Imagination Infrastructure: A Conversation with Keri Facer
19 March 2026 - An Invitation
Imagination Infrastructure: A Conversation with Keri Facer
JFS Futures Community – March 2026 Meet
In March, the JFS Futures Community of Practice will host a conversation with Professor Keri Facer (University of Bristol) on the theme of Imagination Infrastructure.
The phrase may sound abstract at first. Yet the idea it points to is deeply practical. If societies are to imagine different futures—more just, sustainable, and humane ones—then imagination itself cannot be treated as a private act of creativity. It requires support. It needs conditions that allow people to think beyond what appears inevitable.
The concept of imagination infrastructure draws attention to those conditions. What are the material, institutional, and social arrangements that enable collective imagination? What kinds of practices, spaces, and relationships help communities think beyond the present moment? And how might these be strengthened?
In this session, Keri Facer will trace the origins of the idea and examine how it has been used in different contexts. She will also question some of its assumptions and explore how the concept might help bring together diverse practices that seek to nurture alternative ways of living and organising society.
For those of us working in futures research and practice, this conversation touches on questions that sit at the heart of the field. Futures work has long emphasised that images of the future shape the choices we make in the present. Yet the ability to imagine alternatives does not arise automatically. It grows through dialogue, reflection, learning, and shared inquiry.
These questions have also been surfacing in several recent discussions within our community, including some work I have been developing on imagination and futures practice. While that work is currently under journal review, it has reinforced a simple but important insight: imagination is not only an individual capacity—it is something that can be cultivated collectively.
Keri’s work offers an important lens for thinking about how that cultivation might happen.
It is therefore a real honour for our community to host her for this conversation.
As always, our Community Meets are not lectures but spaces for dialogue. Members are warmly invited to join the discussion, share reflections from their own practice, and explore together how ideas like imagination infrastructure might inform futures research, teaching, and action.
If you have been thinking about how societies learn to imagine beyond crisis, constraint, or institutional inertia, this will be a rich session.
We hope you will join us.
Time: Mar 19, 2026 10:00 AM London; 6pm Taiwan
Join Zoom Meeting
https://strath.zoom.us/j/85927611163?pwd=uDawkgu6aepCmgatmbh1uS7fDQtUua.1
Meeting ID: 859 2761 1163
Password: jfscop
Relevant work:
RESEARCH ARTICLE| APRIL 01 2022
Imagination and the Future University: Between Critique and Desire Open Access
Keri Facer
Critical Times (2022) 5 (1): 202–216.
https://doi.org/10.1215/26410478-9536559
The JFS Futures Community is a space for practitioners, educators, and the Futures-curious to connect, share, create teaching & learning materials in making Futures literacy more accessible to a wider global community.
We meet once a month. Our meet is a casual get together - just a space for like-minded people to hang out and talk about Futures. We welcome members to host our monthly meet and talk about topics they’re mulling over, or invite guest speakers.
This is an experimental space. If you wish to give a short talk, try out a workshop or just have a casual discussion about a certain topic, feel free to email Anisah or Lavonne Leong
Teaching and Learning Materials
We publish materials here.
This is a growing library of futures thinking teaching tools that will eventually include skills and dispositions from all over the world. These resources range from semester-long curricula to exercises that can be done in an hour or less. They are for many ages and stages of readiness, and can be used by anyone.
If you have created a tool for teaching futures thinking and want to add it to our community resource pool, please reach out to one of our team.
If you are not sure where to start, let one of us know, and we’ll make a suggestion.
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