From What If to What Next

On this, our 99th episode of ‘From What If to What Next’, we have the first episode in which both guests actually joined my physically in the studio! I was joined by Ruth Ben Tovim and Anne-Marie Culhane, both extraordinary practitioners of community arts and what they call ‘the Art of Invitation’. I have learned so much from both of these extraordinary women. The question we dive deep into is “What if invitations to participate in civic life were creative and caring?". You are going to love this one. The video Ruth mentions about the ‘Town Anywhere’ exercise is here. In two weeks time, we hit Episode 100! Don’t miss it. We have a VERY special guest, and also a big announcement or two. See you there

You're in for a bit of a treat here. In today's episode things are a little bit different: you usual Producer is your host, you usual host is a guest, we've woven some beautiful sound recordings into our episode to make it a sensory experience for you. Our other guest is Andrew Skeoch, sound recordist and author of the excellent book, Deep Listening to Nature. You can find his Listening Earth catalogue of nature soundscape albums here. This episode was such a joy to be part of, I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed making it, and I hope that you find yourself listening to the world around you with a deeper intensity.

Today's episode is a beauty. It brings together Dr. Lyla June Johnston, an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages with Nick Romeo, author of 'The Alternative', to explore 'What if there was an alternative to capitalism after all?' They bring such contrasting yet complementary perspectives for a conversation that, at times, takes the breath away. I hope you love this episode. My deepest thanks to them, and to you for your support of this podcast, and Ben Addicott, as always, for his audio pixie dust sprinkling. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

Here in the UK, the Right to Roam has been pushed into the news headlines by the activities of Dartmoor landowner Alexander Darwall, who just announced that he is appealing the recent victory for campaigners who overturned the ban on wild camping that he brought in last year. His actions have triggered a beautifully colourful and well-supported campaign, and growing political support. This week we bring together Nadia Shaikh and Lewis Winks, both of whom campaign for a right to roam, to explore what it could actually be like to have a right to roam, how it would impact society, the natural world, and our collective ability to 'see things as if they could be otherwise'. It's a delightful conversation. Do excuse our not-quite-so-perfect-as-usual sound quality, our Producer Ben is away on holiday so we've had to improvise! And, as always, do let us know what you think... Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

Better what, I hear you ask? You're in for a treat as I introduce you to futurist and futures designer Monika Bielskyte. She is one of the world's boldest and most adventurous futures thinkers, so you are in for a treat as we dive deep into her concept of 'Protopian' thinking, and so much more. Prepare for a super workout for your imagination! Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

Season's greetings to you! Here is your special Christmas day episode, appropriately focusing on the theme of compassion. Our guests are Jared Seide and Dr Ann Seide, whose work on compassion is amazing. To find out more about Centre for Council, click here. You might also enjoy this film about their "Cops & Communities: Circling Up" program, this one about LAPD officers talking about working with "council huddles" and a presentation Jared and Ann did for a cohort of Law Enforcement leaders on compassion training for police officers. I really hope you love this episode, and thanks so much for your love and support of this podcast during 2023. Have a great festive season. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

As you'll have spotted by now, we're never ones to shy away from asking a good big bold What If question. This week we are diving into the question of how different things would be if we were to rethink the scale on which we operate, and were to root ourselves more closely in nature's own boundaries. The bioregional movement was a big thing in the 1990s and faded away a bit, but is now back with a bang, and we speak to two of its key proponents, Erika Zarate and Daniel Christian Wahl to find out more. How would bioregionalism going mainstream change the world and how we look at it? This is a fascinating deep dive, and I hope you love it. As always, do let me know what you think... thanks! Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

The British Ecological Society’s REED Ecological Network (REED standing for Racial and Ethnic Equality and Diversity) was formed due to the very low levels of people of colour represented in the sector, and their feeling that "it’s easy to feel alone when working in ecology, the environment and related fields like agriculture". My two guests this week, Bushra Schuitemaker and Reuben Fakoya-Brooks are both members, and in spite of working in quite different ecological sectors, are active founder members of this network. How did it start? What does it do? And how does it actively fire the imaginations of those involved? This is a beautiful episode, I hope you love it. As always, do let us know what you think. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

Jonathan Rhodes and Joanna Grover recently wrote a great book called 'The Choice Point' and work together as Imagery Coaching. They work with a wide range of organisations and individuals, building their capacity to be imaginative in a multisensory way. Naturally, their tools and their insights are highly relevant to the themes of this podcast given that, as bell hooks once put it, "what we cannot imagine cannot come into being". I hope you enjoy our conversation and that, at the end of it, your own imagination feels like it has had a good workout too! As always, thanks for listening and do let me know what you think, and thanks to Ben Addicott, Producer Supreme. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

On some of our 'decade' episodes (well, 50 and 80 anyway) we changed from our usual two guest format to an in-depth conversation with someone who represents one of the great practitioners of the radical imagination in our times. And so today, in keeping with that 'tradition', we mark Episode 90 with a one-to-one conversation with Aisha Shillingford, whose work I just love. She is Artistic Director at the fabulous Intelligent Mischief, whose work includes the fabulously-titled Secret Society of Black Utopians. She wrote a brilliant article recently in Yes! magazine which I highly recommend. What a delight and an honour to be able to sit and talk imagination with her. I hope you love it, and as always, do let me know what you think. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

This week I'm joined by Aimee Lewis Reau and LaUra Schmidt, authors of 'How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet'. They are also co-founders of the beautifully named Good Grief Network. Aimee also DJs under the name eXis10shAL (I mention in the episode that I would spell it here as it was too time-consuming to spell it out on the podcast). We had a fascinating discussion about their 10 Steps to Resilience and Empowerment in a Chaotic Climate model, about imagination, and about the inner skills we need for the challenges ahead. I hope you love it. Do let me know what you think. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

This is a wonderful conversation. It's a deep dive into a powerful reimagining of who our energy system serves, and what it might look like. My two guests are both people who have given this a lot of thoughts. Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated, Peabody-winning, and two-time Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker. Her most recent film is the utterly brilliant 'King Coal' (see the trailer here). Rosemary Harris, from Platform, was part of the creation of the recent 'Our Power' report, which you can read here. I hope you enjoy this discussion and the possibilities it will open up in your imagination. Please consider supporting the podcast by visiting www.patreon.com/fromwhatiftowhatnext and becoming a patron.

