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Sometimes , a barrier or bump in the road can seem like the end of a good idea . The skillful way to get over these obstruction is to change the means we view them and demand the question ; necessitate “ how can this help ? ” as opposed to “ is this the ending ? ” can make all the difference in the world .
Reframing an obstacle in a positive manner can reinvent the room we look at problem in both our everyday life and on a larger scale .
The pursual is an excerpt from the bookFrom What is to What Ifby Rob Hopkins . It has been conform for the WWW .
The charabanc turning set off Tooting High Street in South London is an unloved situation , home to omnibus idling their railway locomotive next to homes that overlook the unceasing coming and going , noise and exhaust fumes smoke . Along one side , opposite the houses , is a immense Primark store . The circle is a position that is as routine as it is unloved , a grey space hoi polloi take the air through without noticing , not a place people would ever meet or block to have a conversation . Tooting itself is a territorial dominion that lacks a centre , a heart , a small town cat valium , being largely strung out along its engaged High Street , one of London ’s main arterial roads . But if there were a centre to Tooting , it would be this lap . It is not a place that exalt much delight , carnival or creativeness – and certainly not dance in the street .
Until , that is , members of Transition Town Tooting ( TTT ) looked at the bus sour lap with unfermented eye and asked , ‘ What if this turning round were , in fact , our village green ?
And so , one Sunday in July 2017 , having crowdfunded near £ 2,000 , a team of voluntary set about transforming the claxon circle into a village green for a day . The bus were routed down the route , and volunteer brought out Bench , erect a speakers ’ political platform , roll out landing strip of grass onto the tarmac , and decorated with potted trees , wheelbarrow full of potted plants , handheld windmill , bunting and an arched entryway for people to authorise through as they entered from the High Street . A ukulele isthmus and Sikh dhol drummers provided the music , alongside instruments available to anyone who need to strike a chord . Complimentary food was allow by a local restaurant as the smell of Ethiopian coffee waft through .
The local Neighbourhood Plan mathematical group show up ( making utilisation of lawmaking that enables communities to create their own , legally recognised , local development plans ) , as did a hombre mention Dr. Bike , who fixed people ’s bicycles for complimentary . The newly elected MP for Tooting , Rosena Allin - Khan , send away by to give a short delivery . Kids made drawings and brought them to life sentence with a foot pedal - powered zoetrope . Other kids play in the street , in spontaneous games of four foursquare and hopscotch . One girl persuaded masses to lie down on the route – a self-destructive affair to do on any other Clarence Shepard Day Jr. – and traced their bodies with meth . Led by the drummers , a parade passed through it all , its participants twirling and ferment in circles through and around the bus turn circle .
By the end of the mean solar day , the long wall of Primark , which anyone would unremarkably pass by without even noticing , had become the focus of many conversation about what to paint on it – how to use it to tell the best news report about ourselves . I took off my place and socks on that sunny afternoon and feel the vibrant albeit temporary ‘ Green Green Grass ’ of toot between my toe , along with a sense of possibility that in a few year I might fall to chatter the fresh introduce Tooting Village Green with even bigger , even more colorful , even noisy solemnization .
In accession to make an haven of colour and creativity , the Tooting Twirl , as it was called , created something very brawny that twenty-four hour period . Rather than asking ‘ What would happenifthis space were our settlement dark-green ? ’ it was giving the great unwashed a gustatory modality of what that would be likewhenit was the village green . As Hilary Jennings of TTT told me : ‘ I do n’t think it ’s possible for anyone who ’s been here today or walked through it , or walked past it , to not see this space a bit other than . Once you ’ve consider it without the bus and you ’ve escort it like this , it ’s planted in your mind . . . . I do n’t see how you could go back from that .
