Utopian Pulses — experiments in social dreaming
Utopian Pulses is a monthly blog series in which Josie Chambers shares creative approaches for collectively imagining the world otherwise. From challenging seemingly inevitable unjust futures to facilitating alternative forms of politics, each month, Utopian Pulses invites you into new ways of enabling our collective imagination to flourish.
Josie Chambers is an Assistant Professor at the Urban Futures Studio in the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Her work weaves together critical, artistic, and imaginative concepts and approaches to collaboratively discover possibilities for transformative change with diverse societal groups. For more formal reflections, see Josie’s peer-reviewed research: https://www.uu.nl/staff/JMChambers. To discuss creative approaches for cultivating collective imagination, get in touch with Josie at j.m.chambers@uu.nl
Blogs
A speculative co-production of the future?
For the opening keynote of the 16th Nordic Environmental Social Sciences Conference, Josie Chambers chose not to focus on the dominant ways people have been co-producing knowledge and action for sustainability. But rather, to take stock of the field and ask: what exactly are we co-producing? Are we producing knowledge that reinforces how the world is? Or are we imagining and prefiguring explorations of how the world can be otherwise?
Josie ChambersUrban Futures Studio
Mysterious metaphors of “art–science”
How do scientists and artists experience the world differently? I’ve asked this questions many times to groups of researchers. For scientists, I often hear things like: “systematic, analytical, knowledge, observation, critical, distance, problem-oriented…”. For artists: “intuitive, emotional, subconscious, personal, interactive, playful, engaged…”. Yet ensuing discussion always tears down these binaries, showing how both art and science are fueled by creativity, curiosity, and experimentation ... This piece is about the divergent (often hidden) metaphors that guide how artistic and scientific worlds relate and the possibilities they may create.
Josie ChambersUrban Futures Studio
Around the future in eighty worlds
When we imagine “the future”, what do we conjure up?...[and] what about the very shape of the future itself? Is it linear? Branching? Circular? Throughout history, people have tried to give shape to the future. This piece offers no comprehensive tour of this history. Yet it does share some glimpses of how we might see the future in different ways, or rather different worlds. Here we begin our journey around the future in eighty worlds, even if we visit just a few for now…
Josie ChambersUrban Futures Studio
Notes on the utopian classroom
Having spent much of my life in classrooms — as student or teacher, I have seen that learning goals and content only go so far. We must fundamentally reimagine the form of the classroom. Here I share my recent experiment in creating a utopian classroom.
Josie ChambersUrban Futures Studio
An experiment in musical dreaming
When offered the chance to perform a live musical opening for the 14th International Sustainability Transitions Conference, Josie Chambers, Steve Williams & Noor Noor sought to connect emotionally to where we are with sustainability transitions, yet also offer a glimpse of what could be. In this first blog they explore the question: can music deepen our reflection and imagination in global spaces?
Josie ChambersUrban Futures Studio