WHAT IF WE COULD SOLVE CLIMATE . . . though the power of dreams?
Last fall in Los Angeles, a massive, transformative event embraced a different approach to the global disaster hurtling toward us. Instead of ringing alarm bells, it asked a simple question: “What do you want the world to look like?” It may sound starry-eyed, but the results were promising.
Clearly, current methods are failing. Climate anxiety is everywhere. Warming winters have become more extreme. The West Coast has seen crashing waves and flooding. Pollution is choking cities. Plastics cluttering oceans.
In fact, we possess technology and techniques to solve our challenges. So, why aren’t we? It’s not that we lack information. We’re assaulted by news of rising temperatures, images of parched, cracking lakebeds. Our hearts break watching a lone polar bear perched on a melting ice cap.
To spur action, experts have relied on a single strategy: brandishing the specter of imminent global destruction. But fear tactics may be backfiring, even causing inaction. Importantly, we forget to ask: What are we trying to move toward?
At Visions2030, we wondered what would happen if, instead of painting negative outcomes, we laid out experience-fields to stimulate the imagination and create solutions, to generate doable action steps that people could take.
It could be a live event — something like a World’s Fair.
“THIS FESTIVAL IS AMAZING!” said one student about Visions2030’s Earth Edition. The ten-day Festival of Eco-Consciousness ran last September on the Los Angeles campus of the iconic California Institute of the Arts. Conceived as a multi-level, exploratory, spectacle-infused panorama of experiences, it was designed to spark personal inspiration about how we might transform the future. Separate zones featured everything from immersive environments to hands-on expos, from radical gardens to concerts. “It brought hope, joy, and the will to act,” explained another young visitor.
Its centerpiece was the Lumisphere Experience. Three interlocking domes stood, dazzling white, on a field crowning the institute’s hillside campus. Created in collaboration with Minds Over Matter Design, the team that developed the technology inside the $2.3 billion MSG Sphere in Las Vegas, it mesmerized visitors with gigantic technology-generated images. A curated journey helped guests envision their ideal eco-future. In a final dome, thanks to an easy-to-use AI platform, they could “describe” their vision and have the system display it in vivid detail in a gallery of nine-foot-high LED screens alongside the imaginings of others.
Sound hard to believe? Yet, it worked. It proved engaging not only to the 600 school kids who ventured through but to adults. Santa Clarita Mayor Jason Gibbs found it “unforgettable.” “To see my ideas, thoughts, and hopes for the future come to life in an immersive, multi-sensory collaboration,” he found “an impressive glimpse into the possibilities of technology and artificial intelligence.”
In the 1950s and 1960s, World’s Fairs unveiled awe-inspiring pavilions with futuristic phones, cars, and kitchens, that created excitement about a limitless world to come. Earth Edition, on campus September 15th through the 24th, in a similar, if more creatively home-spun, way consisted of a series of experiential “nodes.” Exiting the Lumisphere, guests could, if they chose, enter a Mentoring Tent, spacious and plant-filled, where guides met them to process their inner and outer Lumisphere journeys, helping them develop action steps to bring dreams into reality. Guests could connect with organizations from Intersectional Environmentalist to the Sierra Club. They could listen to armchair chats by thought leaders like the Center for Earth Ethics’ Karenna Gore. They engaged in conversation. Newly unearthed interests were explored through databases and books in the small library. Opportunities were provided to forge connections with affinity groups.
Importantly, instead of laying out a pre-determined view of what a future world should be, we met people where they were. We allowed them to follow their own inclinations and dreams. And to help them do this, all manner of stimuli and types of engagement were offered.
NESTLED IN DIFFERENT LOCALES indoors at CalArts and in its tree-filled, sloping, semi-desert surroundings, there were activities for kids — hands-on crafts, storytelling, even goat yoga. For those wanting to relax, Sustainable Sounds featured open-air lawnside concerts of jazz and rock and offerings by leading Indigenous performers such as Tha ‘Yoties and Innastate.
For those wishing to explore other perspectives, an Indigenous Deep Knowledge Circle organized by composer Chad S. Hamill/čnaq'ymi (Spokane) included a kiva-like dome featuring a powerfully poetic film wordlessly reflecting the collaborative Indigenous approach to the natural world. For the radically inclined, a Zukunft Garten (“garden of the future”) was inspired by Solarpunk, which proposes that nature and technology can live in harmony. A DIY labyrinth of abundant greenery intertwined with leading-edge media, with an anti-establishment resonance.
Eagle News International provided a streaming comprehensive reporting on the wide-ranging, 10-day event.
AN EXO-EXPO, A GREEN DEMO CENTER, SHOWCASED revolutionaries such as the TreePeople, heroes of reforestation, LA’s Eco-Village and as well as innovations such as sustainable hemp bricks used in construction or the Allosphere, a 3-D immersive climate tool developed at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Located in a CalArts gallery and outdoor locales, Futuring (Art for Building New Worlds) advanced insights through eco-related art, such as an eye-catching dazzling green glass tube that percolated spirulina algae (Emma Akmakdjian, Maru Garcia, and Sanna Bucht-Akmakdjian). Or, on a grassy slope, an installation (Ruben Ochoa and Cam La) of migrant workers’ used farm clothes, arranged to enclose soil within which small gardens sprouted — a reminder that these laborers are essential in any green economy.
Each “node” was under the direction of a different Visions2030 team member. All were designed to directly or indirectly not only to evoke possibilities that might take place in the future, but to showcase remarkable discoveries that are taking place right now. The point was to spark the imagination and leave people with a rucksack of unprocessed insights they could take home and mull. Meanwhile, we tried to compose a day that even the climate-skeptical might enjoy. Los Angeles MOCA director Johanna Burton called Earth Edition a “wonderful and important endeavor. My family had a great time. (And yes, we did the Lumisphere, too!)”
