Rob Hopkins: Conquering the Imagination Deficit and Dreaming Up Delightful Futures
Rob Hopkins at the 2024 Boomtown Festival. Photo by ‘Drum.’
By Daniel Simons
Article Summary
- The Power of Imagination: Climate change solutions require a boost in collective imagination to envision and build desirable, sustainable futures. Overcoming the "disimagination machine" is key.
- Community-Led Action: Hopkins champions empowering local communities to create their own solutions through initiatives like community energy, housing, and food systems, building resilience from the ground up.
- Cultivating Optimism: Hopkins is focused on fostering a love for the future through projects like his podcast and upcoming book, inspiring a positive vision and longing for a sustainable world.
What if the future was delightful, sustainable, and full of imagination? Rob Hopkins believes it can be - and he's dedicated his life to proving it.
In August 2024, Rob Hopkins took to the stage at the 66,000-strong Boomtown Festival. Decked out in a makeshift space suite, sporting a glass helmet that resembeled a giant goldfish bowl, and holding a sign above his head, he paraded in front of the crowd like some sort of cosmic lollipop man.
His placard bore a simple black-and-white phrase, one that has come to encapsulate the essence of Hopkins’ life and work: “I’ve been to the future. We won.”
With a career that blends imagination advocacy and solutions-storytelling, Hopkins is renowned as one of the world’s leading voices for reimagining our collective future. Crowned by The Independent as one of the UK’s top 100 movers and shakers and hailed by The Observer and NESTA (the UK’s innovation agency for social good) as one of Britain's ‘50 New Radicals’, Hopkins has made it his mission to inject creativity and optimism into the veins of social and environmental change makers worldwide.
Bill McKibben, writer and founder of 350.org, praised Hopkins as, “the person who's done more - and inspired more doing - than anyone else I know."
Some might think an 'imagination catalyst' lives with their head in the clouds (or a goldfish bowl), but Hopkins - who came to the solutions movement via permaculture - has never forgotten his roots. As a master of transposing thought into action, Hopkins knows that sometimes the key to real change lies in 'just doing stuff”.
In 2005, Hopkins founded the Transition movement, which has since mushroomed into a global phenomenon with over 3,000 local chapters, spread out over 50 countries.
Focused on building resilience through local, low-carbon solutions, the network has been the subject of many of Hopkins’ 24 books, featured as the ‘big idea’ in his global-stage TED talk, and was brought to life in Cyril Dion’s documentary phenomenon Demain (Tomorrow).
Walking the talk - or living the dream - Hopkins resided in Totnes, the original Transition Town. There, he helped establish one of the world’s first local currencies, became a co-owner of a local brewery, and led an ambitious campaign to create Atmos Totnes, a community-led development project that aimed to repurpose a defunct industrial site into a thriving, sustainable neighbourhood.
In a photo from a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington DC, Hopkins spotted a woman wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, “I’ve been to the future. We won.”
It was a lightning moment and sparked a pivotal shift in focus from community resilience to empowered optimism.
Hopkins went on to pen From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want and then host 100 episodes of the From What If to What Next podcast where he invited the world’s leading environmentalist to time travel to the year 2030 and describe what went right.
He then curated the most visionary ideas from his interviews and released a 300-page policy manifesto and wishlist dubbed The Ministry of Imagination.
Today, Hopkins spends his time consulting, speaking, running workshops, and tinkering on his new book about how to fall in love with the future.
Matters sat down with Hopkins to have a chat about transcending the imagination deficit, the power of ‘what if?’ and how we can all dream up delicious and delightful futures that can act as our North Stars, and guide us towards better tomorrows.
Rob Hopkins at the 2017 Cities in Transition Conference in Paris.
Why is imagination so important for solving the climate crisis and creating a better future?
The writer Bell Hooks once said, "What we cannot imagine cannot come into being." I have been involved with work around climate change for a long time, through the Transition movement and - before that - through permaculture.
Around 2018, I found myself reading a lot by people I really admired, like Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, and George Monbiot. A recurring sentence in their writings was, "Climate change is a failure of the imagination." I found that really interesting, but they would just say it and then move on without expanding on what they meant.
I started thinking, "What if climate change demands that we reimagine everything profoundly? But what if we've created conditions where our collective imagination isn't up to the task? What if it has become enfeebled, desiccated, and marginalised at the very time when we need it most?"
That thought got under my skin, and I spent about a year and a half researching the book that became From What Is to What If. I spoke to over a hundred people, many of whom I hadn't heard of when I started, just exploring that question: What's the state of health of our collective imagination?
I found some fascinating research published in the U.S. around 2000, which showed that imagination and IQ rose together until the mid-90s. At that point, IQ continued to rise while imagination started to decline. The researcher speculated that this might be due to the rise of testing in schools, the decline of play in our culture, and the increase in screen time.
