Book

Designing Hope: Visions to Shape Our Future is out now

Buy from Waterstones here, or directly from The Indigo Press here.

 

When did we stop dreaming of a better future?

What happened to the sci-fi golden age of the 1950s, when futurism flourished as a discipline and drove innovation?

As a society, either we struggle to imagine something good for the times to come or we fail to picture any future at all. Our world is in polycrisis; we face climate breakdown, societal fracturing, governmental collapse, war, and rising inequality.

The exciting outcomes we dreamed of, from the space race to the wonder material plastic, have brought contingent problems of their own. We haven’t yet developed mainstream and accessible new narratives to replace these failures, and if you ask someone to imagine ‘the future’, they’ll probably still picture flying cars.

Designing Hope resets expectations. Through the lens of four emerging futures, Sarah Housley shows us visions of hope that inspire action and critical thinking about how we’ll live in the decades to come.

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Press

New Scientist: We have run out of new visions of the future. This needs to change

The New World: Utopia, with solar panels

Wallpaper*: The future is hopeful. Five questions with a design futurist

The Big Issue: The way we think about the future needs to change

UK 2.0: A forecaster’s guide to designing the future

Nature: Reviving the past and designing the future: Books in brief

The Earthbound Report: Designing Hope - book review

Leeds Sanctuary Podcast: Social Solidarity - Designing Hope

The Readings Podcast: Sarah Housley in conversation

The Mindset Economy Podcast: How To Create Hope with Sarah Housley

The Deep Dive Podcast: Designing Hope & Shaping Our Future w/ Sarah Housley