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Heritage Meaning- property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance.

KEY WORDS-

History/ Historic

Archives

Legacy

Cultural Background

Past

Tradition

Passed down

Ancestry

Birthright

Gift

Origin

Heirloom

Preservation

Authentic

TANGIBLE-

Buildings

Artwork

Monuments

Clothing

Sites

Artefacts

Modes of transportation

Places of worship

Structures

INTANGIBLE-

Family

Dialect

Accent

Rituals

Customs

Social practices

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What is localism?

localism means relating or restricted to a particular area or one's neighbourhood however, it can mean many different things such as communities, or something one considers local

Why is localism important?

Generally, localism supports local production and consumption of goods, local control of government, and promotion of local history, local culture and local identity.

How does localism relate to the theme hidden city?

Hidden city can mean something that isn’t known to everyone. Localism can relate to this as we all have something local to us within our hearts , being something personal.

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“Heritage, the legacy of our family, Shaped by culture, tradition, and society A story of those that came before, It shapes our present and our future.” - HelloDearReader.com

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Intangibile Heritage Marketing- Social Media 

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Intangibile Heritage Marketing- Social Media 

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TikTok Videos of people sharing their experience of finding out their DNA results.

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Birmingham, the second largest city in England, has a rich and vibrant history dating back to the Anglo-Saxon era. Located at the heart of the West Midlands region of England, Birmingham was once an important trading centre during Roman times and later developed into a major industrial hub during the Industrial Revolution.

Today, Birmingham is still home to many manufacturing industries but has also become a popular tourist destination for those looking for historical sites or modern attractions such as shopping centres and entertainment venues.

From ancient monuments like Moseley Bog Prehistoric Burnt Mounds, to Victorian sites such as Sarehole Mill through to contemporary museums like the Thinktank Science Museum, there's something for everyone in this bustling English city.

Birmingham has a long and fascinating history dating back to the Anglo-Saxon era. In the 5th century AD, Birmingham was settled by the Angles and Saxons who were searching for new land to farm. This led to the creation of an important trading centre in what was then known as Beormaingam. Archaeological evidence suggests that the area was a major manufacturing centre during the Iron Age, while Roman coins have also been found in the city.

Birmingham was one of the key places in Britain that saw tremendous growth during the Industrial Revolution. Once an important trading centre, Birmingham went through a major transformation and became a vital industrial hub during this period.

Birmingham earned the nickname 'the workshop of Europe' during the 18th century due to its booming industrial development. During this period, it became a major hub for manufacturing and trade, with businesses such as gun-making and textiles flourishing in the city. The opening of Birmingham's canal network just before this time had opened up new opportunities for trade both within Britain and abroad, allowing Birmingham's industries to benefit from increased access to raw materials and markets. The growth of these industries meant that Birmingham was soon seen as an important centre for production across Europe, earning it that nickname 'the workshop of Europe'.

Birmingham was home to many influential figures during the industrial revolution that helped shape the city's economy and its place in the world. One of the most important figures of this period was Matthew Boulton.

Born in 1728, Boulton was a leading manufacturer and entrepreneur who ran several successful businesses in Birmingham, including an engineering workshop and a silverware business. He also founded the Lunar Society of Birmingham, an influential network of scientists, engineers and industrialists that met regularly to discuss new ideas. Boulton's entrepreneurial spirit helped shape Birmingham into the thriving industrial city it is today.

James Watt is another influential figure from the 18th century Birmingham industrial revolution. Born in 1736, James Watt was an inventor and engineer who revolutionised the steam engine and helped kickstart the industrial revolution. His innovations included a separate condenser for steam engines, a rotary motion device and governor to regulate speed, as well as an improved method for pumping water from coal mines. All of these innovations helped make steam engines more efficient and effective, leading to their widespread use across the world.

Joseph Priestley was another influential figure in the 18th century.. Born in 1733, Priestley was a clergyman, philosopher and scientist who is best known for his discovery of oxygen. While conducting experiments on air, he discovered that when electricity was passed through water it produced a gas which he termed "dephlogisticated air". This gas was later renamed oxygen by Antoine Lavoisier and is now an essential element of life. Priestley's discovery of this gas helped to drive industrial growth in the city, as it enabled mass production of steel and other metals.

John Wilkinson, born in 1728, was an engineer and entrepreneur who pioneered the use of coal-fired machinery and championed the use of cast iron. His most famous invention was a boring machine that made it possible to create more accurate and uniform cylinders for steam engines, which allowed for mass production of the engine parts. His innovations helped bring about the industrial revolution, and he is still considered one of Birmingham's greatest innovators.

One of the key female figures in the 18th century Birmingham industrial revolution was entrepreneur and philanthropist Mary Schwelling. Born in 1730, Mary was a successful businesswoman who ran a school and a shop in Birmingham. She also helped to fund education for local children, as well as supporting charities and campaigns for social reform such as the abolition of slavery. Her philanthropy and business acumen made her an important figure in the city's industrial revolution and she is still celebrated for being one of the most influential female figures in Birmingham's history.

During the 19th century, Birmingham continued to be a vibrant centre of innovation and industry. The opening of the railway linked the city to the rest of Britain, while new technologies like electricity helped drive growth. By the turn of the 20th century, Birmingham was a major manufacturing hub and had become known as 'the city of a thousand trades'.

The thousand trades that Birmingham was known for during the 19th century were varied, ranging from metalworking to clothing production and engineering. Metalworking and engineering had long been a staple of life in the city, and this remained true throughout the 19th century. The development of railways and new technologies like electricity enabled greater specialisation within these industries, leading to a thriving manufacturing and engineering sector.

Through the industrial revolution, Birmingham had become an important centre of commerce and industry in Britain. This legacy continues today, with the city being home to some of the world's largest companies like Jaguar Land Rover and Cadbury.

In the late 19th century, Cadbury began constructing its Bournville factory. The company wanted to move away from its inner city Birmingham location to an area surrounded by green space and fresh air. In 1879, their wish was granted when they purchased 14 acres of land and began construction on the Bournville factory.

In the 20th century, Birmingham was an important centre of industry in Britain and around the world. During World War One, it became a hub of manufacturing as factories were repurposed to produce ammunition, uniforms, and other war supplies.

After the war ended, Birmingham returned to its industrial roots, producing tools, automobiles and other goods for export. Birmingham products were sold across the world, making it a major player in the global economy.

During World War Two, Birmingham was an important site of aircraft production, with factories like the Rover car company being converted to armaments manufacture. The Avro Shackleton bomber plane was developed and produced in the city, while Birmingham-made aircraft were sent to the Far East.

Birmingham continued to be an important centre of industry and innovation during the 20th century. One of the most significant events was the opening of Birmingham University in 1900, which became one of the largest universities in Europe. It was also home to a number of leading scientists and innovators who helped shape the modern world.

Birmingham's history is steeped in industry and innovation, from the innovations of Matthew Boulton to the philanthropy of Mary Schwelling and the legacy of Birmingham University. It has been an important hub for manufacturing, engineering, and science throughout its history, producing some of Britain's most iconic products and playing a key role in the global economy. Today, it is home to some of the world's leading companies and continues to be a major centre of innovation.

