Spring, Sunshine, and Stories
I’m receiving so much pleasure from watching my garden resurrect itself after the long winter. The hellebores were first a few weeks ago, now the daffodils are a bright splash of yellow against the trunk of the silver birch, and catkins are hanging from my corkscrew hazel. Trees are pushing out buds and new leaves, there’s a haze of green over the bare branches, a promise of summer shade and autumn fruits. I’m anticipating a blossom of bluebells in the coming weeks, the dark green leaves are there but the flowers are still shyly hiding away. Days are longer, the sun is warmer. I feel this is the new year …
I attended a Three Horizons workshop the other day with my Design HOPES colleagues held at Heriot Watt University campus just outside Edinburgh. A beautiful campus which reminded me of Lancaster University campus – outside the city, lots of trees and grass and open spaces. Even as I parked the car I saw signs of spring, these bright and pretty primroses nestling amongst the old leaves and new grass beneath hedgerow edging the tarmac.
While listening to the Three Horizons presentation my mind was also making connections to other aspects of my role, studies, and life. I started to wonder how the principles could be used with our Green Futures Storytelling group within the Design HOPES Community of Practice. One note I made is “the map is not the territory, it’s an invitation to think” which I really appreciate, that the ‘map’ is not a defined route I have to take, but merely a suggested one.
I’ve tentatively adapted this into “the story is not the map, it’s an invitation to imagine”.
When we are writing our stories towards a greener future, sharing of the greener choices we have made, we are also inviting people to imagine what a future looks like if we all made even small changes in our lives. And even when we explicitly create stories of an ideal future world we are still simply inviting people to imagine how we could get there. Even if we describe the steps on the journey, these are not defined routes, because we all know the best laid plans can often fall at the first hurdle, and there are many unintended consequences to our actions that often are not apparent until the ‘afterwards’. But those ideas and our imagination can take us places no one has gone before.
Where will your story map take your imagination today?
