Re-imagining Nailsworth workshop
This incredible workshop was part of the Nailsworth Festival and was facilitated by Bill Roberts and Sue Ryall in collaboration with NailsworthCAN.
The workshop gave participants an opportunity to imagine the positive future they’d like to see and what our town and community could become. The thinking behind this work was to create an irresistible vision of the future that can motivate us to make it happen.
The philosophy behind ‘re-imagining’ is that while it’s important to pay attention to what’s going wrong and to try and avert catastrophe, there’s a danger that we spend too much time imagining bad outcomes and this can increase our stress. By contrast, imagining positively increases our well-being and can be a first step to making it a reality.
Participants were invited to cultivate a vision of their ideal future, and then to find commonalities that can become a shared vision to work towards.
What participants said:
“Bill and Sue created a magical yet safe space that allowed us to imagine a positive future without any limits to our imagination. I was encouraged to find that my own vision was shared by many other people in the room. One surprising outcome was the need to harness the water that runs through Nailsworth, whether as a pubic swimming pool or paddling space for children in the centre of town.”
“When thinking about solutions to the climate crisis, it is so easy to want to jump to answers, and to feel constrained by a narrow conversation on immediate concerns. This workshop gave me permission to connect again with that child-like ability to simply imagine, and to connect with others and their imaginings, without being censored 'oh that's impractical'. The process started quite gently, and then we were gradually sharing ideas in small groups until the finale where we offered up ideas on nature, education, transport, and much more. This was not about creating a blueprint for Nailsworth, but a vision to aspire to, that can inspire us and guide us in our more immediate efforts. It raises the question: are we being brave enough, and radical enough, to imagine a fairer and more sustainable future, that everyone can enjoy?”
This workshop should not be seen as the end (of our aim to reimagine Nailsworth), but a new kind of beginning. We hope to run similar events in the future, to engage more people, in a variety of settings.
