Bold Imaginations
A virtual imagining workshop using the metaphor of ‘The Impossible Train Story’ by Phoebe Tickell from Moral Imaginations.
We travelled to a place beyond space and time to make sense of what has happened during the Covid-19 pandemic, and explored possible futures together.
About:
This session took place online, so in order to ground us with our physical space, Phoebe invited us to bring objects or garments which we felt allowed us to “enter imaginal realms”.
People brought items like scarves, blankets and special stones which reminded them of magic and creativity. These objects were used during an embodied meditation which connected us to our physical bodies and spaces via the virtual space.
The Impossible Train Story is one of a collection of Moral Imaginations exercises. It is an immersive, experiential narrative exercise, and was created in the wake of COVID-19 to imagine better futures.
You can read ‘The Impossible Train Story’ here and watch the animation below…
Some questions from Phoebe to consider, reflect (and possibly journal) with in response to the Story:
- What do you understand the train to signify? In your nation? In your communities? In your personal life?
- How did you feel when you first heard about the fire? What threat did you feel? What did you understand its causes to be? What do you now understand them to be?
- What did it feel like when the train stopped? What do you remember of that time? What was lost? What opened?
- What do you understand the cliff to signify? What do you see as the relation between the fire and the cliff?
- What is your understanding of where we are now? Are we back on the train? Is the train moving again?
- Overall, how do you feel about this metaphor? Where does it most help make sense of this time? Where does it not? What are other metaphors that could help at this moment, one year on since the first lockdown?
Suggested reading around this session:
- The next pandemic: where is it coming from and how do we stop it?
- Arundhati Roy: ‘The pandemic is a portal’ | Free to read
- In Times of Grief, Joy Fuels My Fight
- Twitter thread: Big day for noticing how much infrastructure we’ve built for a world we no longer live in
- New Deep Narratives: we need new stories of what it means to be human
Phoebe Tickell is a systems change strategist and ecosystem builder.
She’s a renegade scientist who brings complexity and ecosystems thinking to social problems. The core of her work today is leading Moral Imaginations, empowering people to connect to an expanded sense of self and create shared imaginings of collective futures.
Moral Imaginations is an organisation which is helping bring about an ecological society of the future using imagination powered change.
They work with communities, companies and policy-makers to shift perception and empower action in a way that is connected to future generations, the more-than-human world and our collective past.
They create and design rituals, host collective imagination experiences, and work to embed imagination into projects, organisations or communities. They invite an internal discovery of purpose and power through the power of moral imagination, deepening empathy and collaborative creativity.