Birmingham is home to some of the most influential artists, writers, authors, and musicians in the UK.

Birmingham is home to some of the UK's most influential artists, writers and musicians. From J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, to Ozzy Osbourne and his groundbreaking work with Black Sabbath, this city has produced a wide range of creative talent throughout history.

Birmingham was a key part of Tolkien's inspiration for The Lord of the Rings, with many locations in the books based on places he encountered.

In recent years, Birmingham has become a hub for emerging talent in the music scene, such as Young Fathers, Editors and Catfish and the Bottlemen. Similarly, there is also an abundance of established acts from this city, including Frank Skinner, Ocean Colour Scene and UB40.

Moreover, some of Birmingham's most iconic bands are Duran Duran and Steel Pulse. Finally, the city is also home to influential spoken word artist Benjamin Zephaniah. Birmingham's musical and literary heritage clearly reflects its diverse population, making it one of the most vibrant cities in the UK.

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Ultimately, Birmingham's past and present have come together to create a vibrant and bustling city, full of industry and innovation. From its rich cultural background to its array of culinary offerings, there is something for everyone in Birmingham. It is a city with a unique past that continues to be an important part of our future. It is a city with a rich industrial heritage and an exciting future ahead.

You might also like this 10 reasons to visit Birmingham.

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Birmingham, UK has a long and interesting history particularly with its prominence during the Industrial Revolution up until today.

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COORDINATOR (Company Worker) = CW

“I organise the team to work together to achieve the goals”

Conservative, dutiful, predictable

Focusing on objectives – Optimising the skills of the team – Establishing key roles within team –

Setting priorities through questions

Not thinking ‘outside the box’ – Preoccupation with objectives –

Very trusting

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https://www.wgsn.com/fashion/article/69373

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https://www.wgsn.com/interiors/article/85211

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https://www.alustforlife.com/videos/sonder-the-realization-that-everyone-has-a-story

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26 things you didn’t know about Birmingham

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Here are 26 facts about the UK’s second city you probably didn’t know.

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Table of Contents

When was London founded?

Was London bombed during World War II?

What is London known for?

Where is London located?

London, city, capital of the United Kingdom. It is among the oldest of the world's great cities-its history spanning nearly two millennia-and one of the most cosmopolitan. By far Britain's largest metropolis, it is also the country's economic, transportation, and cultural centre.

London is situated in southeastern England, lying astride the River Thames some 50 miles (80 km) upstream from its estuary on the North Sea. In satellite photographs the metropolis can be seen to sit compactly in a Green Belt of open land, with its principal ring highway (the M25 motorway) threaded around it at a radius of about 20 miles (30 km) from the city centre. The growth of the built-up area was halted by strict town planning controls in the mid-1950s. Its physical limits more or less correspond to the administrative and statistical boundaries separating the metropolitan county of Greater London from the "home counties" of Kent, Surrey, and Berkshire (in clockwise order) to the south of the river and Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Essex to the north. The historic counties of Kent, Hertfordshire, and Essex extend in area beyond the current administrative counties with the same names to include substantial parts of the metropolitan county of Greater London, which was formed in 1965. Most of Greater London south of the Thames belongs to the historic county of Surrey, while most of Greater London north of the Thames belongs historically to the county of Middlesex. Area Greater London, 607 square miles (1,572 square km). Pop. (2001) Greater London, 7,172,091; (2011 prelim.) Greater London, 8,173,941.

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London | History, Maps, Population, Area, & Facts

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London, city, capital of the United Kingdom. It is among the oldest of the world's great cities-its history spanning nearly two millennia-and one of the most cosmopolitan. By far Britain's largest metropolis, it is also the country's economic, transportation, and cultural centre.

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https://www.boody.co.uk/blogs/lifestyle/10-reasons-why-it-s-important-to-shop-local

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By Chris Gill

Here at Boody, we're big supporters of reducing your carbon footprint by shopping locally. Because of this, we're excited to be kicking off our new Shop Local series this month where we will be profiling Boody stores around the United States and taking a look at their unique stories.

But before that, we thought we'd take a closer look at why it's so important to shop local. From lowering your environmental impact to investing in your local community, here's why we fly the "Shop Local" flag with pride.

1. It reduces your carbon footprint

One of the key reasons it's worth shopping locally is that it reduces your environmental impact. Locally-owned businesses make generally more local purchases, requiring less transportation. They also tend to set up shop in town or city centres, meaning there's generally less sprawl, congestion, and habitat loss.

2. It supports your local community

By shopping locally, you are directly contributing to your local community. Your money is going straight into your village, town or city - helping it to thrive. Otherwise, you will most probably be supporting a giant chain or conglomerate, meaning your local businesses could suffer.

3. It creates local jobs

By supporting local businesses, you are in turn helping your local economy by creating more jobs. Even a small business needs enough hands to help it sell its products and services, which is why the more we support them, the more jobs will be created and the better off our local communities will be.

4. It's more personal

Another of the great things about independent businesses is that they're run by people, not boards or stockholders, and you will likely get to know them. Quite often these people, such as family-run shop owners, will have interesting stories as to how their stores came to be and about the area you're living in. This personal touch cannot be matched by a chain.

5. You get great customer service

Leading on from the previous point, you'll generally find you'll experience much better customer service in smaller, local businesses. Particularly when dealing directly with store owners or their families, you'll notice that customer service is everything to them - this is what will keep their customers coming back for more. Generally speaking, those working in larger chains won't be as invested in the business and therefore won't give the same quality of customer experience.

6. You're supporting local not-for-profits

Many local businesses support local not for profit and charities that are relevant to that area, so by shopping locally you are helping to increase the number of local donations. It goes without saying that bigger companies and chains do also support charities, but if your preference is to support local not-for-profits and charities, your best bet is to shop from your local store.

7. You're encouraging innovation

Local businesses are usually hubs of creativity and innovation. After all, the very fact they exist is down to the idea from an individual or multiple people. Just look at the cafe and coffee business. There's constantly a new local hotspot popping up trying to do something different and these ideas are not to be underestimated.

You never know, your local store might be run by an entrepreneur who is close to inventing the Next Big Thing. Support them and you're supporting their creativity and innovation.

8. They're often in walking distance

Another way you're lowering your carbon footprint by shopping locally is that these sorts of stores are quite often within walking distance. Leave the car at home and hop on your bike or take a casual stroll to your local shop to minimise the pollution your vehicle would be contributing.

9. It promotes individuality

With giant chains homogenizing communities, independent businesses bring some much-needed originality. Shopping locally promotes individuality and breathes new life into communities that are dominated by generic and commodified companies.

10. It helps create the identity of your community

Finally, one of the top reasons to shop locally is that it helps to create the identity of your community. A town, village or city street filled with unique and vibrant shops will create a more appealing aesthetic that is not only great for the locals but for tourists, too. Just have a think about your favourite towns and cities, either here in the UK or overseas, and we're sure they're made up of unique independent stores that give them their soul and character.

