Suggestions
Phoebe Tickell
Regenerative Catalyst, Renegade Scientist, Founder and Director at Moral Imaginations, Activist, International Speaker, 1 of 500 Global Impact Edmund Hilary Fellows, Scientific Advisor to the Inner Development Goals
Phoebe Tickell is a scientist, educator, systems thinker, and social entrepreneur based in London, England.1 She is currently serving as Teaching Faculty at the New School of the Anthropocene, a position she has held since January 2024.1
Phoebe has a diverse background and holds multiple roles:
-
She is the Founder of Moral Imaginations, an organization she established in June 2020 to push the frontier of research and implementation of collective imagination exercises.12
-
As of November 2024, she became a Visiting Research Fellow and Co-Lead for the Nature Centric Catalyst at the University of Reading.1
-
She serves on advisory boards for organizations such as the Inner Development Goals and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.1
-
Phoebe has a first-class degree in Biological Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and applies her training in understanding biological networks and systems thinking to various fields, including governance, organizational structures, and education.3
-
She is known for her work in developing methodologies and approaches suited for a better world, applying complexity and systems thinking lenses across multiple societal contexts.23
Phoebe Tickell's LinkedIn username is indeed phoebetickell.145
Highlights
"Longing on a large scale is what makes history.
Longing on a large scale is what makes history."
These are the words I shared with the audience of changemakers at ChangeNOW two weeks ago.
The role of an imagination activist is to build the longing for a different kind of future. It’s to build the sensation that this is possible, that it’s real. As Eve Ensler once said, the role of a normal activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.
The role of an imagination activist is to remind you what it is you are fighting for, what it is you believe in, what is it that is driving you to make the changes, to do the work of creating a more just, beautiful and flourishing future every day. Imagination activists create more activists in the world. They connect them back to the longing for a future in line with their values.
In March, I joined 35,000 people at the ChangeNOW conference in Paris, to deliver a message on their stage on being an imagination activist. In order to change the world, we need to escape the ways of thinking that are perpetuating the mess we currently find ourselves in. The system is self-perpetuating, and so seeing differently takes work, it is a form of resistance, and it's a form of activism.
Ursula K. Le Guin, a fantastic sci fi author, an absolute heroine of mine, said ‘any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. And that resistance and change starts in art, and often in the art of words’, in storytelling. We need to keep the dream alive that things can be different, that we have the solutions we need - you can find them all around the world at the edges, and equitable, human, life-centric ways are not impossible, but they require choosing, and protecting.
One of the mantras of being an imagination activist is: "We think that we have resource problems, but in fact we have imagination problems". We think that the problems we face are technological, we think that we need facts, that it’s a lack of resources or a lack of knowledge or intelligence. I promise you that if we closed the doors on this stage and we said nobody here is going home until we fix these problems, we would fix them. We have all the intelligence, all the ideas and talent we need.
Thank you very much for having me #ChangeNOW, and to all those who made this session brilliant and inspiring: Maëlle Bousquié Gaspard Plantevin Martina Catherine Buchal Marion Chaygneaud-Dupuy Olivier Maurel Amandine Roche . . . . . . . #ImaginationActivism #ChangeNOW #change #movement #action #conference #speaker #activism #leaders #leadership #imagination #people #inspiration #change #socialjustice #ecologicaljustice #movements
Blown away by the audience at the Inner Development Goals Summit yesterday, where over 8,000 people joined internationally to explore the inner and outer dimensions of activism and systems change.
It was a joy and honour to share about my work and 7-year inquiry on the Industrial Growth Mindset and scientific paradigm, and journey from a renegade scientist to an Imagination Activist.
I presented my disappointment and frustration at the world and design thinking, green business, good growth, innovation and collective buy-in to making a better polished catastrophe. In the west and in many places touched by the west, we are stuck in the fishtank and need to get to the vast and endless sea.
"We think that what we face is a resource problem, but actually what we face is an imagination problem... We've designed a system from a worldview that is out of date - we have our priorities completely wrong... We need to move from the Age of Reason to the Age of Imagination.
"How to get from the fish tank to the ocean? Instead of just making the fish tank more livable - as the vast majority of our actions are doing today."
“We put a human being on the moon in 1969 using the force of competitive, colonial, Western imagination. Moral imagination is the power of imagination on behalf of the welfare of the whole. It’s imagination specifically to reconnect with the larger collective of humans, non-humans, future generations and ancestors.
What could we achieve in 7 years with the power of moral imagination activism?"
The thing I am leaving with from this conference is that many people are open to receiving these shifts in perspective, understand the scale of what is going on and want to act. But they don’t know how to act differently, and they don’t feel like they have that option. A lifetime of choices is a long road to walk back on. Many of these people have kids, salaries, mortgages and do not understand an alternative.
Very moved and touched by the talks of other speakers, and the chance to connect with others working on similar problems from different angles.
Thanks to all those who made this possible and the invitation to share. Well done to Katharina Moser Jan Artem Henriksson Tomas Björkman for putting together a memorable event.
#ImaginationActivism #IDG23
