Imagining and creating a regenerative future

A NEW series of workshops will ask Northern Rivers communities to imagine what a safe and regenerative future could look like, and how to get there.

The free Imagine Northern Rivers sessions will run in Tweed from July 20 and Ballina from August 1, following events in Byron and the Clarence Valley that drew around 180 participants.

Organiser Carmen Stewart said the region was collectively in a “hot mess” and business-as-usual was no longer working.

“We need to move towards regenerative futures across our region,” Stewart said.

“We’re talking social, environmental, economic and cultural regeneration – in the plainest of language – a better and safer future for us all.”

The workshops encourage participants to shift focus from crisis to creativity.

“We humans can only create things that we can first imagine, so that’s where we have to begin,” she said.

 

“At the moment, many of us are focused on what we don’t want to see happen – the possibility of climate and/or social collapse – and we aren’t focusing on what we most want to create.

“The beauty of the Imagine workshop is that at the end we have mapped possible futures along a wall that are so achievable… futures that are safer, regenerative and adaptive to a changing climate and world.”

Stewart said a regenerative future wasn’t necessarily going to be easy, but it was inevitable.

“We can’t sustain what we have, and we know it.”

“The question is how much human and environmental suffering will we allow before we attach our hearts, minds and hands to the regenerative futures that most of us would choose if we would stop long enough to consider it.”

For information, visit ittakesatown.org.au/imagine