ABSTRACT
Shresthova introduces future world-building as an approach that frees participants from the constraints on the imagination, which are posed by a relentless focus on existing constraints, which limit the possibilities for change. Here, world-building is an approach that focuses on harnessing the creative energies of invested groups to conjure shared visions of complete worlds and then empower them to find and share stories within those worlds through various media formats. In her account, Shresthova details specific approaches deployed within the Academy to encourage students to collectively engage in a process that invites them to think about what alternative worlds might look like, reading them in relation to our own, and deploying them as a means of expressing and debating visions for what alternatives might be to current conditions. She details how this approach activates the imagination as a crucial dimension of personal and collective media transformation.
