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Dreaming a flourishing future: Rob Hopkins on radical creativity, activism and re-booting our imaginations
Season 4 Episode 3
If Climate Change is a failure of the imagination and this is a time when we need to be at our most imaginative, how can we change the trajectory of our falling imaginations? Rob Hopkins of the Transition Town movement, has explored the depths of our imagination and creativity. Our society is a dis-imagination machine. But we can reverse it.
Rob Hopkins, author of 'From What Is to What If?', offers an answer. In this podcast, we explore the ways that all of us could combine to create a new future - ways to recharge and restart and give space to our imaginations. Rob offers a vision of a future and actual examples of change happening now from the Civic Imagination Office in Bologna, with its pacts of actually doing things, that has inspired other towns in the UK to do the same, to the Doughnut Economics model and the ways people engage to make a difference.
Here, we have a wealth of radically transformative ideas that we can engage with on a daily basis to transform ourselves, our communities and our planet.
Links
Rob Hopkins site https://www.robhopkins.net/
Buy the book from Rob's site: https://www.robhopkins.net/the-book/
Rob's podcast Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext
Radio 4 Food Program 'Sitopia' https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m49j
Kate Raworth Doughnut Economics model https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
AG_S3_P8_RobHopkins_12oct20.mp3
Manda: So Rob Hopkins on our second try at the other end of a lockdown- the other end of first lockdown - welcome to the Accidental Gods podcast. How is life down in Devon?
Rob: Life is kind of I don't know. I almost feel like I'm emerging from lockdown as a different person than I went in. It feels very strange kind of a process. And next week I'm going away to France to go and do some talks and stuff, which was supposed to happen in April or May and was cancelled. But actually, I'm sort of feeling that in the last six months, the furthest I've been is Totnes. I went to Exeter once and it was completely sensorially overwhelming. So quite how going on Eurostar and all that's going to be, I have no idea.
Manda: This is how our ancestors lived there, wasn't it? There were people in our village who for whom going to Glasgow was a once in a decade event when I was a kid growing up. And the rest of the time they were within walking distance or maybe took a bus to the little town and that was it.
Rob: I used to live in Italy when I was about in my early 20s and I lived in this village and we had this friend called Guido, who was about 80, lovely, lovely man, still running his farm on his own. He had a cow and a horse. And I remember he had one time an English backpacking young woman had come to stay in his house for a while and helped on the farm called Lynetta. We still talked about Lynetta all the time. And I don't think he'd ever been maybe he'd been to Pisa once, you know, he'd hardly ever been away.
And I remember he said, I know you're going to London. If you go to London, just ask for Lynetta. Everyone will know.It's like this mental picture of London as it was the same size village..
Manda: So since we last spoke, you have started your own podcast and the whole of your book, 'From what is to What If' seems to me to have taken off as an Internet phenomenon. The concept of creative thinking as a way to move us forward has become central. So there may well be people listening to the podcast. Actually, I hope there are people listening to the podcast who haven't read you
Published on 5 years, 2 months ago