We’re on a mission to co-create hopeful, sustainable futures. What about you?

What if it was possible to create hopeful, sustainable futures by inviting people to imagine a better world?

We believe that this IS possible.

In this space, see how others are imagining the future, share YOUR vision in our Time Capsule, join us for monthly online gatherings and in-person events, tap into regular inspiration, and join a community of change makers who are turning their visions into tangible realities.

Add your vision to our Time Capsule

We’re creating a digital time capsule filled with hopeful, sustainable futures, as envisioned by the people of planet earth.  We’re filling our time capsule with the imaginings and dreams and visions of a better world, one that will benefit present and future generations.

For the next five years (2024-2030), we will be inviting people from across the globe to share their idea of a hopeful, sustainable future with us, so that we can add it to our time capsule. From a few sentences to long-form stories, videos of community contributions and singer-songwriters in action, to artistic performances, photo stories, poems and everything in between, we want to know what a hopeful, sustainable future looks like to YOU.

Resouces to help you imagine a hopeful, sustainable future

Sometimes it’s difficult to start thinking about what hopeful, sustainable futures might look like. That’s why we’ve put together some ideas to kick-start your creative thinking: from verbal prompts, visualisations of possible futures, and thought-provoking reading, we’ve got you covered.

Be inspired, stay hopeful

We have three free newsletter-y things that might be of use to you. We spend so much time immersed in the world of hopeful, sustainable futures and we come across so much interesting “stuff” that we thought it might be worth sharing. Perhaps we can save you some time! Perhaps we can make you think. Perhaps we can give you hope.

And perhaps it’s all a colossal waste of time – we’ll see. Sign up for one or all. Unsubscribe if they are too much or not useful. Easy!

Join our community

Join our free community on to receive invitations to monthly online gatherings on Zoom and other events, share ideas and inspiration, and receive occasional notifications about research and news.

Events

Courses

Why bother imagining hopeful, sustainable futures?

We humans are storytelling creatures. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, what other people think about us, what matters to us, what we hope and dream of, how the world was created and what the future might look like.

In fact, it’s been said that we’re made of stories.

The glorious, and terrifying, thing about stories is that the can be self-perpetuating. If we can imagine it, we can become it.

When it comes to the future of humanity and the future of our planet, the stories are pretty dire. We’re bombarded from all sides by stories of catastrophe and doom and gloom. Sometimes it feels as if we’re living in the book of revelations, or a horror story with no redeeming ending, or as if we’re soon to be characters in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

If we only hear stories of doom and gloom, then we don’t have much to fight for or live for.

So what if we started imagining new future? What if we started creating new stories, stories of how our homes and cities and societies and futures could look if we were able to imagine the best possible futures? And what if, instead of just telling stories, we used those stories as our goals, then identified practical actions to help us get from where we are now to where we want to be?

If this sounds crazy, let me tell you right now that it’s not. This technique is used by some of the largest, most successful companies in the world as part of their growth strategies. This process of strategic visioning and future storytelling is used to work backwards to identify practical steps, potential problems, and pathways to success.

And it’s not just businesses: there is a wealth of research that shows that stories have great power, and that creating future stories that function as future visions or goals is an effective way to instill hope, remind us that we have agency, and move us from thinking and caring to taking tangible action.

The Hopeful, Sustainable Futures project is all about providing tools and resources to help anyone, anywhere tap into their imagination, envision better futures for current and future generations, and take steps to make those futures real.

Get in touch

Think a conversation might be useful? Want to know more about what we do, who we are and how we can help you move from where you are now to where you want to be? Get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

How did the hopeful, sustainable futures (hsf) project start?

Well, hello there! I’m Suzanne Whitby and a few years ago, I started to get a bit frustrated with all the “doom and gloom” messaging around climate change, the environment, society and the world at large. I know that we humans do love a good moan, but if all we do is moan, we miss not only the good things that are already taking place, but we miss the opportunity to be strategic in creating the world we want.

As an oral storyteller, I know that stories matter. I’ve seen this in action as a performer, and I’ve also seen the power of stories at work in my role as a sustainability catalyst, futurist and communicator. In my academic research, I am interested in how to shift people from thinking, understanding and caring to action, and guess what? Stories have a significant role to play in change behaviour and driving action.

I created hopeful, sustainable futures because I believe that if we want a better world, we need to be able to tell better stories. And once we have the vision, we can start working backwards to work out what actions we need to take to turn vision into reality. The project offers resources, ideas, inspiration and community to support future makers and change catalysts.

Enjoy!