Becoming better futurists with Sarah Housley

"...positive visions don't necessarily come with statistics. They come with creativity and imagination. And we don't make as much room for creativity and imagination in our culture as I think we should."

Anna Mullenneaux and Paul Skinner, co-founders of MarketingKind, interviewed Sarah Housley, design futurist and author of Designing Hope: Visions to Shape Our Future, to discuss how we can develop greater agency in imagining what better futures could look like and find the right ways to start working towards them.

We talked about why it feels like we’ve stopped dreaming about better futures and what it takes for leaders, marketers and organisations to start imagining them again. Not as a nice-to-have, but as a practical skill for navigating change.

We explored the ideas in Designing Hope and the four futures movements highlighted in the book that spark hope, action and critical thinking about how we might live in the decades ahead.

We discussed how hopeful futures are created (not predicted), and reflected on how marketers and leaders can develop the mindset and tools to become better futurists in our own spheres of influence.

Sarah’s reading recommendations:

• Dorian Lynskey - Everything Must Go

• Octavia Butler

• Kim Stanley Robinson

• Becky Chambers

Learn more about Sarah’s work here.

You can listen to an edited replay on our podcast here or watch it below.