How can we truly build a world where everyone belongs? Has such a world ever existed? And do we have the capacity to imagine such a world? While we don’t have definitive answers to these questions, we hope that our Radical Imagination research will bring us closer to co-creating an image of a world where everyone can thrive and truly Belong.

Firstly, we position imagination as a “muscle,” and like any other muscle, imagination requires to be exercised and to be maintained. Along the way we hope to co-create a definition of Radical Imagination that encompasses the frameworks that we use at the Institute. We explore different types of imagination at different scales and we look at the conditions necessary to cultivate and exercise said imagination. 

We also talk to other practitioners of Radical Imagination through a partnership with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), we launched a series that explores World Building and Radical Imagination across different disciplines like education and comedy. Additionally, we interviewed other practitioners through a series we are calling “Radical Imaginators,” we sat down with other practitioners and had a conversation about their approach to Radical Imagination and its importance to their work and the realities they are crafting through their art.

At the core of this research project is the preservation and protection of our inherent right to imagine. We hope that this project will encourage all of you to day dream, dream, and imagine a possible world where we are truly free. Here is where we say: more is better. We are asking folks to defy the ways in which we have been socialized to view race, gender, and class and to boldly push beyond the limits  of our current reality–even at the quantum level.

As the Institute undertakes this new research project, we hope you follow along and you share your thoughts and insights with us by contacting Arts and Cultural Strategy Lead Jose Richard Aviles at jraviles@berkeley.edu

Below are a list of offerings for you to explore and get involved: 

• Arts Monthly Newsletter: We will continue publishing a newsletter that informs and updates the OBI audience on works and writings from the Arts and Cultural Strategy.
• Radical Imaginators Profiles: A series of conversations with Artists and Cultural Workers that are integrating the framework of Radical Imagination in their work.
• Community Accountability Committee: A selected group of thinkers, leaders, cultural workers and artists that work alongside the institute to review, validate, and co-create the research design of the Radical Imagination project. If you're interested in joining the second phase of the Community Accountability Committee, be on the lookout for a google form in the near future.
• Popular Culture and Belonging: A series of blog posts that explores how the frameworks used at the Institute manifest in pop culture. Here’s a link to check out our first post: “‘Happy in the end’: Wicked teaches us how to bridge across differences, find belonging without othering.” and our second blog: Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter tour is a reclamation of belonging in America