Welcome to one of those episodes of From What If to What Next that really gets under your skin. We are going to step out of our everyday commonplace universe and enter the parallel world of fungi that lives all around us, and really creates the world we live in. It’s a pretty wild ride. And I have two amazing guests for you, who will hold our hands on our deep dive into this fascinating world. Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, and her forthcoming book has possibly the best title I have ever heard which I’m not going to tell you so it can be a delightful surprise. And Doug Bierend is a New York based writer and author of the fab In Search of Mycotopia. I think you’re going to like this one. As always, thanks for listening, thanks to Ben Addicott for sprinkling his audio gold dust over the whole affair, and do share your thoughts, it’s lovely to know what you think. Thanks.

This week's episode is just delightful. Meet Leah Black, currently leading the development of the new Regenerative Futures Fund for Edinburgh, and Shasta Hanif Ali is a writer, poet and anti-racism campaigner who works on racial equity and racial justice at Corra Foundation. I have to say that Shasta's time travellers' reflections from 2030 were possibly the most beautiful we've yet heard on 'From What If to What Next'. You are in for such a treat, some real possibility-stretching reflections on how the world of philanthropy needs to adapt to the times we're in. I hope you love this conversation, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

When it comes to work that celebrates the radical imagination, Jayna Brown's recent book Black Utopias: Speculative Life and the Music of Other Worlds is one of the most fascinating that I've read recently. Jayna is professor in the Graduate Program in Media Studies at Pratt Institute, and for this episode she is joined by Kevin Quashie, who teaches black cultural and literary studies and is a professor in the department of English at Brown University. Together they take us on a deep dive into our What If question for this week and into many areas of discussion. It was such an honour to be joined by Jayna and Kevin for this episode. I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

As soon as I started reading 'The Seaweed Revolution' by Vincent Doumeizel, I knew we would have to do an episode of this podcast about seaweed! It is a mind-blowing book about the many different ways in which expanding our relationship with seaweed could be good for us, our brains, our ecosystems and our climate, a book that sent my 'What If' brain racing. When we connected and planned this recording, Vincent suggested for our second guest Nancy Iraba, a marine scientist, seaweed entrepreneur, and founder of Healthy Seaweed Cafe in Tanzania. Together, let them transport you to a kelp forest somewhere and expand your mind as to the potential, promise and possibility of the seaweed revolution. And then go get yourself a copy of Vincent's book because it's incredible. And as always, do let us know what you thought of this conversation.

This is a rather special episode, our first recorded in front of an actual audience! Recorded live at the wonderful Timber Festival, this episode takes on a big question and dives deep. Our first guest, Lucy Neal had, the previous day, presented a performance which explored how the near future would be transformed by the introduction of a Rights of Nature Act, and our second guest Paul Powlesland, a lawyer specialising in the subject, had appeared in the play and has done a lot of work on what legislation designed to protect the rights of nature might look like in practice. How would such legislation transform our relationship to the natural world, and how would it accelerate and support efforts to protect it? This is one of those episodes that opens up a beautiful What If space, helped by some great questions from the audience. I hope you love it, and I’d love to hear what you think. Thanks to the great team at Timber for making this possible.

Never let it be said on this podcast that we shy away from the big questions! I loved this conversation so much, it was one of those conversations that really opens up some expansive thinking and some new ways of looking at what might be possible. My guests are Lisa Witter, co-founder and board member of Apolitical, and CEO and co-founder of the Apolitical Foundation, and Graça Fonseca, former Portugese Minister for Culture and much more besides. My hope is that after listening to this conversation, you will be able to look at the deeply unloveable situation with many of our political leaders in 2023 and be able to say, with great confidence, "it doesn't have to be like this". I'd love to know what this conversation brings up for you, and thanks as always for listening, and for your support of this podcast.

This week we are exploring how we do things, rather than what we do. We are diving into the concept of 'healthy human cultures' and how to build them. What would it mean if, in the organisations and movements we're part of, we set out to create the best conditions for a shared culture in which we thrive? Luckily we have two great people to help us unpick this one. Leila Hoballah is an organisation designer, a community builder, a facilitator and a coach, co-founder of makesense.org, one of the leaders of Boundless Roots, a collective action-inquiry investigating the enabling condition for radical changes in ways of living. She is also part of The Week. Sophy Banks was one of the architects of the Transition movement, founder of Transition training, who does a lot of work around grief tending, and exploring Healthy Human Culture, the culmination of her life’s journey so far, which you can read more about here. Impossible to think of two better people to have this conversation with. Enjoy, and as always, do let me know what you think.

Today’s podcast was recorded live in Paris, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. As part of the wonderful ChangeNOW festival in the Grand Palais Ephémère I had the pleasure of sitting down with Otto Sharmer in the ChangeNOW podcast booth for an in depth conversation and journey into the future. Otto is the creator of the Theory U model of change, and spends much of his time teaching the model to groups around the world. The previous day he and I had both been speakers at the festival (you can see him here and me here). We also had a question from the audience from among those sitting outside the booth. My thanks to the organisers and to Otto for making this possible. I hope you enjoy it.