Envisioning: teaching tool

Normally, people are told what their goal is, and how to get there. It has been noted that creates a situation where people "don't take ownership of the change process and also feel extremely disempowered" (ARIES 2006).

Envisioning invites participants to create a shared vision around an issue, and take many forms. It involves the creation of a shared vision among the group, and gives people a positive goal to work towards together that they have created together (GSE827 2010, Tilbury & Wortman 2004).

I think it could be a useful tool to sidestep the hopelessness that can surround may seemingly overwhelming environmental problems. It helps people simultaneously hope for better outcomes, as well as take ownership of the problem and its solutions: while it is important to show people "hell" [the world if the problem is not fixed], you must also show them "heaven" - this also helps them contrast the positive vision world with the status-quo world (GSE827 2010).


ACTIVITY
In our class, we undertook an envisioning exercise. We were all invited to draw our perfect vision of how the world would be in 20-30 years time, or write a poem. Our convener started by getting us to close our eyes and go to a peaceful place (yoga meditation techniques/music might be helpful here), then imagine ourselves walking from that place over a hill through a hedge, and as we come through that hedge, there is our perfect world set out for us [bringing us into an alpha state and encouraging mental imagery helps set the scene for the visual nature of the task]. We were also supposed to come up with five key words that explained our vision.

My vision:

My five key words were: renewable, innovative, ethical, community, multiple solutions.

In pairs, we then took turns explaining our visions, and the other of the pair had to then guess what our key words had been (I think this would work best in large groups, although you could have people stand up and explain one-by-one if the group were smaller). As a group we then looked at five peoples key words so we could see what different peoples visions looked like. Although if you had enough time you could do it by table, and get each table to compare and clump down their key words until they had a group set - as a whole group, you could then try and come up with list of 10 or so mutually agreed key words.

You could then extend the exercise, and use the visions to develop a vision statement and the key words as a base for developing outcomes statements, around which you could build some pathways, project plans and indicators.

REFLECTION
The most interesting aspect of the exercise for me was the different visions people came up with, and how that reflected their cultural and national backgrounds. For instance, quite a few of the international students from developing nations had "peace" as one of their key elements, and I don't think any of the westerners had even considered that as an issue - we just assumed it would be so because we already have it. This helped highlight one of the developed world students core assumptions about the "worlds" we had envisioned.

I think envisioning could be a good tool for clarifying and eliciting values (for example, people putting peace as one of their core elements of a future society, or participants from developing nations highlighting prosperity and education as things to be worked towards). This can bring the group to a better understanding of the others viewpoints and core needs/goals.

It can also be used to help people create a shared goal out of their disparate visions, and one in which they all feel engaged. This could be good ground for beginning a change process.