In the meantime, find your local Boody store with the Boody Store Locator

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10 Reasons Why It's Important To Shop Local

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By Chris Gill Here at Boody, we're big supporters of reducing your carbon footprint by shopping locally. Because of this, we're excited to be kicking off our new Shop Local series this month where we will be profiling Boody stores around the United States and taking a look at their unique stories.

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Citizens are demanding a more receptive and equitable built environment that will allow future urban generations, nature and businesses to thrive.

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"Protopia is a continuous dialogue, more a verb than a noun, a process rather than a destination, never finite, always iterative, meant to be questioned, adjusted, and expanded. Our goal is always to center the previously marginalized perspectives, especially those at the intersection of Indigeneity, Queerness, and Disability. Above all, Protopia explores visions of embodied HOPE, futures wherein we have come together, as imperfect as our condition is."

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Planet Earth, 2021
Throughout this document, a conscious choice was made to use the pronoun "we". The "we" of Protopia is everyone involved in putting this together, yes, but also the collaborators past and future, joining this gradually expanding community of ours. Together, we learn to foster radically hopeful and inclusive future ways of seeing and being in this world.

Collaborative cultural frameworks of gathering and nurturing are at the very origin of our species, despite the historical prevalence of patriarchal and individualist accounts associated with hunter mythology. Through our explorations, we express deep gratitude to all those who nourish the soil in which Protopian imagination seeds can germinate and grow. We were inspired by thoughts developed not just over the last few years, decades, or even centuries, but millennia. Specifically, this document has been influenced by the revolutionary work led by authors, activists, and innovators at the forefront of Black feminism and Indigenous, Queer and Disability activism. Some of these brilliant minds include Aimé Césaire, Angela Y. Davis, Ruha Benjamin, Tyson Yunkaporta, Bruce Pascoe, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Alice Wong, Imani Barbarin, Arundhati Roy, and Adrienne Maree Brown.

So much of this framework came to be through conversations with our kin: chosen family and peers whose contributions have been vital, not just within this text but through all the projects that @protopiafutures has already released, and is yet to release into the world. Gratitude is especially extended to everyone in the Knowledge Exchange collective whose daily insights continue expanding Protopian horizons. Please see the end of this document for the full credit list.

Ultimately, Protopia's "we" as well as the framework itself are meant to be continuously reexamined and augmented. This is not a one-off "manifesto" but rather a scaffolding that will be adjusted and expanded with every new learning (and unlearning). What you're reading below is really a sum of our inquiries, explorations, and conversations from the pandemic year of 2020-2021.

Mainstream futurist discourse tends to extrapolate from the status quo and proposes singular, predetermined future visions. The problem with a lot of such foresight is that it is bound by the constraints and suppositions of dominant perceptions of reality (*Radha Mistry).

Within the Protopia Framework, however, we position that there is no singular "future" trajectory but rather a vast scope of many alternative futures. It is continuously shaped not just by our actions but also by our inactions and our apathy. Hence, we consciously choose to use the plural "futures", instead of singular "future", throughout this text. Our work is always meant to engage the plurality of future possibilities - not a singular thread but rather the ever shifting perimeter of the probable, possible, plausible, and, most importantly, desirable.

Both Science Fiction and corporate foresight visions directly influence reality, and their predominantly dystopian/utopian stereotypes more often than not limit our understanding of the possibility space of tomorrow's choices. Protopia research is intended to open such imagination doors so that many others can "walk through them" and take our ideas further than what we could ever do by ourselves. We are here to journey together - with you - in crafting Speculative Fiction world design and foresight practices that challenge, rather than further entrench the status quo.

Before we move into what specifically we want to achieve with Protopia Framework, it is important to understand why such work is even necessary.

The dominant historical narratives within both entertainment media and education have brought on a crisis of our collective futures imagination. Industrial markers of "progress" lead us to dead ends: the speed and quantitative aspects of our mechanical technologies have advanced to 21st century paradigms - culturally, socially, and politically, however, so much of our lives remain informed by a multiplicity of biases and injustices of centuries prior.

These flawed narratives of progress predicated on colonialism have privileged treacherously incorrect scientific theories, such as Cartesian dualism, that distort any true understanding of human community and our complex interdependence with all life on Earth. The narratives of "colonizing progress" and individualism have blocked us from more expansive scientific inquiries and innovative discoveries (*Mary Katherine Heinrich).

Currently, the two most commonly familiar frameworks to discuss the future are the seemingly polar opposites of Dystopia and Utopia. But has Dystopia vs. Utopia ever been a binary, or are these concepts just two sides of the same coin? Is this argument just another manifestation of self versus "other" entrenched into Western thought by colonization as "thingification" (Aimé Césaire, Le Discours Sur Colonialisme, 1954)? Haven't most utopias been someone else's dystopias, and vice versa? Instead of being productive frames of inquiry, are dystopias and utopias mere neo-religious content outlets for dualistic ideas of Heaven, Hell, and the fetish for the Apocalyptic Rapture?

What are the tangible consequences of such constrained, monocultural ways of defining our futures? What could be the possibilities of multicultural, open definitions (*Sydette Harry)?

Dystopian Futures are generally depicted as desolate beyond repair, and consequently mostly futile to be engaged with or salvaged. Whatever action happens in such a setting looks pretty much like cyberpunk dancing on the deck of the Titanic.

By now, Dystopias have become so obvious and banal that they are memes rather than cautionary tales, despair escapism, and excuses for inaction and further consumption. But also, and possibly even worse: they serve as product roadmaps for entities such as Peter Thiel's Palantir, the deeply racialized predictive surveillance tech inspired by Minority Report.

This is not to say that, historically, dystopian warnings, especially by authors of marginalized backgrounds, have not been extraordinarily prescient and valuable. For example, if our policy makers would have heeded the lessons of Octavia Butler's The Parable Of The Sower (1993), we could have diminished or at least been better prepared for some of the most disheartening aspects of the last decade: the disinformation warfare-driven resurgence of inequality, alienation, xenophobia, racism, fascism, and biosphere collapse. Butler's dystopia rings true in 2021 PRECISELY because the systems of oppression she critiques remain. Further, her embodied experiences as a Black woman, impoverished and disenfranchised early in her writing career, positioned her to see the broader societal implications of these injustices because she and those in her community were already living in these dystopias (*Ash Baccus-Clark).

Even today, the majority of "mainstream" figures in the foresight field position Utopias as antidotes to Dystopias. Yet this approach tends to be deeply exclusionary, perpetuating the gaze and the experience of privilege, even if with a "green" twist. It must be said here that "environmental utopias" that do not address racial, Indigenous, gender, and disability justice are at best greenwashing, and, at worst, eco-fascism.

Utopian Futures are generally envisaged as so "perfect" that they can only exist by prodigiously leapfrogging all of the most urgent inequities of the present. Consequently, they are mostly closed to critical inquiry. Utopian imaginings pertain to communicating a peaceful and magically post-austerity world, yet somehow the peace of such a future is always peace without justice.

