ISSUE 2
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USING YOUR IMAGINATION COULD HELP SAVE THE PLANET WORDS ELLIE STROHM
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arlier this year, the Rural Youth Project spoke to writer and environmental activist, Rob Hopkins who told us about his experiences as co-founder of the, now worldwide, Transition movement. He explained what he had learned through writing his latest book, From What Is to What If? which has been described as, “a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination”. There is no avoiding it, we are living in a time of great challenge. We are facing an ecological and climate emergency; vast bio-diversity loss; food insecurity; a social justice calamity; continued racial, sexual, and gender-based discrimination; economic inequality; a housing crisis; and a pandemic that has gravely emphasised these issues. Tragically, it is young people – both urban and rural – who are bearing the heavy burden of these challenges. At the Rural Youth Project, we have heard young people describe how overwhelmed they feel. Many talk of feeling numb, fearful for their futures, and unable to change their stories or that of their community. In such a time of crisis ‘imagination’ may seem frivolous. The capacity to create, evolve, and conjure images and ideas for scenarios that do not yet exist, seems an unlikely result under such pressure. Indeed, Hopkins recognises that imagination is, tragically, often a privilege reserved for those who can already meet their most basic needs. However, he argues that limitations, “offer our imagination a structure, a space in which to thrive”. “One of the most beautiful things about imagination is that the more limits you put around it, the more imaginative you can be,” he continues. We only have to look at responses to the covid lockdowns to see this in action. People were creative and communities came together to look after each other, people did not wait to be told to help or what to do, they came up with solutions themselves.
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‘If we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we act as individuals, it will be too little. But if we act as communities, it might just be enough, and it might just be in time.’ - Rob Hopkins Founder of the Transistion Movement
