Curated by Harriet Hand and Keri Facer, this site brings together practical resources and research for developing the temporal imagination.
What is temporal imagination*?
The ‘temporal imagination’ refers to our individual and collective abilities to reflect upon and change how we think about and work with time.
‘Time’ is not neutral or outside us. It is:
timing - how we decide when to do things, how we coordinate our collective lives;
rhythm - the experience of living in time, the feelings of speed or slowness, regularity or disruption, the feeling of being ‘in’ and ‘out’ of time with others; and
timestories - the stories we tell and live by, about how change happens.
Developing the temporal imagination
Becoming aware of our temporal imagination - questioning our temporal assumptions, tuning in to other people’s timing and rhythms, exploring different timestories - and finding ways to negotiate time with other people - is central to creating regenerative, diverse, and flourishing communities, organisations and societies.
We work with a wide range of organisations, from government departments to community groups, from academics to artists, to help them explore how developing their temporal imagination can open up new ways of seeing the world and pathways to transformational change.
In our work, we create mirrors for your time habits, and create safe and brave spaces to recognise them, negotiate them, and create new ways of thinking and living in time.
*the term ‘temporal imagination’ was coined by the great sociologist of time Barbara Adam. The definitions we work with here, however, are our own.
About us
Keri has spent 25 years working at the intersection of ecological, technological and social change and exploring how the way we learn and what we learn might better enable us as societies and individuals to create better futures. She is concerned with imagination, with possibility and with creating conditions for social change – and with playfully opening up possibilities for new ways of thinking.
Keri is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, and has held visiting professorships at Uppsala University (as Zennström Professor of Climate Change Leadership), the Swedish Agricultural University (as August T Larsson Guest Professor) and at Gothenburg University (as guest professor in Education for Sustainable Development). From 2001-2008 she was research director for the interdisciplinary research lab Futurelab. From 2012-2018 she was leadership fellow for the UK research council’s ‘Connected Communities Programme’ – a 327-project, nationwide experiment in facilitating new forms of collaboration between universities and communities. Keri was editor-in-chief of the journal Futures, helps to steer the international Anticipation Conference series, advises and partners with a wide range of organisations from international bodies such as UNESCO to charitable foundations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. She publishes across the fields of futures studies, education, philosophy, environment, research methods, participation and technological development.
Harriet has a background in graphic arts and in the development of design programmes that transform how people access and experience cities. Bringing her arts and design practice to the field of education, she explores experimental modes of engagement with everyday life to understand how these practices help develop our sense of self in relation to a changing world. She is interested in speculative approaches that help access the complexity of a situation to better understand challenges, open up possibility and support change.
Harriet is Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol School of Education and teaches on the MA Graphic Art programme of the University of the West of England. She was awarded an ESRC grant to complete her PhD which focussed the problem of how schools create conditions for creative thinking. Setting up a six-week residency, she explored participatory mapmaking techniques with a group of 17-year-old students to create a speculative expanded classroom as a place of possibility. Since graduating she has collaborated with Keri to develop time tools as part of the BA programme The Times of Just Transition. From 2001 to 2017 Harriet was a design lead at City ID, an international team of strategists, designers and urbanists. She continues to work with public sector organisations to develop new practices, methods and tools that support collective engagement with processes of change and the transition to better and more inclusive futures.