A non-whitewashed history tells us a horror story of 20th century top-down dreams of the "perfect society" morphing into eugenic, genocidal nightmares. We must remember that the Third Reich's extermination of Jewish, Roma, Queer, and Disabled people was seen as a means to achieve an "Aryan Utopia". As recently as 1994, apartheid was the Utopia for Afrikaaners, with the price paid by everyone "one shade darker" than white. The most recent chapter of these "Utopian" nightmares features Silicon Valley evangelists peddling technology to "connect all humanity" which has quickly shifted to extreme surveillance capitalism - commodifying every interaction, radicalizing us for clicks, exploiting us as products, and tearing at the very fiber of our social fabric.

And yet, even with all of this becoming public record, the best that many Futurist "thought leaders" seem to propose for the 22nd century is the absurdity of endless economic growth based on "exponential technology".

The ideologues of exponentialism are dragging the mindset of the " Enlightenment " into their projected futures without any real analysis of colonial and capitalist exploitation consequences extending from past to present day and into the future. Such a techno-utopian mindset is dependent on limitless extractive economic growth, and it glosses over all genuine consideration for the cultural and biosphere extinctions that inevitably happen in the wake of that growth. The principal offerings of these ideas of infinite material expansion on a finite planet are always magical techno-fixes and, of course, space colonialism as its deus ex machina.

As we can see, both historical and contemporary iterations of Utopian envisioning are all very mired in ivory-tower delusions of colonizing grandeur: an utter insult to the planetary life AND our shared humanity.

So we ask here: Can either of these binary concepts truly represent the complex fabric of our lived realities or do they reduce them?

The critical setting of context is vital so we can at least attempt not to fall back into common future stereotypes. BUT! Just saying NO is not enough. Protopia is our framework for shared YES VISIONS of the future, intended to inspire and support us in making the hardest choices of the decades to come.

The word "Protopia" was coined in a 2011 blog post by Wired 's founding editor Kevin Kelly. Kelly's initial idea of the concept came from the word "pronoia," (the opposite of "paranoia"): an exuberant feeling that the entire world is rooting for you. At the time, however, it captured only a niche audience, being so early in the futures conversation, but possibly also for being very much an extension of Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brand's techno-utopian thought.

At @protopiafutures, we have taken a significant departure from the original framing of "better futures" via the route of incremental technological innovation to proactive prototyping of radically hopeful and inclusive futures that shiftS the gaze from technological panaceas to focus on future cultural values and social ethics. Simply: technological innovation without humanitarian evolution always leads to Dystopian Futures. We consider humanity rather than the abstract notions of "technology/science" (as featured in Kelly's 2010 book What Technology Wants) to be the drivers for said evolution. To boldly address past and present injustice and exploitative frameworks IS to strive to replace them with regenerative and equitable alternatives, rather than merely patching things up with inevitably temporary, disposable, technological solutions.

Superficially, one could perceive Protopian Futures as situated "between" Dystopia and Utopia, yet they are not particularly indebted to either. Dystopias/Utopias are monologues moored in the gaze of privilege, inevitably tied to boundaries of thought established via patriarchal settler colonialism. Protopia is a continuous dialogue, more a verb than a noun, a process rather than a destination, never finite, always iterative, meant to be questioned, adjusted, and expanded. Our goal is always to center the previously marginalized perspectives, especially those at the intersection of Indigeneity, Queerness, and Disability. Above all, Protopia explores visions of embodied HOPE, futures wherein we have come together, as imperfect as our condition is.

Protopian futuring is NOT to be solely bound to the realm of theoretical imagination. It is also very much about the methodology of creating (and recovering) blueprints for action. Our goal is to challenge the inevitability of imposed futures. We hope to create spaces of active imagining, resourcing in the present and moving towards collaborative visions of liberation (*Tiana Garoogian).

Unlike most Science Fiction which features distant time periods and fantastical locations (i.e. space colonialism, alien invasions, singularity/simulation projections, etc.), we want our speculative futures to explore time horizons no more than 30 years into the future and to take place primarily on Earth. We deem the narratives of life on our home planet the most urgent and compelling, and we critique the neocolonial approaches to space expansion.

1. PLURALITY - BEYOND BINARIES: We consider mere "tolerance" a failure and actively resist the violence of sexism, misogyny, racism, colorism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism, classism, and any other forms of exclusionary categorization and discrimination. Nothing embodies our approach as accurately as words by Alok Vaid-Menon: "Creativity reveals all categories to be artificial and unambitious."

2. COMMUNITY - BEYOND BORDERS: Our narratives are narratives of communities coming together rather than glorifications of individual "hero journeys" of magical saviors. COMMUNITY is the hero of our futures.

3. CELEBRATION OF PRESENCE: Our futures are embodied and interdependent. We revel in expanded sensory experiences and consciously make vital space for neurodiverse and disability inclusive expressions of intimacy, care, and radical tenderness.

4. REGENERATIVE ACTION & LIFE AS TECHNOLOGY: With recognition of destructive feedback loops already in motion, we consider sustainability solutions entirely insufficient and aim for regenerative practices in every aspect of our civilizational construct. We prioritize biological over mechanical technologies as the only truly viable long-term strategy. We grow, not just build.

5. SYMBIOTIC SPIRITUALITY: We appreciate the importance of spiritual practices from the dawn of humanity and their role in human culture-making. We therefore quest for spiritual practices that acknowledge ancestral wisdom, whilst also expanding rather than stifling scientific inquiry.

6. CREATIVITY & EMERGENT SUBCULTURES: From the interwoven journeys of our Ancestors to the future living fabrics of our cities, we celebrate the role of creativity beyond the elitism of disciplines previously labeled as "artistic."

7. EVOLUTION OF VALUES - CULTURE OF CONTRIBUTION: We must depart from colonial/neocolonial individualist cultures of exploitation and greed, and endeavor to nurture cultures of equity, contribution, and planetary mutuality. We envision the values of a material degrowth society.

Protopian visions are anchored in principles of:

plurality - beyond binaries,

community - beyond borders,

celebration of presence,

regenerative action & life as technology,

symbiotic spirituality,

creativity & emergent subcultures,

& evolution of cultural values.

1. We recognize the rigid gender/sexual binary to be a recent, colonial invention. Gender and sexuality are not just a spectrum but an open, fluid exploration space. Futures are beyond the binary. The process of future-queering does not just benefit those living outside the oppressive, cis-heteronormative boundary; it opens the realm for all of us to be in a continuous becoming of our very own authentic, expanded selves.

2. We challenge colonial fictions of race and embrace the extraordinary cultural plurality without stereotyping. We encourage the urgency to listen to the stories previously silenced and honour the full scope of their narrative complexity. We also recognize just how many among us have hybrid identities as "third-culture people": we were either born, raised, or negotiate our lives in between cultures.

3. Protopia positions a firmly antifascist narrative. No culture is self-contained or finite, but a continuum of history's blending and humans on the move. We create no space for callous and violent chauvinist, nationalist, and xenophobic bigotry.

4. Ableist worldviews have no place in Protopia. Challenging pervasive ableism in today's language must go hand in hand with challenging the ableist infrastructures of our cities, academia, and social and cultural constructs. Disability and Neurodiversity have always been the forefront of innovation and the most vital creation nodes for networks of mutuality, catalyzers for a society that learns not by forceful normalization, punishment, and austerity but rather by adaptiveness, nurturing, and flexibility.