But did change occur?
Seeds that are planted can take years to bear fruit. However, thanks to intake questionnaires filled out before and after the “dome journey,” we could track participants’ views and see them micro-shifting — from negativity about the future to cautious optimism, and from cautious optimism to empowerment.
In addition, AI-equipped tablets in Dome 3, featuring multiple-choice menus, offered the potential to get a sense of people’s desired futures. Participants selected options about their preferred landscapes and type of community interaction. Selections included advanced sustainability techniques people might like to have in their ideal world. (In our sampling, for example, 18.44% chose solar power, 15.87% Indigenous stewardship, 17.69% artificial intelligence, 12.8% electric transportation, 9.77% wind energy, and 9.11% mycological innovations.) With the knowledge we gained from this pilot project, in future installations of the Lumisphere, more robust questionnaires might be designed that might provide a kind of census of the future, relaying detailed insights about a sample group’s predilections and aspirations as well as how these change over time.
THE WORD “DREAMS” can summon associations from hazy reveries to practical goals. More to the point, the term points to a mysterious inner gestalt that sparks passion, something that propels us forward. “I Have a Dream”: with that metaphor, Martin Luther King’s speech inspired people to a horizon beyond what was believed possible. Studies have shown that visualization, “future thinking,” measurably affects the brain and behavior. Athletes use visioning to help them toward desired results. Psychologists have observed that focusing forward can even ease anxiety.
In designing the Lumisphere’s narrative immersion, the techniques we assembled somewhat intuitively did seem to produce a transformative catharsis. Guests reclining in Dome 2 lounge chairs were plunged into a sound bath and surrounded by shifting imagery of fragmented possibilities presented at a speed above the threshold of conscious perception. This induced a semi-dream state, where guests were led deep into their psyches to uncover their own aspirations. Molly Kawahata, former Obama White House Climate Advisor, praised the Lumisphere as a “climate- envisioning tool” and Earth Edition overall as a rich breeding ground for solutions. She stressed the effectiveness of both in integrating, as she put it, “hope into the climate narrative.” Kawahata, a leader in environmental messaging (and a key speaker during Earth Edition), pointed to the importance of what she calls a “Promised Land” — an ideal state toward which to aim. “If people can't envision where they're going,” she observes, “it's hard to motivate them to take action.” And, she stated, our festival helped achieve that.
We believe that if elements of Earth Edition were made widely available, that among communities who engaged with them, a more empowered outlook and greater connectedness would result. Indeed, we could observe this happening during the festival in the reactions to the popular Mentoring Tent, a “third place” that became a magnet drawing together CalArts students, adults, and the very young alike, allowing visitors to quietly explore ideas and talk. It was beautiful to see children, while sipping lemonade, sketching artworks of their ideal futures with images such as “UFOs who come in peace,” “lavender gasoline,” and “worlds full of children.” Such arenas unlock the imagination and spark curiosity. And communities are in desperate need of them.
By providing them tools to envision desired possibilities, we can empower people to contemplate themselves leading the way forward. We can build excitement about what lies ahead. We are now seeking venues and partners to tour our “climate- envisioning tool” around the country and the world.
In that spirit, Visions2030’s Elizabeth Thompson, Chris Hayes, and I traveled to the global climate summit COP28 in Dubai in early December to gauge reaction within the sustainability world to our imagination-based Lumisphere. More about that trip in a subsequent newsletter!
In attempting to heal our planet, answers aren’t easy; courage is not always near at hand. But if we lean in, turn to the imagination as a lever for global change, nothing is impossible as far as transforming our world for the better.
MANY ELEMENTS OF THE SUCCESS of our Festival of Eco-Consciousness, the visible as well as the less obvious, were possible only thanks to our astonishing and wonderful partners. Above all, CalArts, our host, who provided generous access to their facilities and helped us think through many ideas. The storied avant-garde institute, of course, has its own history of utopian world-building. When it opened in 1970, it was at the forefront, not just of experimental teaching, but of “dematerialized” art at the farthest horizon.
And grounded in that adventuresome spirit, CalArts opened its doors wide to us. We appreciate all of this remarkable, galvanizing cauldron of creativity, its past, its future. We are particularly indebted to Ravi Rajan, its forward-thinking President. As well as to Theatre School Dean, Travis Preston, who was there from the beginning. Much gratitude, too, goes to Serene Jones and Union Theological Seminary and Rita Walters. Not to mention Suzanne Lacy, Leslie Labowitz, John Threat, Elizabeth Thompson, Chelo Montoya, Troy Allen and the CalArts facilities team, Chris Houchin, Minds Over Matter, as well as Pedro Hernandez, Vera Petukhova, Alexis Morley, James Andrews, Yona Backer, Jim and AnneMarie Mead, Lillian, Jim, Jeff, and Rob Lovelace, California Community Trust, Ting Y. Lin, Ang Zheng, Marie Vigneau, Marissa Chibas, Michael Keegan, Vrinda Aggarwal, Chad Hamill, Shannon Scrafano, the extraordinary Monkey Jean and extended team, LatinX With Plants, Sax Agency, Stanton & Company, Allianz Schools, Veronica Alvarez and CAP, Abigail Salling, Dena Muller, Tom Leeser, Tracie Constantino, Diana McClure, Shalyce Benfell and all our Mentoring Tent guides, the Lumisphere staff (Malik!), Anatola Araba, Pete Galindo and his photography team, Visions2030 Advisors . . . (NOTE: Visions2030 team members bold-faced.)
For all these, and many invisible hands, we are eternally grateful for the ingenuity we achieved together!
— Carey Lovelace