Gardens by the Bay, Supertree Grove, by Robert Glod on Flickr.
I've been reading a lot of stories this year, and exploring creative writing. This has been a treat and I've seen it as an alternative to working or to following the news. But of course, there's sustainability and change-related learning in reading and writing for pleasure too, if you look for it. So here's a combination of an exercise from Tim Clare's 100 Day Writing Challenge, and ideas from some of the utopian fiction and positive sci-fi (solar punk) I've been reading.
It might…
One of the exercises in the 100 Day Writing Challenge podcast is 'it might...'. Tim Clare, who made the course, is a poet, novelist and creative writing teacher. He has a great coaching approach - lots of unconditional positive regard for his listeners/students, and a playful experimental style which emphasises norms, not rules, in writing fiction.
He encourages people to experiment, silence the inner censor, and play with ideas. The 'it might...' exercise gives you ten minutes to list as many possibilities as you can for your story. They can be silly, serious, related, contradictory, conceptual, detailed... It's a classic quantity-not-quality brainstorm which you can then choose elements from.
Tim used this exercise to get people to think about their novel. But you could use it to think about your sustainability vision or strategy. What might a sustainable future look like? What might net zero look like? What might your sector or organisation be like?
Do the exercise
Pick a focus (e.g. a sustainable future, a net zero society, your sector or organisation when it’s sustainable…), and take ten minutes to list as many ways to complete this sentence as you can:
'It might...'
Here are some sentences inspired by stories I've read:
It might be far in the future.
It might make decisions by consensus in facilitated meetings.
It might have gender equality.
It might include people honouring their various ancestral traditions while living in multi ethnic households.
It might have a reformed WTO.
It might have matriarchal families.
It might be powered by wind, wave and sun.
It might have beaver dams in Manhattan.
It might have floating sky villages held up by massive balloons.
It might involve assisted migration for animals.
It might include teenagers going on vision quests and choosing their second names and vocations as a result.
It might give women full control over their reproductive choices.
It might have community water cisterns and orchards.
It might include eating acorns.
It might have money.
It might have credits for carbon emissions.
It might not have money.
It might speak an entirely different language.
It might use old railway lines with horse-drawn trains.
It might include spray-on photovoltaic paint.
It might have communal housing.
It might include people living in retrofitted waterproofed buildings under the risen sea.
It might have religions which revere the Earth's life support systems.
You can see that the list can contain contradictions, details, big picture statements, desirable things, undesirable things, realistic or fantastical. That's the great strength of this technique: it encourages greatest creativity and imagination at the early stage, before allowing you to pick what you want later.
Tim's exercise is directed at a single person working alone, but it’s also suitable for a group. In fact, you could use meta plan to do it.
Book study
By the way, books in my self-organised study tour of Utopian novels, positive Sci-Fi and Sci-Fi by women and people of colour include: Herland; Woman on the Edge of Time; The Fifth Sacred Thing; Ecotopia; Always Coming Home; New York 2140; The Parable of the Sower. I'd love to hear your recommendations too.
Making the path by walking
This post was first published in my newsletter, June 2021. Scroll right down to subscribe.