5. Protopia acknowledges that ageism is a trap. Instead of continuing to draw generational lines, we explore the inversions of "conventional" hierarchies and recognize that we are in a continuous process of learning from diverse lived experiences.

6. Low-context seclusionist thinking brought us to the brink of biosphere and societal collapse. We must resist isolationist approaches at all costs. We support the integration and melting of disciplinary boundaries. Contextual ecosystems education is vital; research and development within isolated fields, ideas, and discourses is leading towards obsolescence.

PLURALITY - BEYOND BINARIES:

1. Our stories must revolve around coming together to radically expand each other's horizons, and most specifically to uplift the voices previously silenced. We converge not because we are similar but because, through our diverse knowledge and experience, we can complement each other, evolving as a plural planetary culture.

2. Our narratives focus not just on relationships between diverse individuals within communities but also on relationships between these diverse communities. We do not intend to generalize, homogenize, or simplify our sometimes painfully interwoven histories.

3. We are NOT trying to revive Western communitarian socialist frameworks of imposed homogeneity. Rather, we endeavor to learn from the indigeneity-rooted philosophies of interwoven, symbiotic coexistence.

4. We advocate for moving away from cultural constructs based on Cartesian fabrications, such as "I think therefore I am." Instead, we look to UBUNTU (*a nguni bantu term from Southern Africa): I am because we all are. We are human because we participate, belong, and share.

COMMUNITY - BEYOND BORDERS:

1. Technologies are extensions of our mind and our biology. They should expand, not bind, human potential: intellectually, physically, creatively, spiritually, emotionally.

2. We believe in the prospects of "technology at Human Scale, buildable by communities, maintainable by communities." (Amber Case)

3. The tools we design must bring us together rather than constrain, isolate, overwhelm, disembody, or split us apart. Technological innovation can only be deemed successful if it ensures safety whilst also enabling DIVERSE experiences of togetherness, collaboration, and co-presence.

4. We delight in an expanding array of accessible physical experiences and expressions as the age of sensorial augmentation dawns, whilst also acknowledging the historical erasure of the embodied knowledge of Indigenous cultures. This sensorial expansion should NOT be led by the "wants" of the most privileged, but rather by the needs of the previously excluded.

5. Honoring the sensual ritual as a place of ancestral reckoning (*Tiana Garoogian), Protopia revels in tenderness. We celebrate expansive, creative sexuality and the joy of human connection.

CELEBRATION OF PRESENCE

1. The living world is neither "environment" nor "natural resources.'' Such ways of framing pervert any possibility of an equitable relationship with the Planet. As Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us in Braiding Sweetgrass, the language we use with "more-than-human beings" matters. We honor how language shapes our perceptions.

2. Human-centric design is a design failure from the start. Human peoples will only thrive if they do not position themselves in the center but rather among and in relationship with all life. Life-centric design is the space we explore. As framed by Tyson Yunkaporta, "understanding biological networks appropriately means finding a way to belong personally to that system."

3. Life IS technology. We reject the obsession with "mechanical" technologies so prevalent in mainstream/commercial futurist discourse and instead embrace biology-based technologies and circular ecosystems design. Learning from the living world infuses our innovation. We move away not just from fossil fuel-based energy but also finite, mineral-based materials, striving to replace them with organic, living compounds. We move away from notions of "World Building" to World Growing.

4. We must prevent the transition from anthropocene to eremocene - the age of loneliness having calamitously extinguished all other life forms on earth. As we imagine and design our future spaces (cities, workplaces, homes), we never design them just for "ourselves." In the visions we work towards, we include all creatures - not just wild, "charismatic species" but also microscopic beings.

5. Algae, mycelium/fungi, bacteria, and viruses are not forms of life to fear or disregard but to lean into. We honor these unsung heroes holding together the biological realm of this planet.

6. As over 90% of DNA within our bodies belongs to the microbial biome, we see ourselves not as isolated entities (or distant floating islands) but as ever evolving ecosystems, in dense, continuous communication with the world and with each other. We honor the mind-body connection and our living inner landscapes, and we nourish them as we would a garden.

7. We acknowledge the extraordinary damage brought about by a mechanized, reductionist version of agriculture, and seek a plurality of innovative and ancestral agricultural strategies needed to support all life on this planet. Protopia seeks to find balance between industry, Earth, and community.

8. We must design future habitats outside the conventional duality of rural and urban. The living world seeps into our cities, and cities must nourish rather than consume the living landscapes they occupy. We imagine "built" environment and the living landscapes in symbiotic relationship with each other as living, breathing entities (*Radha Mistry).

9. Our regenerative thought should not limit itself to the "visible landscapes" alone. The health of Earth's oceans is as important as the land's, the deep subterranean as much as the air we breathe. Everything we do is informed by appreciating the interconnectedness of it all.

10. Most importantly, we must stop being a destructive force and aim to become a regenerative intelligence. We must engage in regenerative action in every critical civilizational choice that we make. In this, we depart from settler-colonial relationships with the land and relearn Indigenous, symbiotic worldviews. We remember living as entangled with and mutually dependent on everything that is alive within and alongside us. Unless science can meet us here, science fails.

REGENERATIVE ACTION & LIFE AS TECHNOLOGY:

1. We honor the diverse intelligence of the living world and acknowledge our co-dependence, rather than continue to position ourselves as a superior consciousness.

2. We are weary of "new age (con)spirituality" commodification practices bound to a colonial legacy (and neo-colonial occupations), mired in deeply ableist prejudices and exclusions.

3. We seek spirituality and rituals that move beyond divisive religious dogmas which require the dehumanization of the "other."

4. We recognize the cultural importance of both ancestral and emerging spiritual practice, and of those design technologies that support them.

5. In our cities, we keep and make space for places for accessible gathering. In our calendars, we make time for the celebratory rituals that appreciate the living world's cycles, not just human "achievements."

6. We honor the sacredness of First Nations sites and restitute the Sacred Land. We acknowledge that linearity of time is not a universal truth. We remember and learn from cyclical life-visions of our Indigenous Ancestors.

SYMBIOTIC SPIRITUALITY

1. In the age of technological automation, creativity is the true survival skill of the future, especially when matched with critical and analytical thinking. We honor creativity as permeating everything that quests new pathways and brings joy - not just aesthetic and cultural but also scientific, social and political.

2. The world has never seen such an explosion and emergence of new subcultures as it has today. Yet our future narratives, technologies, environmental efforts, and urban design remain mostly ignorant to it. Protopia embraces this Plurality of Creative Expression.

3. The creativity of our youth must be encouraged, never diminished or denied. We, however, should not in any way perpetuate cultural ageism.

4. Today, so much creativity is focused on "self-expression," and often the ones who "speak the loudest" or have the greatest access to tools that amplify their voices get the most rewards. We dream of future creativity that equally explores deep listening/seeing.

CREATIVITY & EMERGENT SUBCULTURES

1. The capitalist model of the current economy is based on the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet. It is unsustainable and deadly. We must move past linear economies and engage the emergent values inherent in circular ways of being.