By the time I finished writing the book, I added a few other things to that list. I feel like we've created a perfect storm of conditions that are deeply damaging to the imagination—what Henry Giroux calls the "disimagination machine."
When we have a movement trying to mobilise people at scale around climate change, and it only talks about collapse and extinction, it fails. Without focusing on the creation of longing and giving people something to run towards - a vision of the future that's seductive and delicious - I don't think we're going to make it.
Imagination is vital because everything around us exists because we imagined it. The world exists as it does today because people imagined it that way, but we can just as easily imagine it differently.
So, the work I've been focused on over the last few years has been about boosting that imaginative muscle, that imaginative capacity, in organisations, businesses, and activist groups.
Image supplied by Rob Hopkins.
Can you tell us more about the ‘disinformation machine’ and how we can transcend the limitations it places on our imagination?
The term "disimagination machine" comes from the activist and academic Henry Giroux, who writes extensively about fascism.
In one of his articles, he discussed the "Trump disimagination machine." He was referring to the entire ecosystem surrounding someone like Trump, which includes media platforms that tell people a different version of their history and downplay certain people's experiences of history.
Dictators and autocrats despise imagination because it's unpredictable. This is why, in most dictatorships, artists, playwrights, and creative people are often the first to be targeted - they are not understood and are deeply distrusted.
I remember giving a talk last year in France. At the end of the talk, someone in the audience shared that the last time he was in that room, it was for a talk by one of the last surviving members of the French Resistance, a 95-year-old woman who had joined the resistance as a teenager.
Someone asked her if there was anything all the people she knew in the French Resistance had in common. She thought for a while and then said, "Yeah, they were all optimists."
We live in a culture where optimism is often frowned upon and seen as naive or unnecessary. I feel like we need optimists more than ever right now. I'm currently writing the sequel to From What Is to What If, with the working title How to Fall in Love with the Future. I believe this ‘love and optimism’ is absolutely essential.
When we went to the moon, it wasn’t originally JFK's idea. The journey began much earlier. Jules Verne wrote a book in 1865 called Journey to the Moon, where he gathered all the best science of the time about how we might actually get there and crafted a thrilling story around it. His book inspired countless scientists to conduct more research, and more people wrote stories.
This created a back-and-forth between scientists and storytellers, building a collective longing to reach the moon. In the 1930s and 1940s, Mighty Mouse went to the moon, jazz dances celebrated going to the moon, even Tintin made the journey.
By the time Neil Armstrong actually set foot on the moon, we'd already been there hundreds, if not thousands, of times in songs, stories, and movies. We had created the longing for it to happen.
What other limitations get placed on our imagination and how can we overcome those?
The capacity to reimagine everything requires specific conditions to be met. Unfortunately, we’ve often created the perfect set of conditions to make imagination really difficult. What interests me is how we can create a different set of conditions.
When I work with businesses or municipalities to help them reimagine, the first crucial element is creating the space for them to be imaginative.
When I facilitate these spaces, they must be playful, safe, and confidential. It's essential to guide people back to the imaginative state they experienced as children, where they had that "let's pretend" approach.
I've learned skills from improvisation, like "yes, and," that I bring into these spaces, creating a collaborative environment that's often missing in day-to-day life. So, whether on a societal, personal, or organisational level, we must create the right conditions for imagination to thrive.
Rob Hopkins in the garden. Photo by Miriam Klingl Werde.
Can you tell us a bit about your podcast and the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto?
The podcast I did was called From What If to What Next, it ran for 100 episodes, including bonus episodes. In those, we invited guests to imagine they were ministers at a fictitious ‘Ministry of the Imagination’ and to come up with three bold, audacious, and brilliant policies each.
When we wrapped up the podcast, I read an article stating that in 2024, 48% of people in the world across 68 countries will go to the polls, making it the most important year for elections. I thought, okay, we need to compile all these policies into a document. That's what led to the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto.
Brilliant. Did you have any favourite, or most memorable policies?
I like the idea that people should be able to take artistic leave from work. There was also a suggestion for pretzel-shaped door knockers to remind people about the importance of bread. Another was the creation of a Ministry of Global Joy, where every policy would need to be run through first to ensure it met those criteria.
Another idea I found compelling was that every company, in its annual report, should also list all the things that failed. It’s not just about showcasing brilliance but fostering a culture that is honest about failure. Similarly, every nation should issue a statement of failure, acknowledging where it has fallen short.
I also particularly liked Natasha Marin's idea of doing away with the concept of whiteness, proposing that we recognize we are all varying shades of black.
100 episodes is a great achievement for a podcast. Which episodes or ideas inspired you the most?
One episode that profoundly impacted me was with Staci K Haines and Susan Raffo, which focused on trauma. It was so powerful that I had to sit under a tree for an hour afterward just to process it. That conversation made me realise the importance of integrating trauma into my thinking and the work I do.
