Join the Movement Fostering Thriving Creative Futures
Explore the transdisciplinary framework that supports you in co-creating positive systemic change.
The Vision
Our framework emerges from decades of research, practice, and lived experience across multiple fields, from ecology and psychology to economics and the arts. It represents a synthesis of wisdom traditions, cutting-edge science, and grassroots innovations that are already creating more life-giving ways of being together.
What are Social Imaginaries?
Key Characteristics:
Social imaginaries operate as more than just abstract ideas: they are embodied in everyday practices and institutional arrangements. They function as what sociologist Emile Durkheim called “collective representations,” but with the crucial difference that they can deliberately challenge rather than simply reinforce existing social arrangements.
How They Work:
Social imaginaries serve as catalysts for change by making visible connections that are typically obscured by dominant frameworks. They operate through multiple expressions:
- Stories and narratives that offer new ways of organizing experience
- Artistic expressions that engage different ways of seeing and sensing
- Marginalized voices that introduce alternative perspectives
- Alternative practices that demonstrate different ways of organizing society
Their Function:
Social imaginaries reveal what philosopher Ernst Bloch termed “concrete utopia”—educated hope that emerges from engagement with real possibilities within the present. They expand what we perceive as possible by altering our attention and interpretation, thereby making new forms of relation and action available.
Transformative Potential:
We argue creating social imaginaries that reveal our interconnectedness can help shift society from systems based on independence, competition, and domination toward those grounded in interdependence, collaboration, and partnership. They work by demonstrating how what appears out of our control and inevitable is actually constructed and changeable, opening space for new social possibilities to emerge.
How to Use This Framework
This isn’t a simple solution but an invitation to explore and co-create. Use these ideas as:
– A lens for understanding current challenges
– A framework for evaluating different approaches to change
– A toolkit for experimenting with new possibilities
– A bridge for connecting with others who share these values
The goal isn’t to perfectly implement these ideas but to engage with them as living questions that can guide us toward more life-giving ways of being together.
Acknowledgments
This work builds on the contributions of countless thinkers, practitioners, and communities who have challenged domination systems and demonstrated alternatives. We particularly acknowledge Indigenous wisdom keepers whose cultures have maintained partnership principles across generations, often in the face of systematic suppression.