2. We explore the emergent values and recalibrated cultural constructs of humanity on a path towards material degrowth. The sole civilizational aspect in which we could encourage infinite growth is knowledge.

3. Politically, we do not subscribe to the obsolete binaries of conservative vs. liberal. What we define as an emergent political divide is extractive vs. regenerative politics. Extractive politics is anchored in the culture of exploitation, and its power is its capacity of expropriation. Regenerative politics emerges through the culture of equity and contribution, and privilege here translates to accountability and responsibility.

4. The current novelty/innovation/youth-obsessed culture does not honor the importance of aging, death, and the depth of grief in our personal lives and within the larger social body. While techno-utopianism remains obsessed with immortality, Protopia embraces the importance of temporal experience, ecosystem regeneration that is inextricable from mortality, and the preciousness of every moment lived generously.

EVOLUTION OF VALUES

It is hard to believe we can eradicate the seeds of prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination entirely. We can strive, however, to make the cultural environment significantly more inhospitable for the further rise of fascism and other genocidal ideologies. We must, at the very least, imagine a world that gives as little oxygen as possible to such violence. None of this is feasible if we only look forward. We embrace the lessons of history from the perspectives of the oppressed rather than of the oppressors.

There can be no healing unless there is CHANGE. Protopia encourages the uncomfortable yet vital conversations about the harm we have experienced AND the harm in which we have participated. Rather than celebrating being "right," we must vitalize the processes of learning and unlearning. Even as we evolve, we will experience failures, misunderstandings, and misalignments. But none of these instances are signs to give up. If we allow ourselves to be honest and vulnerable, they become opportunities through which we can deepen our engagement.

To begin to free ourselves, the first thing we need to do is to see ourselves again as historical actors, as people who can make a difference in the course of world events. This is exactly what the militarization of history is trying to take away. The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make differently. - David Graeber (1961-2020)

With the awareness of exponential global warming, climate-pattern disruption, biosphere collapse, pandemic realities, disinformation warfare, fascist consolidation, and increasing inequality, time is of the absolute essence.

We MUST dream more expansive, hopeful futures, for their very purpose is to help us act in accordance with Protopian values in every step of our personal and professional lives. As Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree-Brown write: " All organizing IS science fiction." By supporting forward-looking and regenerative-action-focused grassroots activism, participating in local and international policymaking, and equally engaging with large-scale corporate entities, we shape the realm in which our future hopes breathe - or suffocate. Fundamental lasting change must come from and through all these complementing strategies, AND more.

The scope of our futures is the scope of our dreams.

We very much hope you come dream with us.

❤

This work has been done with vital contributions and editing advice by (in alphabetic order): Ash Baccus-Clark, Alina Negoita, Amber Case, Angie Davis, Ari Kuschnir, Carmen Aguilar Y Wedge, Caroline Barrueco, Charles Shafaieh, Dorothy R. Santos, Efflam Mercier, Gemma Milne, Ibtisam Ahmed, India Osborne, Jamie Perera, Jenka Gurfinkel, Jess Vovers, Joseph Purdam, Kayus Bankole, Kefiloe Siwisa, Kevin Bethune, Lidia Zuin, Luisa Ji, Mark Gonzales, Mary Katherine Heinrich, Phoenix Perry, Pumla Maswangany, Radha Mistry, Rasigan Maharajh, Regina Walton, Romi Ron Morrison, Sarah B Brooks, Sydette Harry, Tiana Garoogian, Tyson Yunkaporta.

Images by Mario Mimoso & Monika Bielskyte. Logo by Kazuhiro Aihara. Text originally commissioned for #SkyAnyColour curated by Errolson Hugh & Rod Chong.

@PROTOPIAFUTURES was founded in 2019 as a research project by Monika Bielskyte but has quickly grown into a borderless collective across disciplines and cultures.

@PROTOPIAFUTURES combines the captivating power of entertainment productions with the value and depth of educational endeavors. Our collaborative research, creation, and curatorial projects seek out new avenues for audio-visual storyworld design. Through this work, we render more accessible the realms of critical knowledge of bleeding-edge scientific and technological innovation as well as evolutions in the cultural, social, political, and spiritual spheres.

We hope to facilitate a platform for creating glimpses into radically hopeful futures, and to open up conversations and explorations about what it takes to get there. With all that we do, we want to challenge the alienating dystopian/utopian SciFi stereotypes, and to inspire, and be inspired by, what truly inclusive futures could be. ❤

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Throughout this document, a conscious choice was made to use the pronoun "we". The "we" of Protopia is everyone involved in putting this together, yes, but also the collaborators past and future...

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Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!

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Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!

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Forget Utopia. Ignore Dystopia. Embrace Protopia!

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Some proponents of protopian thinking believe that it can lead us to a better future. Others maintain we’re already living in a protopia.

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Regenerative fashion is another model that complements circularity by addressing unsustainable style at the source. Switching from synthetic to natural fabrics that are “grown” using techniques that rejuvenate agricultural land can help reduce fashion’s overall carbon footprint. Carbon-intensive farms can instead become carbon-sequestering communities. Major brands are already committing to regenerative fashion. In April 2022, brands such as Burberry, Selfridges and Stella McCartney signed a regenerative fashion manifesto as part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative.

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Collina Strada X Skullcandy - Linus Leonardsson - Nicole Wu - Lara Huz, Max Kure and Daria Mikhailova - Adrian Cruz Elements - Tomihiro Kono - Morphine - Juzaphoto

Our moodboards are free, feel free to support us.

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Collina Strada X Skullcandy - Linus Leonardsson - Nicole Wu - Lara Huz, Max Kure and Daria Mikhailova - Adrian Cruz Elements - Tomihiro Kono - Morphine - Juzaphoto Our moodboards are free, feel free to support us.

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“protopia”, defined as: a state that is better today than yesterday.

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@protopiafutures urban rewilding vision - concept art by Efflam Mercier, world design by Monika Bielskyte, commissioned for "A Little Movie About The Future" by Ari & Luna Kuschnir / Mssngpces.

Post Growth Fellow, Monika Bielskyte, is a futurist, futures researcher, and founder of Protopia Futures, a platform for research and creative collaborations that offer alternatives to dystopian/utopian stereotypes, and inspire - and be inspired by - what truly inclusive futures could be. We sat down with Monika to discuss the emergence of Protopia Futures, how to transcend the current 'crisis of imagination', and why we need to move beyond binaries in order to nurture post-growth futures.

I was born in a country that doesn't exist anymore, the Soviet Union. My own origins span from Sakhalin - an island on the far side of Eurasia - to the Baltic Sea, as well Jewish heritage. My family's history was profoundly marked by the trauma of the country's colonialist, expansionist legacy, as well as that of Nazi Germany. Both were totalitarian regimes: some of my family were deported to Siberian gulags, some to German concentration camps, and I was ripped away from my roots by the policies of ethnic cleansing and ethnic assimilation of the Soviet regime. I happened to come of age at a critical moment: the collapse of the Soviet Union, an imperial entity that seemed so massive, so oppressive, and impossible to overcome. And yet it collapsed - on the one hand, under its own weight, but on the other, because people fought for it. I have distant childhood memories of taking part in the Baltic Way, when around two million people (around one quarter of the countries' combined population) from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia created a human chain stretching almost 450 miles. It was a peaceful protest against the Soviet Union, which had annexed those countries as part of the secret Molotov Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement between Stalin and Hitler to partition the territories, later labeled ' Bloodlands '. Though they were - and continue to be - presented as binaries, Soviet Communism and German Nazism have some things in common: for example, they both conducted mass ethnic cleansing of ethnic minorities and Indigenous people, and first suppressed and then outright proceeded towards a eugenic attempt to exterminate Disabled, neurodivergent & Queer people, because these identities were seen as 'non-productive' and challenged the homogenizing power of these extractive systems.

