Fighting the Fear of Imagination: Growing Institutional Capacity For Better Futures
Taking agency and navigating unexpected futures requires the ability of institutions to promote courage in imagining. Demos Helsinki invites you to explore how institutional arrangements can encourage governments to imagine better alternatives.
Today’s institutions lack the capacity of imagination required to deal with today’s complex, systemic and uncertain policy issues. In 2020 together with Sir Geoff Mulgan and with Demos Helsinki and the Untitled alliance we initiated the conversation on this Imaginary Crisis.
We are better at imagining apocalypses and disasters than positive alternatives. The gap in imagination hinders our ability to steer through transformations. Right now, when our societies are facing critical questions of resilience, we might be inclined to resort to familiar and safe seeming action and short-sighted solutions. Dealing with multiple crises simultaneously requires governments to be capable of transcending reactive action and becoming proactive through growing their capacity for imagination. At the event, we will focus on how institutional imagination reflects on policy, regulation and democracy.
Berlin, 10243 Germany
Mikko Annala
Governance Innovation Lead / Demos Helsinki
Sophia Robele
Consultant (Strategic Foresight & Systems Leadership) / UNDP
Indy Johar
Founding Director/ Dark Matter Labs