Towards a Collective Imagination and Design Practice for Transformative Climate Adaptation
Juli Sikorska
Year
2020–2025
Supervisor
Anab Jain
Reflective Documentation
https://phaidra.bibliothek.uni-ak.ac.at/detail/o:74264
Humanity is on the brink of a non-linear climate experimentation. Conventional solutions can’t solve our polycrisis; we need collective imagination to envision and create radically different ways forward. This practice-based research investigates how collective imagination practices can catalyze climate action and adaptation in European cities. It explores transformative climate adaptation, the role of experiential interventions in surfacing emotions about climate futures and changing assumptions, and mindsets for organizing collective imagination work. The research methodology combined participatory design approaches with auto-ethnographic reflection, culminating in the creation of an imagination collective. This collective developed and implemented multiple interventions, including two scenario narratives examining climate resilience and three place-based experiential interventions bringing together climate practitioners, and a framework for designing experiential climate scenarios. Key findings demonstrate that the long-term, fundamental changes needed are not connected to current climate adaptation plans, and how embodied, emotions-based approaches can help surface often-overlooked emotional and imaginative dimensions of eco-social change. The research shows how post-experience reflection can help shift perspectives about possible futures. It also suggests that organizing collective imagination work requires careful attention to power dynamics, trust-building, and balancing creation and resting. This research contributes to both theory and practice by developing new metaphors for climate adaptation, creating a framework for designing for collective imagination, and establishing a living handbook for building imagination collectives. It argues that collective imagination practices constitute essential activities that catalyze social and ecological change.