Any given version of the future is neither predetermined nor inevitable, and even the most oppressive systems can be taken on.

As a Queer, neurodivergent person of mixed ethnic background, even in contemporary Lithuania I found myself outside of normativity. I guess my desire to peel off the layers and try to understand what shapes the realities of our world has been very much informed by my own lived experience and the necessity to reckon with the inherited trauma. I started out working in media, photography, and videography, and with time became a creative director, specializing in futuristic-leaning projects. In my mid 20s, after a near-fatal accident, I realized I was interested in more than just what the future looks like - I wanted to understand why the future looks a certain way, how it's made, and whether we can actually change its course. When I look back, I think it all stems from the sense I got when I was young that any given version of the future is neither predetermined nor inevitable, and even the most oppressive systems can be taken on. I saw that some things do change - and that all change (or the absence of it) is continuously shaped by our actions (or our inaction). I decided to apply myself fully into inquiring why our perception of the future is the way it is, and how, by understanding our past and analyzing our present possibilities, we might actually change the narrative of what is possible and, especially, what is desirable.

Utopia-dystopia are not a binary but reverse sides of the same exploitative coin.

As I embarked on future studies and futurism, my creative background and visual style led me to work on projects that were leaning heavily towards cyberpunk adjacent aesthetics, which tend to be quite dystopian. After a while I started questioning whether dystopia is productive, or whether it just regurgitates the inevitability of doom and gloom that ultimately leads audiences to disengage from their own role in shaping the future and, even more dangerously, serves as a product roadmap for those who are willing to cash in while the world burns - or even by directly setting the world on fire. At the same time, I was interacting with folks in technology industry and hearing their techno-utopian propositions, which have roots in top-down, eugenic, colonial, and exclusionary understandings of 'progress' and in some cases trace the direct lineage to techno-fetishistic 'futurist' ideas described by Marinetti in his futuro-fascist manifesto published in Musollini's Italy. It made me realize that utopia-dystopia are not a binary but reverse sides of the same exploitative coin - just like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, in the sense that they both feed and inspire each other, and ultimately exclude and erase the voices of people who are not seen as 'the default', and who are not seen as 'productive' within this world obsessed with extractivism and infinite materialist growth.

By centering the voices of people who are at the forefront of immediate harm, and by looking at their ideas, approaches, and the future they imagine, we have a much better chance of getting it right.

Ethnic minorities, Indigenous people, Disabled people, gender nonconforming and Queer people remain excluded from homogenizing techno utopian visions, which are constantly coming up with ways to 'cure' or forcefully integrate or outright eliminate us. Within dystopia, sometimes such people are represented, but almost always exclusively as fetishized 'underdogs' that are never in positions of true leadership except for - maybe - a tiny rebel group. There is an alternative to the utopian-dystopian binary, and it involves centering the perspectives of people who have never been silent yet whose voices have been deliberately erased from most of the historical record, and either continue to be silenced or are currently co-opted and appropriated by those who do not actually share their lived experience and embodied expertise. Instead of top-down visions centering the voices and perspectives of the most privileged, I'm interested in how we can really center the voices of the previously marginalized, and most specifically those working at the intersection of Queer, Indigenous, and Disability Justice. Importantly, it's not just about skin tone, or what kind of disability you have, or what kind of ancestry you have, or who/how you love, but whether you actually stand up for intersectional justice and whether your vision of the future is rooted in regenerative action.

Utopias tend to magically leapfrog today's issues without ever fully addressing, let alone rectifying, inequities of the past. What is actually missing is: How do we get there? By centering the voices of people who are at the forefront of immediate harm, and by looking at their ideas, approaches, and the future they imagine, we have a much better chance of getting it right. The evergreen rule of such an approach is 'never design for, always design with '. And as we edge closer, a whole new horizon opens up. Protopia Futuring is designed to be continually iterated. We need to keep reframing and bringing additional points of view onboard. It's really about this process of learning, and not about always being right. And while it's centered around a common vision, it is never, ever 'finished'.

Monika's talk, 'From Fiction to Real Futures', at Building The Future 2022.

I feel a sense of urgency because, if a power vacuum is created, we need to ensure it is not filled by something more toxic. 'No' is never enough - we really need some kind of shared 'YES' visions of the future. These visions of the future that we're creating are not the territory, but hopefully maps towards the kind of future we want to grow, weave, nurture. It's also about taking the best lessons from academic, speculative future circles and the bleeding-edge of scientific, social, cultural, and political innovation, and matching them with the appeal of visually and narratively captivating mainstream science fiction, so as to make them accessible to as broad of an audience as possible.

The concept of binary is a product of an enforced patriarchal settler coloniality - it's truly inseparable from it. While Indigeneity is made up of so many cultural expressions and should not be painted with broad brush strokes, one of its defining features is a profound relationship with the land. Settler coloniality is about being decontextualized from the land, and seeing yourself as separate from it, whereas within Indigenous cultural understanding you see yourself and your community as truly part of the living fabric of life and never 'on top of it'. The only way that you can do that is by feeling deeply connected to the land, by listening, observing, and being in conversation with it. And once you do that, you realize that there's no such thing as a clear boundary. In the living world there are no absolute dividing lines between genders, between humans, between us and the living world. I find it fascinating that cutting-edge science on the microbiome is proving it, with research revealing that more than half of the cells in a human body are not even human but of the microorganisms that are an inseparable part of the ecosystem that is you and me, for example. Life is really about processes of becoming, and the boundaries are always blurred. There's no perfectly straight line. As Tyson Yunkaporta writes in his book , "only a fool would ever attempt to walk in a straight line," which is such an excellent illustration of how an embodied and circular, as opposed to disembodied linear, learning is the only way to truly relate knowledge rather than just decontextualized 'information'.

Neurodiversity, Indigeneity, Queerness, and Disability show us that binaries are a myth, and that the concepts of spectrums and plurality are liberating for everyone.

