I am working with Paul Hamlyn Foundation on Kinship Discovery, a programme of exploration, research, thinking and insight-generation to inform a major new funding initiative focused on young people and hope for the future. As we embark on this Discovery phase we’ve developed a set of principles through which we…

Earlier this week I did a session on Imagination Infrastructures for a few different communities that came together for one event: the Wasan Network, Transition Innovation Group and the Social Innovation Exchange — all of which are global networks. The Wasan Network organises monthly calls to learn with and from…

Last November I was one of the speakers at the Anticipation conference — thank you to Keri Facer. If you don’t know it, I’d really recommend it. “A unique, radically interdisciplinary conference for exploring how ideas of the future inform action in the present.” I was doing a talk in…

Given I’ve done some mammoth blog posts the last few days, I thought it might be good practice to do a really short one! I was also inspired by all the More of /Less of posts I’ve seen. So here are mine… This is the video that I refer to about Sharleen Spiteri, which just makes me smile whenever I listen to it!

My previous blog, where I reflected back on my work in 2022 was so long it became a good reminder of why I should begin writing more regularly again, rather than a huge download at the end of the year. It felt helpful to do that splurge for me, but…

Throughout the year people have asked me “How’s JRF going?” or “How’s Power to Change going?” — I’m not sure people have realised the way I’ve been spread out this year. What I’ve loved is being able to work on the same set of things all year, even though they…

A few weeks back we (Joseph Rowntree Foundation) shared an update about the work we’re continuing to grow and invest in, in relation to collective imagination — creating the capacity in communities to practice, draw on, and shape futures with their collective imaginations. Much of this work is happening on…

The Elephant in the Room. It feels like it’s been quiet in UK funder land in relation to tech. It may just be that I am out of the loop and that there are funding programmes focussed on tech. …

“The lack of plural, functional, compelling and active vision(s) in the United Kingdom (actually England, where I currently live) is palpable” wrote Anab Jain in her most recent essay. Even though we’ve been quiet on the ‘imagination’ front, behind the scenes we’ve been plotting a programme of work for exactly…