition to a sustainable state is this topic in this industry?
-Participatory process / collective intelligence: who can be involved, in what ways, to enhance data collection, analysis, and then use of insights to have real impact?
-Generating public goods, by making the data, the results and the method available to others.
-A digital interface, as the host for all this interaction.
The funding from Lloyds Registry Foundation gives us a chance to do a pilot for the Ocean Vision Area (one of the 6 issue domains in the Roadmap). The concept is for some different kinds of results:
-Direct impacts:
Influence ocean-related investment decisions in shipping, to drive systemic change faster in ocean governance, biodiversity and related topics.
Contribute to the enabling conditions for systemic change in shipping (eg more industry players primed to lead).
-Proof of concept of the method:
Have a track record and method for the SoSS, to apply to the next Vision Areas (as part of 2-3 year cycle of going through all 6 Vision Areas).
Have a method to apply in any domain (ie not in shipping). The intention is to create an 'Open Protocol' (probably with some kind of Creative Commons licence) so that anyone can give it a go. Working title: Imagining transformative pathways for decision-making. (I know the title needs work.)
In terms of the Atelier's strap line ('a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future'), it is the method which is at the frontier. The long-term potential is of creating something many people can use where they are for a real difference. This is one of the key priorities of the Atelier for 2024: a launch of something having impact of its own right, and also a showcase for the Atelier is all about.
Other WeekNotes have given some of the method (see here). Over the coming weeks I will be sharing a lot more (and all organised under this heading on the SubStack site).
For now, a small celebration for the win. And on with the design.
WHAT NEXT
Assembling a consultative group of futures specialists, to tell us how badly we are doing stuff and how to improve. If you would like to be considered for this, do get in touch.
Designing the specific steps within the existing sketch of the Open Protocol method.
Writing up the research work so far, so there is an audit trail.
UCL Module's Big Claim: The only viable story of the future is transformation.
I am doing a weekly key insight from the Masters module I co-teach on 'Innovation and Sustainability in Business', collected under this heading.
This week makes a big claim. Using Jim Dator's four recurring stories of the future, we argue:
More Continuation will inevitably lead to some serious form of Decline and Collapse.
Limits and discipline will not be stable or enduring.
Therefore, transformation to new configuration(s) is necessary.
You can read more here.
WHAT NEXT
Keep delivering the lectures and teaching.
Keep writing the series. Later this week, another big claim: how all efforts at sustainable business are innovation on some level.