Coloniality had to draw these lines of separation between various groups of humans and between humans and the other-than-human world, because that process of othering lays the foundations for exploitation. That's why I really dislike this term 'human-centered design': I mean, we're heading towards biosphere collapse because we keep centering humans (and only the richest few in the Global North at that)! The only way to ensure that humans thrive is to ensure that all life thrives, because we are inseparable from that life. Yet the world's gazillionaires are fantasizing about colonizing the so-called 'virgin terrain' of Mars or even Alpha Centauri under the illusion that we can survive, or at least maintain our humanity as we know it, while completely separated from the ecosystem. The truth is, we won't be able to replace or replicate the profound organic interaction with other-than-human life with which we've co-evolved over millions of years. What's more, this dream of space expansionism is rooted in the millennia-old Christian notion of Ascensionism and denigration of everything associated with the soil - Heaven, after all, is about as far away as you can get from the Earth. Through the lens of such ideology, (and its modern iterations such as transhumanism, longtermism, etc.) Earth and soil are linked variously to biology, femininity, Queerness, Disability, Indigeneity - all perceived as 'weak', 'impure', 'uncivilized'. Our very bodies are never vehicles for transcendence but rather vessels that must be transcended for the 'heavenly', 'cosmic', 'pure' existence. It's truly an indictment of our civilizational priorities that we know more about deep space than about the deep ocean, upon the health of which our terrestrial life is utterly dependent.

Neurodiversity, Indigeneity, Queerness, and Disability show us that binaries are a myth, and that the concepts of spectrums and plurality are liberating for everyone, not 'just' the ones experiencing the greatest harm - because they help us realize that you don't have to conform to any ossified notions that only truly serve to control and constrain our potential.

The only way to move into a post-growth future is to move towards aspirational interdependence, which is so beautifully illustrated by the Nguni Bantu term 'Ubuntu': I am because we are - united in our humanity because we participate, belong, and share.

I always return to the words of Aimé Césaire from his Discourse on Colonialism, in which he points out that the colonizer is only able to colonize by removing the humanity from his colonial subjects - and in doing so he removes his own humanity. From an Indigenous perspective, it's perhaps more that such a mindset stops you seeing things as fully alive and conscious, and that makes you become less alive and less conscious yourself.

'Protopia Dreams' by Reuben Wu. "In the margins, beyond the binary, exists a possibility space..."

Unfortunately, the world we have built is predicated on the continuously enforced boundaries. The only way to move into a post-growth future, one that is actually regenerative and not merely sustainable - because do we really want to sustain the status quo? - is to move away from the notions of aspirational independence and isolationism, towards aspirational interdependence, which is so beautifully illustrated by the Nguni Bantu term 'Ubuntu': I am because we are-united in our humanity because we participate, belong, and share. The decolonial foundations of human evolutionary history tell the story of interdependence and collaboration, not isolationism and competition.

Fundamentally, if we cannot see it, we can never do it. Yet as we acknowledge how important imagination is, it's not enough to have these smart and artsy people in the world's cultural centers, academic institutions, and think tanks get together to discuss ideas and publish reports. We need to communicate these visions to more people - in fact, to the global majority, because the vision of fear, isolation, and paranoia is being successfully communicated right now. We see the rise of neo-fascist, authoritarian governments across the world, and that's because it's so easy to communicate visions of fear, and much more difficult to communicate visions of hope. Words are not enough.

Imagination needs to effectively translate the vision of the kind of world that we want to live in - awaken people's curiosity and make us want to bring such dreams closer to reality.

Through my work in virtual reality, I know that it's easy to provoke a strong fear reaction with a really unsophisticated VR experience, such as walking a plank, falling from a skyscraper, or having zombies (generally a thinly veiled illustration for xenophobia) chasing you down. Unfortunately, it's the same with politics. It's so easy to trigger fear by demonizing people (and entire populations) perceived as different and, hence, a threat. To counter that, you need much more captivating storytelling that inspires people to action on both very local and global scales. This is the core of @protopiafutures as a project, and it's why I want to use all the tools at my disposal to create compelling, memorable narratives that people can connect with and feel represented within.

I think it's really important when we talk about imagination, that it should not remain abstract. It needs to effectively translate the vision of the kind of world that we want to live in - awaken people's curiosity and make us want to bring such dreams closer to reality.

Another commonality among Indigenous worldviews is that there's no such thing as 'empty' content (i.e. it is never 'just' entertainment). In almost every Indigenous culture all content is capsules of knowledge and memory devices - whether it's a dance, chant, ritual, or ceremony - and there is always something being taught and something being learned. By the same token, as much as some people would like to dismiss this, the entertainment content we consume is also teaching us: profoundly affecting what we consider attractive, valuable, and aspirational, for instance, but it is too often both littered with discriminatory bias and bereft of real knowledge that could actually help us to engage and have agency with our presence on this planet now, and to make the future more livable.

Monika's keynote, 'The Metaverse: Extending realities' at this year's Ada Lovelace Festival.

Imagination is vital, because if we can't actually see the future we want, the best we can do is stumble towards it - and chances are, we're not going to succeed. But we don't have the luxury of time, or of the biosphere, to keep doing the wrong thing until we figure it out.

I often speak about this notion of post growth and how we need to move beyond material growth as a measure of the value of our lives, and towards fully-circular ecosystem living. But there's one area where I think growth should be desirable, and that's in the realm of knowledge and experience. Love, learning, and creativity for example, have no boundaries - they can continue growing, unlike material material extraction and pollution on a finite planet.

Tech should bring us closer to understanding how life itself is the most extraordinary technology there is.

What if we imagine a more hopeful future? By Ari & Luna Kuschnir. Music by Julio Monterrey aka YouthFaire

I'm interested in the future of experience as multisensory. There's so much for us to perceive beyond what we do now, and there's so much to learn in terms of our own sensory apparatus. Emergent tech should not reduce human potential but expand it: intellectually and physically, but also creatively and emotionally. Most importantly, it should bring us closer together, not just amidst humans, but also with all life here on Earth - and some attempts to do that are already happening, for example Marshmallow Laser Feast's collective project In the Eyes of the Animal, which allows us to see the forest through other-than-human eyes. There is so much more to explore here - if we want to understand a consciousness different from humans instead of fantasizing about 'conscious AI' or aliens, we'd do better to understand the consciousness of octopuses, whales, and forests. Tech should bring us closer to understanding how life itself is the most extraordinary technology there is - rather than pushing us further away from that insight and rendering us ever-more algorithm-like (as illustrated by the goals of the increasingly popular utilitarian longtermist movement).

Nobody can quantify how much you can love, learn, and explore, and these are the areas where infinite growth is possible. The only real boundary is how much life there is on this planet; if only we would focus on that rather than on the accumulation of things, which requires the destruction of life. Colonial space expansionist fantasies are the deus ex machina of unlimited material growth and are likely to actually further endanger us, not save us (though it's important to draw a distinction here between fundamental physics and astrobiology-related scientific research, and space expansionism). When you move away from quantitative growth within the material realm, to qualitative growth within the realm of knowledge and experience, a whole new space of possibility opens up and for me, that's the biggest opportunity of the unique moment we all currently inhabit on this planet.

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Protopia Futures: Hopeful Visions For A Post-Growth World

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Post Growth Fellow, Monika Bielskyte, is a futurist, futures researcher, and founder of Protopia Futures, a platform for research and creative collaborations that offer alternatives to...

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A Little Movie About The Future (with my 5 year old Luna)

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Results

Antonia- Implementer

Implementer (IMP)

Implementers are the people who get things done. They turn the team's ideas and concepts into practical actions and plans. They're typically conservative, disciplined people who work systematically and efficiently and are very well organized.