It’s now two weeks into the Possitopia Festival I’m facilitating in Norwich, and there is lots of enthusiasm and curiosity about the idea of Possitopia. Possitopia is my invented word and the unique principle of the organisation I’ve founded, Climate Museum UK. As our team grows, there’s a real need for us to all have a sense of ownership of the concept.

The Possitopian approach to future thinking expands the cone of the possible future, drawing on geophysical data and realities, and also applies imagination to help you imagine future scenarios that are potentially worse or better than you may allow yourself to think. It’s certainly not being only positive about the future. Possitopian methods aim to braid the Probable with the Preferable to close the gap and establish a viable path for humanity amidst the everchanging and uncertain realm of the Possible.

This requires more sustained and frequent imagining of scenarios, bringing together people with different views, combining the imagination with the hard evidence or existing solutions, and more design of creative and safe ways to lay down the stepping stones to forge the viable path. In addition, utopian practice is far more location-specific than utopian or dystopian thought. U-topia means ‘no place’, and being Utopian is about separating the imagination from place to help free up fantasies. However, that makes it too unmoored from ecological realities.

Therefore, we must tether imagination to place. Possitopian thinking offers a field rather than a patch; it helps you resist predefined and hackneyed visions. We already know images of dystopia and utopia from advertising and movies. There may well be dystopian and utopian patterns which form out of cultural tropes and psychological states. Possitopian approaches do not try to create a third trope but to overcome fixed, limited, and binary ways of thinking. Possitopian practice enables us to imagine new possibilities by talking and weaving together rather than flipping helplessly.

In Climate Museum UK, we develop imaginative practices to engage people with biodiversity and climate issues, growing our skills through participatory projects across the UK. Much of my time is taken up with overseeing the national and strategic development of Climate Museum UK, supporting the strategy and communications of Culture Declares Emergency, and working on research projects with my colleagues in Flow Associates.

Increasingly, I am spending more time on my local programme under the umbrella of Climate Museum UK, called Possitopia Norwich - for the activation of the Earth crisis, to explore alternative possibilities for the city, its surrounding bioregion, and the Earth systems that support us all. I returned to my birthplace in June 2022 and have been busy nurturing partnerships to make Possitopia Norwich as collaborative as possible.

I started by trialling Walking in the Shoes, workshops whereby participants walk in the shoes of characters from the radical and ecocentric history of Norwich. These historic characters are brought from the past to the present day, and my character has travelled from a climate-changed future, asking for help. As we stroll, numerous geographical and historical elements spark conversations on what we can do right now to improve the city's future. There were 13 participants for the first walk who were assigned characters such as Elizabeth Fry, Emma Turner, Thomas Browne, and Robert Marsham. Since this first trial route, I’ve developed three more routes and brought several more characters to life, including Ethel Colman and Amelia Opie.

Imagine Futures was a project that generated an online resource with eight Possitopian workshop ideas for young people to imagine their futures in the face of the environmental crisis. With the support of Festival Bridge, we ran a day-long workshop in February 2023 with local schools, creative practitioners and environmentalists. We envisioned and role-played five roles of future work, such as Water Flow Keeper, Movement Magician, and Healthy Lives Weaver. These inspired many ideas for interventions to save two local sites - The Wensum Valley and the Mousehold Heath, threatened by road building and climate change. The project website offers eight workshop plans in total, including Creating a Time Capsule and News from Possitopia.

The Possitopia Festival is an excellent showcase for what is already happening in Norwich. Artists, venues, campaigns, and groups are exploring and creating a sustainable future. There are 34 activities in venues across the city throughout November, thanks to the support of the Norwich Eco Hub and their National Lottery Community Fund work and public donations supported by Aviva. Events include the Eco Lens on Heritage tours, the People Take Action Workshop, the launch of an alternative fashion school, and much more. The final event is a workshop with Nick Brooks to explore how various initiatives locally are tackling the environmental crisis and the potential of launching a Norfolk Association of Resilience and Adaptation.

Future-facing activities of mine include exploring Norwich as a Doughnut City and working with the Norwich Eco Hub to develop a shared space for a consortium of 24+ social, creative, and environmental organisations. We have been offered a substantial building by the city council, so with some luck and effort, we hope to have a Possitopia Norwich space for workshops, displays, and resources by next year (2024).