IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability

What do you envision when you think about the future? Flying cars, food as pills, or high-tech clothing? We all think, dream, and fantasise about the future, but our imagination may be more significant than many think, and influence the way we live our lives today. Some visions of the future are dominant; they steer the direction of social development and legitimise our choices and actions. Other visions of the future remain in the background and become marginalised. In the same way as imaginaries people had in the past have influenced us today, our ideas now will influence those in the future. Just think about the climate crisis. Many imagine that new and innovative technologies and global politics can control and solve the problems we face. But there are also many other possibilities. Some imagine living in small communities with homegrown food, frugal consumption, and short working days. Others imagine living in high-tech, green cities where food is grown on the rooftops. The most dominant notions of a sustainable society are created by those who develop products and services, and those who develop the politics we live within. It is therefore important to propose some questions for us who are living today.Why are some visions of the future more dominant than others? What consequences do they have in the present and in the future? And perhaps most importantly: Who has the power to shape the future? IMAGINE has aimed to produce knowledge about dominant and marginalised imaginaries of the future and their significance for sustainable societal development. Through a three-part research design, we have worked to identify, represent, and confront the public with cultural imaginaries of the future. We identified dominant imaginaries in 30 political and strategic documents, works of fiction, advertisements, and through a public survey on Minner.no, which 158 people have responded to so far. Thoughts about the future often take the form of abstract images and ideas that are difficult to convey. Through design courses at OsloMet and Eindhoven University of Technology, we have produced 51 "provotypes," - art and design works aimed at making imaginaries of the future tangible, allowing us to see, hear, and touch them. In this way, abstract images and ideas become concrete and more accessible for critical discussion and reflection. Finally, we have created a traveling exhibition based on these works, which has already engaged the public in sharing, discussing, and reflecting on their own visions of the future. The exhibition takes visitors on an engaging journey through various future imaginaries. It explores themes such as techno optimism, the tension between political governance and free markets, and alternative approaches to consumption and production. It also demonstrates how future imaginaries vary globally. What is perceived as a dystopian future in one part of the world may already be reality elsewhere. This highlights the significant disparities in how sustainability is understood and experienced across different regions of the world. By presenting possible outcomes of dominant future imaginaries, the exhibition seeks to make them more visible to us. IMAGINE is a multidisciplinary and international consortium with junior and senior researchers from the humanities and social sciences. Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) at OsloMet has led the project, with partners from the Faculty of Technology, Art, and Design at OsloMet, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, the University of Manchester, Utrecht University, and Eindhoven University of Technology. In addition, the project has engaged the innovation agency ÆRA to create new arenas for sharing and discussing visions of the future. We have disseminated the project's purpose, findings, and results to the public through the exhibition, which was shown in December 2024 at Litteraturhuset in Oslo and will be displayed in 2025 at Nitja Center for Contemporary Art and at OsloMet. Additionally, we have shared our research through press interviews, radio, articles, our website (imagine.oslomet.no), and social media. Academically, we have presented the results at several international conferences, in research reports and peer-reviewed articles. We are continuing to publish the findings in a planned special issue of the journal Consumption and Society and in articles. Follow us at imagine.oslomet.no. By identifying, representing, and confronting visions of the future, IMAGINE has highlighted the importance of cultural imaginaries of the future as a critical element in political, business, and public discussions about our shared sustainable future.

The IMAGINE project has made a substantial societal and cultural impact by creating four democratic spaces for consumers, policymakers, and businesses to reflect, discuss, and share imaginaries of sustainable futures: i) Articulating and reflecting on imaginaries: Through the Minner data collection, the public shared hopes, dreams, and fears for the future via four open-ended questions. The questionnaire, open to future submissions (N=158), creates a rich repository of stories for ongoing and future research (WP2). ii) Confronting diverse imaginaries: Three Confront workshops (N=45) brought together representatives from consumers, policy, and business. These sessions fostered relationships and tested business and policy strategies, enabling businesses to identify innovative sustainable solutions and policymakers to better understand consumer visions of sustainable futures (WP4). iii) Making imaginaries tangible: Design students at OsloMet and Eindhoven University developed 51 ‘provotypes’—art and design objects exploring future imaginaries of sustainable food, clothing, and transport. These objects aimed to provoke reflection and discussion (WP3). iv) Discussing imaginaries: The project culminated in a final conference on December 10, 2024 (N=~100 attendees), and a touring exhibition. The exhibition debuted at Litteraturhuset in Oslo and will travel to Nitja Centre for Contemporary Art (January-February 2025) and OsloMet (February-March 2025) (WP4). The exhibition examines themes such as techno optimism, the tension between political governance and free markets, and alternative approaches to consumption and production. By presenting potential outcomes of dominant future imaginaries, the exhibition renders these visions more visible and critically accessible. Academically, IMAGINE has united junior and senior social science and humanities researchers to explore cultural imaginaries, emphasizing the interplay of radical design methodologies and philosophical perspectives on human imagination. This research has enriched understanding of consumption patterns and their implications for sustainability. Outputs include 1 published article, 2 reports, and 8 forthcoming articles, and several articles are in writing. Additionally, the consortium has presented at international conferences like Anticipation and the European Sociological Association Conference, stimulating critical discourse on cultural imaginaries. Key findings highlight the importance of recognizing diverse imaginaries—not just possible or probable ones, but also disastrous and idealized visions—in shaping pathways toward sustainability. The Minner database serves as a vital resource for further exploration. Creative dissemination has been central to IMAGINE’s impact. Pop-up and touring exhibitions, diverse storytelling methods, and public engagement activities, such as a postcard-to-the-future initiative, have fostered widespread participation in imagining sustainable futures.

IMAGINE is an interdisciplinary research project (humanities, social sciences, design and arts) that will study cultural imaginaries of sustainability. Since some imaginaries become key stories that guide and legitimize actions taken by different societal actors, while others remain without influence, they are of great importance for the creation of possible futures. Considering the current global urgency of transitioning towards more sustainable societies, this influence makes them important to investigate. IMAGINE looks specifically at imaginaries tied to three currently unsustainable areas of consumption:food, clothes and mobility. To identify dominant imaginaries we will involve actors in sharing imagined futures and utopias, and look at how they exist within strategic documents, media and popular culture. IMAGINE aims to go beyond mere identification, towards interpretation (discourse analysis), representation (design and art works), and confrontation (workshops, exhibition, and conference). Innovative dissemination methods add visual, tactile, and sonic experiences to conventional forms of digital and verbal communication. Through an experiential exhibition we will make imaginaries of sustainability tangible through the senses - making abstract images and ideas more accessible for critical discussion, and confronting actors with the imaginaries of their own and other spheres. The main anticipation behind IMAGINE is that dominant imaginaries of sustainability will have great impact on the future. Thus, it is imperative to bring these imaginaries to light in a cultural perspective to show how imaginaries are reproductive - reproducing existing ways of thinking, contingent on various knowledge regimes, and representing power struggles that determine how we act in the present. Finally, IMAGINE aims to contribute to co-create novel (productive) imaginaries, new shared understandings between actors, and the push towards sustainable futures.