Imagination Work

The most important and the most gratifying part of my job as a leader in my communities is the work of imagination. It is vital to the projects I am interested in that there be Thought Leadership. I don’t take for granted that leadership in any situation is the same as Thought Leadership. Indeed, often, leaders in various fields and industries are mostly helping whatever has been happening simply perpetuate. They are leading the way down the path that has already been paved. In such a case, do we even require leadership? What is a leader for, if the idea is to get people to do what they are already doing?

For people who wish the future could be different than the past, there is a need for imagination. The poet Rilke said, “the future must enter into you a long time before it happens”. We need dreamers to imagine a possible future that does not yet exist on a large enough scale. It doesn’t and won’t work for the future we want to live into, to go about things by doing them the way they have always been done. There have to be dreamers. There have to be people who have ideas about how things COULD be, which are the drivers of our ambition and our action.

My Imagination Work centers largely on children, of course. I am dreaming of a future where children are valued members of their communities, acknowledged as having thoughts and feelings that are just as valid as any adults’. I dream of education as a way for people to experiment, grow our understanding, and build useful skills that feel relevant and meaningful throughout our whole lives. I dream of a future where it’s unimaginable that adults, especially parents, would hurt children for any reason. I dream of parents having enough support and help for the hard work of raising families, and those families being connected and nurturing to all of the members in an ongoing, lifelong way. I dream of kids being able to express what they need and the adults and other children listen to them, take them seriously, and come together to help every child thrive. I imagine that this is the real future we can create, if we try. I know it’s possible, because I have seen this future come true at our school. 

I take Imagination Work seriously for kids, too. For one thing, there is the plain fact that these kids are the citizens of the future, and so the tools we are giving them to transform that future are inherently meaningful. The children of today are the policymakers of tomorrow, and that makes it feel incredibly urgent to provision them with a broad license to dream. The author bell hooks reminds us, “What we cannot imagine cannot come into being”. We need to grow kids for whom imagination is their birthright. Their dreams must flourish to create our collective future. 

What kind of future society do you think Cottage kids might dream about? I hope it’s a future where children have inherent human rights, and they view these in the context of other struggles for full participation and liberation that marginalized groups of people have been pursuing for generations. I hope they dream of community care, where nobody is left out and everybody contributes as they are able. I hope they dream of freedom and play, where people are able to do things just because they are interested in doing them, and the value of those choices is apparent, and we all support each other’s learning pursuits, and everyone gets to spend their one precious lifetime doing work that interests us and brings us joy. I hope they dream up clean rivers and lots of trees, high speed rails that connect us, and places for everyone to live comfortably. I hope I live to see the future they are dreaming. 

In the near future, our kids will go to schools where some of the adults forget how important it is to dream. But many of them have not. There are caring, hopeful teachers everywhere who love the work we get to do, and for whom Imagination Work is a critical part of our pedagogy. Listen for them waiting for insights, encouraging experimentation. Watch them find who your child really is, caring about their incremental wins and setbacks. Wait as the big work of imagining unfolds slowly as the kids learn to trust in the teacher, the space, and themselves.