So we’ve been trying to solve the challenge of inequality since for almost 20 years. On Thursday the 20th May 2021, I gathered the most influential group I could in Sydney, and then a group to join us virtually to present a vision of a virtual nation, with no borders, which learnt from the design of our current economic models, and created a world where there were more highways of exchange between those people inside and outside the margins, with the goal to value and center intelligence from outside the margins. I didn’t quite know how to build it, but after almost 18 years of working in the space of building physical networks that created new pathways for exchange between those inside and outside the margins, I knew enough about creating designs to shape behavior that could create microcosms of a fairer world in the real world, and felt confident that these designs could be mirrored and then amplified in the virtual world. The invite read as follows: “Come and hear our plans to bring together an alliance of wonderful organisations and human beings to design a new nation, an online country called IMAGI-NATION, that models a different economy and is a home for kids pushed outside the margins to walk across a bridge into knowledge and opportunities, and a space for citizens of our earth to work out how to live and design a world more equitably. We’ll send a deeper brief to digest before we gather.” Before the session I knew I would have to start writing and documenting the thinking. The playgrounds I was hyper conscious of building designs around where our economic model, our expectations of human beings, and designing against manipulation, power, destruction. After this date we’d done the only thing I knew how to in terms of creating something new, we had to tell a story, cast a vision, and then use our actual selves to be the scaffolding for the building of the bridge between today and tomorrow. You’ll see to the pages on the right a couple of Harvard Case Studies on AIME that track our history with Moonshots (INSERT PAGES TO THE RIGHT WITH QR codes). Moonshot set, we’d given ourselves a year to create a new nation, and now we had to work out how. The nation was centred on a few principles, we believe human beings are decent. We believe we need to network differently in unlikely fashions to alleviate inequity, and we think these unlikely connections create imagination that allows us to see and feel in new ways. There are two elements in Indigenous systems thinking that I really love, one is relations - that we centre on relations, and invest without expecting anything in return, but know it’s not a waste of time. The investment in relations, then allows us to embrace the second element of design I love - emergence, to let it emerge and move with the currents of the river you are in. What’s this mean in reality? We decided to book in close to 50 one hour co-design sessions with people from all walks of life from all over the world, with the simple brief, come and design with us the strategy for the road ahead. We started with a blank canvas and set about 50 call and response experiences, we listened, we adapted, we evolved, and we held our sights on the core destination, a fairer world. We tried our best to say yes to every idea or offer, to accept every lens, to value the intelligence, time and knowledge of all we connected to. This book showcase the journey from a blank page, and a drop of rain to start the idea of IMAGI-NATION, a river running freely and the final story that was generated. After the 50 sessions landed the story, we reached out to close to 10 artists to illustrate different sections of the narrative. And that’s what you get to read today. It was my pleasure to be in every one of the 50 sessions, and to help try bring all the ideas together, from Mycelium Mike to Robot Heads, to how to see the best in all of us. If you like what you read, feel free to reach out to us, and come and keep building IMAGI-NATION for a fairer world - powering the relations of unlikely connections, emergent design, and seeing the best in all of us. Yours in Imagination & Doing, Jack MB AIME CEO & Founder
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