I also had the opportunity to meet some of my heroes, like Adrienne Maree Brown, Mariame Kaba, and Walidah Imarisha. The episode with Walidah introduced me to the "People's Encyclopedia of 2070," a project that involved gathering entries for a future encyclopaedia, which would tell the story of how we achieved the futures we desire.
Another of my favourites was with Andrew Skeoch, a sound recordist from Australia who captures the sounds of nature. This episode was unique because I switched roles, becoming the guest while my producer took over as the presenter. We discussed a project I'm working on called "Field Recordings from the Future," which is part of my next book.
In this project, I visit places that already sound like the future should, make recordings, and then collaborate with a young ambient electronic music artist, Mr. Kit, to create music that evokes a nostalgia for the future.
Rob Hopkins with his bike in Totnes. Photo by Mattias Olsen.
Your recent work has focused on optimism and imagination, but your earlier work with Transition Towns focused on adaptation and resilience. What do you think are the most vital areas for policymakers at the moment?
The most obvious step is the rapid phasing out of fossil fuels. Being in the UK has been particularly eye-opening because, for the past 14 years, we've had a government heavily influenced by the oil and gas industry. They spent those years downplaying climate change, insisting it wasn't a big problem and that we shouldn't rush to take action.
But we've had a new government for just two and a half weeks, and already there's been a significant shift. They've established a publicly owned renewable energy company called Great British Energy, lifted the ban on offshore wind, proposed installing millions of solar panels on roofs, and even discussed cancelling oil and gas licences.
It's like we've been gaslit for 14 years, with the previous government saying all these actions were impossible or too expensive. But now, suddenly, there's a government saying, "Of course, it's possible, and we're going to do it," and everything starts to move forward.
When I imagine the sustainable city of the future, it's not some grand, futuristic vision like Star Wars. Instead, it's a mosaic of things I've already seen.
For instance, the future needs the cycling infrastructure of Rotterdam and Utrecht, the commitment to urban forestry of Barcelona, and the car-free neighbourhoods of Freiburg in Germany, where pedestrians, cyclists, and trams take precedence. We should also embrace rewilding efforts, like those at the Knepp Estate in the UK or the beaver rewilding projects, which are remarkable.
Cities need to reimagine their food systems on the scale of what's happening in Liège, Belgium, with the food belt around the city, or the school food revolution in the French town of Mouans-Sartoux, where all school meals are 100% organic and 80% local, grown in a market garden started by the municipality.
New housing should be built to high energy efficiency standards and in community ownership, similar to Coin Street Community Builders in London, where the community owns its housing.
When I talk to people about the future, I remind them of William Gibson's quote: "The future is already here—it's just unevenly distributed." We have all the knowledge we need. What's missing is the collective longing for that future. Additionally, implementing something like a universal basic income, or universal basic assets, is essential to remove the precariousness that stifles imagination and societal progress.
Rob Hopkins speaking to the crowd at the 2024 Boomtown Festival. Photo by Arlo Hopkins
So, if you were made ‘president of the world,’ or given $100 billion to start a fund, which policies would you start with? What projects would you invest in?
The idea of the global economy having a president is a terrifying concentration of power into one individual. Instead, I would flip the power structure entirely. The role of national governments should be to ensure that regional governments have all the power, resources, and policies they need to tackle the climate emergency with imagination, creativity, and speed. Then, those local authorities must work closely with communities, empowering them to act swiftly and effectively.
If I had a hundred billion dollars, I would focus on two main areas. First, I'd embark on a different kind of storytelling, one that amplifies the successes of community-scale initiatives. Second, I'd invest in properly funding community-based projects. In the Transition movement, we've seen incredible things happen even with minimal resources. For example, small grants of a few thousand pounds have led to significant impacts in communities across England and Wales. Imagine what could be achieved with proper funding.
I believe in supporting community initiatives that allow them to become their own energy companies, housing developers, and food systems. The Liege food belt model, which has already spread to six other cities in Belgium, is a prime example. It creates jobs, circulates money locally, and supports the local economy through the creation of cooperatives.
What is next for you and how can people connect with your work?
At the moment, I’m working on the field recording project and I’m hoping to do a number of live recordings with Mr. Kit and other musicians. We’ve done eight recordings from the future tracks, which are gorgeous, ambient and immersive pieces.
I’m envisioning some live performances inspired by Max Richter’s project, ”Sleep,” where they took over an entire venue, filled it with beds, and played music while people slept. I’m also looking for funding to turn that into a state-of-the-art travelling immersive experience.
I've also just submitted the final draft, or the first full draft rather, of my next book to the editor. It’s about ‘How to Fall in Love with the Future’ and will hopefully be coming out in March 2025.
To learn more about Rob Hopkins and his imaginative optimism, you can visit his website, catch up on his podcasts, read his books, or download the Ministry of Imagination Manifesto.