Creating Space for Emergent Imagination

This short piece appears in The Art of Imagination Magazine, Vol. 2, Summer of 2022.

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As a scholar-practitioner, imagination shows up in tangible ways as I support leaders and communities to engage with the complex issues of our times. Often, imagination can evoke thinking about the future. But, in thinking about the future, habituated responses frequently kick in: from the heroic visionary who wants to forge the way forward (now!) to those who feel the future is bleak and hopeless (and have checked out), to everywhere in between. To open pathways of imagination beyond these habituated responses, I often invite groups to move together—and dwell for a while—into divergent spaces of not-knowing. Can we pause and stretch (even in the discomfort of it) before our habitual responses set our direction, inadvertently taking us into the same-old ruts and dead ends? In this extended space, can we delve into what has been historically marginalized and, in futurist Ziauddin Sardar’s words, the ways our imaginations have been colonized? Can we rescue our imaginations by healing and retelling our pasts and presents as part of the practice of reigniting our collective wellbeing? Poet and philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé invites us to become fugitives in these wilds together… READ MORE.