Unstampable: Postcards from the Still Possible is a workshop giving participants time to engage in imagining the futures we would love to co-create, in response to the challenges of our time.
What would a thriving future, where all life can flourish, feel like, smell like, sound like? And how can we get there?
There is a phrase in our culture that always boggles me- “it’s just your imagination”. What?! Surely our imagination is one of the most powerful, radical, life-creating tools we have in our human pockets and it needs to be honoured and treated with respect, love, permission and given plenty of space to play?
Hannah Mulder, Artistic Director, MakeShift Theatre and Associate Artist, Exeter Northcott.
In the workshops we gather, warm up our imaginative muscles, time-travel to positive futures and capture details of what we find. We have conversations with future descendants, exploring how it is to be alive now, what we are facing and hear their response and wisdom. The compassion and care that these future beings show for what we are currently grappling with often touches people deeply.
The workshop was enjoyable but it was also a deep and profound experience.
Sarah, Workshop Participant
Spending time with possibility – with our longing – and recognising that imagining is a first step in bringing something into being can be powerful, especially when done collectively. When we receive wisdom from a future in which things have worked out, it can subtly reshape how we see the present – what feels possible, what feels worth attempting and what story we tell about now.
Acts of imagination are often thought of as a luxury, but I believe they are a courageous and vital thing to do in these times.
Each workshop culminates in the creation of a postcard from the future: messages sent back to now, to ourselves. The images here are the postcards that emerged.
This was a perfect mixture of activity which led to a blend of conscious and subconscious processing and left me feeling hopeful and more grounded.
Lisa, Workshop Participant
These postcards are the beginning of an evolving project that will invite artists and communities to respond to the same core provocations through writing, movement, music, visual art and performance, building a shared archive of messages “from the still possible”.
This pilot project was supported by Arts Council England and developed alongside a new show, Unstoppable, which responds to the climate and nature crises and asks: what futures might emerge from this moment and what would it take to choose the one in which all life can thrive? In one strand of the show, characters living in a regenerative future speak directly to the audience, thanking us for the actions we are taking now that made their world possible. These workshops opened that same imaginative process to communities and artists
Find out more about UnstoppableIf you feel inspired to create your own “postcard”, in whatever form and would like it to be part of this living futures archive, please find me at on at make.shift.theatre or email [email protected] or if you’re interested in my bringing this workshop to your organisation, community or creative process, I’d love to hear from you.
Find out more about Hannah Mulder and her work
I’m so grateful to everyone who brought their imagination, longing and creativity to these workshops and thank you for allowing me to share what emerged.
Hannah Mulder, Artistic Director, MakeShift Theatre and Associate Artist, Exeter Northcott