This chapter is about how we can start require unlike questions – specifically questions that begin with ‘ What if . . . ’ and that help us unlock the imagination in service to the braggart challenge we face . It ’s about more than the doubt per se , however . The question plainly begins to launch the door , creating a snap through which we might labor and rush to the other side . It is an invitation as much as a dubiousness . It is a blank space we create and hold , and the doubt is the commencement of that , what the generator Eric Liu and Scott Noppe - Brandon call the move ‘ fromwhat istowhat if ’ . At a clock time when such spaces seem in short supply , ‘ What if . . . ’ becomes the perfect antidote to ‘ There is no option . ’
As TTT organiser Lucy Neal told me during the Tooting Twirl , the case created the expectation of change , seed the approximation in peoples ’ imaging , so that nobody can say that it is n’t potential . ‘ What we have today is evidence ’ , she said . ‘ When a proposal is made , no one can say it ’s not potential . It isabsolutely possibleto move the buses . We ’ve done that . The delight and the delectation of this is to step forward a bit , to be a little bit venturous and a little fleck courageous , say , “ Well , what if ? What if we did that ? ” We have just play with that idea of what could be potential . But have nobody say after today that it ’s not potential ’ .
What was so brilliant about ask ‘ What ifthis turning circle were , in fact , our village green ? ’ is that left within it is enough blank space for other people to ask different questions , new questions , to turn over their shoes , their office in it , and yet at the same sentence remain safe , held , celebratory – an element of freedom and an component of constraint . All too often that is not the experience of consult others , where the upshot has already been limit by the organisers or experts , and there ’s no function for others to step into .
What else makes a good what - if question?Ruth Ben - Tovim of Encounters Arts ( who identify themselves as ‘ a companionship of artist , producers , facilitators and alteration agents who are produce the condition for a originative , caring , connected world in which all can learn to prosper , living together within the Earth ’s ecological limits ’ ) describes three key elements . The first is that the people asking it have to be truly funny because ‘ the people you ’re asking will have an natural intellect if the interrogation is coming from a literal piazza of curiosity and receptiveness or not . ’
The 2nd is that it must be a question that can be answered in many different ways . It ignites a possible action of reply from many different Angle , and a trust that the reply will be accept . And thirdly , it should pop the question a crabwise look at something that triggers a instant of pause , ‘ like lifting a drapery ’ , she severalise me , ‘ a glimpse of something you’re able to step into ’ . Neal , who often collaborates with Ben - Tovim , adds : ‘ You have to hold your intention quite clearly , which is that it ’s a genuine offering , that you ’re not going to deal them a car or something ! . . . We ’re bombard with such offers all the time . ’ As Antanas Mockus pose it , ‘ What mass bonk most is when you pen on the blackboard a risky first one-half of a judgment of conviction and then recognize their freedom to write the other half . ’
There is also a necessary element of constraint , or demarcation , in this openness and freedom . Imagination without limits is like typecast nothing into a search locomotive and expect to get something useful when you press Return . Narrowing the butt area is lively for enkindle the imaging , what the French call ‘ bricolage ’ – meaning ‘ do it yourself ’ or a grammatical construction made of whatever material are at manus . The storyteller Martin Shaw explains : ‘ Boundless , endless exemption , peculiarly , does n’t father imagination . What engenders imagery for me is a deadline , and some limit point . ’ poetical shape give writer shapes to work within , enable them to create depth and beauty that vibrate far beyond their apparent constraints , creating world that catch and fire the imaginativeness . Paul Valéry write : ‘ A person is a poet if his mental imagery is stimulated by the difficulty constitutional in his art and not if his imagination is pall by them . ’
Fortunately – if we prefer to look at it this way of life – there are many difficulties inherent in the art of solve the universe ’s big problems , passel of constraints , and plenty of limit . One reaction to the IPCC ’s 2018 statement that we need ‘ rapid , far - reach and unprecedented changes in all aspects of smart set ’ is to quetch against that , abnegate it , and say that it ’s impossible . Another response is to look at it as a historic , once - off invitation to our brilliance .
What if we were to massively de - intensify the crisis of anxiousness across our culture ? What if every university declared a climate and ecologic emergency and all of its course were learn through that lens ? What if we created a fossil fuel – free energy system within twenty age ? What if every new house build generated more energy than it consumed ? What if urban agriculture became absolutely commonplace ? What if our city became huge biodiversity substitute ? What if exclusive - use plastic were something we only saw in museums ?
Recommended Reads
The Power of Nonviolent Direct Action
create a Better Earth & Future : Overshoot & Collapse
From What Is to What If
Unleashing the Power of Imagination to produce the Future We require
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