Rob Hopkins
FROM WHAT IS TO WHAT IF: UNLEASHING THE POWER OF IMAGINATION TO CREATE THE FUTURE WE WANT
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ROB HOPKINS Rob Hopkins is best known as the founder of the Transition Network, a radically hopeful and community-driven approach to creating resilient societies powered by community-based imagination and locally generated energy. Since forming the Transition Town Network in Totnes, England in 2005, Rob has witnessed and nourished several thousand initiatives in over 40 countries and also overseen the development of numerous practical tools to assist communities in becoming better equipped to shape their own destiny. He inspires us not only with myriad examples of community achievements, but also in demonstrating how tourism enterprises could both benefit and contribute to the places where they do business.
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OUR FIRST CHALLENGE TODAY, WE’RE FACING A CLIMATE EMERGENCY. CO2 EMISSIONS ARE RISING AND WE NEED TO ACT ACCORDINGLY. So how do we bring this alive in our storytelling? How do we create that intensity of longing, which is what we try to do in transition?
It’s very interesting to see the different industries telling stories about what the world could be. Now, we have ‘culture declares’: theatre and the arts declaring a climate emergency. We have ‘music declares’: the music industry and artists saying this is a climate emergency. We have architects backing ‘architecture declares’. And what would tourism look like if it declared the climate emergency and decided to act accordingly?
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OUR SECOND CHALLENGE CREATIVE THINKING AND IMAGINATION ARE UNDER THREAT. 1
The Creativity Crisis Imagination and IQ rose in tandem until the mid 1990s and then they diverged. IQ kept rising while imagination went into a steady and persistent decline.
2 The Shrinking Hippocampus The hippocampus is the part of the brain that is most responsive to and involved in our imagination. • When we experience stress, anxiety, and trauma, it shrinks. • We then lose the ability to look at the future in positive, hopeful and optimistic ways.
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The Age of Anxiety • D ecline of free, unstructured child’s play. • Awareness that the biodiversity and world around us is shrinking. • Fear of boredom.
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WHAT IF - WHY IMAGINATION MATT
From Rob Hopkin’s perspective in transition, we always need to approach transition in a way that is based on telling stories about where we could go from here, not only saying ‘it’s going to be terrible’. The coming years need to feel energised and full of imagination.
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THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT WORDS
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WHAT COULD TOUR LOOK LIKE IN 2030 Let’s bring imagination into the equation.
RISM 0?
How can we generate big, bold, imaginative interventions that shift people’s sense of what’s possible? How can we create a kind of a pop-up tomorrow where people can experience the sort of future we’re talking about? Let’s switch on our time machine and jump forward to 2030.
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INSPIRING EXAMPLES Local economy, Preston In Preston they want to ensure that every penny that comes into Preston stays and circulates in Preston. Hospitals, schools and universities, as well as organisations in the tourism sector, are all buying local produce and are even investing in energy co-ops that are buying local energy.
The Tooting Twirl, London People took over a bus turning circle to turn it into a pop up village for the whole community, making space for play and connection. The conversation went from ‘if’ this was our green to ‘when’ this is our green, implying there was a shift in permission that occurred among these people.
Nature as a medicine, Shetland Isles On these isles there are doctors who prescribe doing things in nature to people who come in feeling depressed or anxious.
Festivals, UK People attending festivals were given the chance to experiment with a different lifestyle for the weekend (e.g. using no plastic bottles or milk). They came in as tourists to test drive a new way of living.
London National Park City Making a map of London that only shows the green and blue spaces, London could almost be taken for a National Park. So the question was launched: “What if London was a national park?� and many people came up with amazing, creative ideas.
Organic food, Mouans-Sartoux In Mouans-Sartoux, the local community decided to aim for 100% organic food in schools, transcending the government quota of 20%. Now the food there is 100% organic, 70% of it coming from a city market garden and with 60% of the parents buying a lot more organic local food. The good intention started to change behaviour.
From football to forest, Germany Here they took over a football stadium and turned it into a forest!
Imagination, Barcelona In Barcelona squares are closed off and shut to traffic, the streets lined with trees and spaces created for children to play. They bring the invitation for imagination back into the city, supported by neighbourhood assemblies that suggest policy and shape the local government.
Roof top gardens, Paris In Paris nowadays, there’s an explosion of rooftop food gardening and tourists are helping out with the harvest. Tourism can really help to support these projects too.
Unloved places, Texas Here, a group of people goes to really unloved places and then, overnight, with their team making stuff off-site, they turn up and transform it into something really nice.
Sustainability to benefit the poor, Grande-Synthe Sustainability benefits the poorest people in this community. Energy efficient street lighting has saved them half a million euros, which was used to support the people with the lowest incomes. And around the social apartment blocks food gardens were created, attracting tourists as well.
Ceinture Aliment-Terre, Liège “What if the majority of food eaten in Liège came from the land closest to Liège?”. This community project has built something better and people shift off on to the things that are better. Now there are 21 new cooperatives, they have raised five million euros from local people, started two farms, two vineyards and a brewery, in just four years.
Trash to Treasure Festival, South Africa Instead of going to festivals at a beautiful site and covering it in rubbish, a new festival was created where people go to a place littered in rubbish and clean it up. They packed all the plastic bottles full of waste plastic, calling it an eco-brick, and used these to build an education centre. In other words, turning a dump into a school.
Civic Imagination Office, Bologna Here the Civic Imagination Office creates pacts with transition groups and the municipality to make sure that great projects really do come to fruition, whether it’s making a garden on the street or starting a seed bank or even a community energy company.
Ministry of Imagination, Mexico City In Mexico City, the mayor of Mexico has a Ministry of Imagination. For them imagination is something that should run through everything that the city’s government does.
The transition movement started in 2005 in Rob Hopkins’ home town. Today you can find it in 50 countries all over the world, in 1000s of towns and community groups.
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FOUR INGREDIENTS CREATING & BOOST COLLECTIVE IMAGIN
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Space The imagination needs space. A city or a tourist organisation needs to help people to create space. And actually when people are on holiday this is often the very time they do have the space. So maybe they’re more open to these ideas and to having their imagination expanded.
Place The imagination needs places where people can go, where “what if” questions are asked, places where their imagination is stimulated and valued.
S FOR TING THE NATION
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Practice Things we do together which pique the imagination and allow us to step into what the future could be like, to test drive it, to experience it.
Pacts The imagination needs pacts where once the community has done their imagining, the local government or whoever will work with them then says “How do we make this a reality?”, “We’ll provide this, if you provide that,” and those are the things that can really help to make the world as imaginative as it can possibly be.
More information:
www.traveltotomorrow.be robintransition