What’s your vision of a positive future?

We’re going to try a little gedankenexperiment, you and I - a thought experiment that involves a kind of time travel (indulge me, I’m a kind-of physicist). Don’t worry, you’ll come back to the present in good time, although I hope you’ll be a little bit changed as a result. 

I’d like you to be aware of where you are in space right now - in a chair, perhaps, hopefully sitting somewhere comfortable. Imagine the journey you took today to get to where you’re sitting. Maybe you rode in a car, took a train, walked - or maybe you’re enjoying this in bed with your first coffee (in which case: good morning!). 

Remember that journey you took – or, for morning readers, your last journey outside. What did you see around you? Who did you pass? What were they doing? What did the world look, sound, feel and smell like to you? Take a moment to recall the full sensory memory of your journey to wherever you are, right now. Let those sights, sounds, textures, and scents come back to you, and remember what that journey felt like. 

After a pause, let’s take a step into a different world: a positive future. From where you are now, we’re going to imagine the years flying past, in a blur of activity, whizzing through all the challenges, obstacles and time between us and that positive future. 

We arrive in front of a very large door with a big, round handle. On the other side of that door is the best future you could imagine for any person. We’ve fixed the issues that 2025 is facing. The societal and environmental problems, vast as they seemed, have been understood, addressed with a whole lot of coordination, collaboration and capital - and solved. On the other side of that door, lies what we’ll call Our Positive Future.

It’s daytime. You find yourself standing in a public space. I want you to see this place; smell it, feel it, touch it. What kinds of things do you see around you? What do you hear in the gentle breeze? Are there others around? What are they doing? How do they interact with each other – with you? 

Look around. Take it all in. How does this place make you feel? Take a minute or so, with eyes closed, to spend a bit of time in Our Positive Future. 

When you’re ready, come back to the present space you’re in. If you’re with someone, share your vision with them. Listen to theirs too. Did they come up with something similar to yours, or totally different?

I’ve taken part in and guided this exercise with a number of groups, inspired by Rob Hopkins’ wonderful workshops and Katie Villa, who facilitated our event in Exeter this year. In these sessions, I’m yet to find someone who imagines a future filled with traffic, fumes, poverty or conflict. 

In Our Positive Future, we tend to imagine trees, plants, birds, sunshine: people walking around, smiling and getting along, treating you and others kindly. There’s the smell of nature or nice food; the feeling of warmth, of happiness – of hope.

There’s a lot of psychology supporting the idea that visualising a goal is the first important step in making it happen. And I hope you saw too that your vision isn’t intangible. The raw ingredients – nature and people-friendly spaces, kindness, community – are all possible. 

Now, the next step is: how do we make it happen? What creativity, ingenuity, or perhaps simply time and advocacy, can you bring to solving this problem? 

I feel like this kind of activity ought to be a daily ritual, a bit like Benjamin Franklin’s famous daily morning question: “what good shall I do this day?” 

You might be wondering by now why a physicist is thinking about things like this - why not stick to science? Well, I’m one of the co-founders of a small but ambitious charity that exists to get everyone on board with tackling global issues – and we do this through the lens of science (to save acronyms, I’m using science as an umbrella term for STEMM - science, tech, engineering, maths and medicine). Research has shown how cultivating awe - which science delivers in bucketloads - inspires compassion for other people and the environment. Being ‘science literate’ helps individuals to make informed life decisions, and having a strong connection with science (known as ‘science capital’) is correlated with better life chances and a positive future outlook

But for many people, science hasn’t been an accessible or regular part of their cultural experience. Many people last engaged with science at school, unlike art, sport, theatre, history or music, despite being exposed to and reliant on it every day. To understand and tackle the many complex and interconnected global issues that we’re experiencing right now, from climate change and biodiversity loss to pandemics, AI safety and antibiotic resistance, we need people to be comfortable with, trust in, and take part in science. In a rapidly changing and polarising world, we need to try everything we can to resist the destabilising forces around us. But providing meaningful, regular and positive engagement with science, for everybody, as a fundamental part of culture, has been almost completely overlooked. 

Let’s see that as an exciting opportunity. We haven’t tried everything yet. In our work, we are fully aware that you can’t just tell people facts, show them graphs, and expect them to be fully on board. But through the power of awe, storytelling, immersive experience, local and personal relevance, and opportunities to get involved, we can make science – and the solutions to global issues – meaningful and accessible for everybody. That’s why we’re not just a science centre – we’re working to be a science and arts, or more broadly, a science, arts, philosophy, history, sociology, literature... ‘centre of everything’. Our goal is helping people to feel comfortable with science, excited and hopeful about how it fits into our wider society, and how it can help make Our Positive Future. 

It’s been a few minutes now – how do you feel about that imaginative thought experiment? You can go back there any time you’d like. And we’re trying to help as many people as possible to try it too. 

We’re currently piloting this idea with an event series we call, fittingly, ‘Our Positive Future’. We’re bringing together residents, scientists, artists, and community leaders – not to dwell on problems, but to express what they want the future of their communities to look and feel like, so we can work out how to make it, together.

With food, hands-on science activities to explore hopeful ideas like nature-based solutions (trees and plants for shade and flood resilience, for example), combined with imaginative collaging and collective mural painting, we hope this event can provide the initial spark to galvanise a community. That spark can then lead to community assemblies and local action in their local area. 

Connected, collaborative communities will be more resilient to the social and environmental issues we’re all facing - just like ecosystems. Imagine if every village, town and suburb regularly took part in this kind of activity, while sharing food, and resources, ideas and hope with others around them. 

That’s our vision of a positive future. I hope it’s something like yours, too. 

Thank you for reading - if you’ve enjoyed this article, please reach out to let me know (I’d love to hear what you imagined behind that door): natalie@exetersciencecentre.org. You can see more about the Our Positive Future project, and further reading from this article, via: linktr.ee/esc_infocus, and follow Exeter Science Centre on @ExeSciCentre on social media for updates. 

Dr Natalie Whitehead is one of the Co-Founders and Directors of Exeter Science Centre, a charity with a mission to educate, motivate and empower everyone to make a difference in the world.