Like the science centers and museums that compose the Seeding Action network, the Seeding Action team loves a good question. Here is one we have been turning over in our work lately:
What happens if we consider imagination as a vital component of building a culture of active hope and an environment that supports planetary health actions?
The question is a rich one and one that aligns with Seeding Action’s central goal: creating a culture of hope and action to inspire collective efforts to improve planetary health. Like the notion of active hope at the heart of Seeding Action’s work*, engagements with imagination are often underpinned by the sense that things could be otherwise.^ Far from “fixed” or static, the world(s) we inhabit are subject to change, creating the space to consider how and where people can take action individually and collectively to support planetary health.
Seeding Action’s new resource, Imagination & Planetary Health: Resources for Supporting a Culture of Hope & Action, explores the relationship between imagination and planetary health and offers recommendations, models, and tools to support science center and museum practices integrating imagination into efforts to promote planetary health action.
A Three-Part Approach to Inspiring Imagination
Overview: To lay the foundation for the suite of resources, the overview document provides an introduction to the collection’s approach to imagination and explains why imagination may be a critical component of a science center’s or museum’s planetary health endeavors: It has the potential to generate a sense of active hope, spark conversation about planetary health challenges and solutions, invite people to consider fresh perspectives, and inspire ideas for planetary health action. The overview includes general recommendations for practice sourced from the collective insight of the Seeding Action community and reflection questions designed to encourage deeper thought about how imagination might fit into a science center’s or museum’s broader approach to planetary health.
Resource Board: Imagination is a broad topic with no shortage of readings, websites, podcasts, and facilitator tools committed to deepening understanding of how it works and how to encourage it. As a curated selection of this work, the resource board includes materials on subjects ranging from play and games to creative arts and multimedia projects to community discussions; all situated as part of projects to imagine better futures for the planet. Explore the LEGO® Build the Change Resource Library with their course packs for addressing sustainability or peruse the reading group discussion guides that accompany Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s book, What If We Get It Right? Designed to be dynamic, the resource board includes space to offer your resource recommendations or share your story if you have used materials spotlighted in the Imagination & Planetary Health suite.
Models: Science centers and museums cultivate imagination in diverse ways and offer rich insights into how imagination-based activities, practices, and exhibits can support broader goals. This section features some of these initiatives with detailed descriptions of each program, exhibit, or activity and an emphasis on what they help elucidate about imagination and its connections to planetary health. The models in the suite include:
- Building Dream Cities Together: Making Aspirations and Priorities Visible (Discovery Museum)
- Changing Vantage Points: Imagined Time Travel as an Invitation to Reconsider Connections to the Planet (Re-Imaginary)
- “It’s Okay to Be Silly”: Imagination & Apprehension (Boston Children’s Museum)
Profiles of these efforts offer concrete examples of museum practices that encourage imagination and model ways to incorporate imagination into planetary health initiatives.
With more to come!
Seeding Action is preparing new profiles to expand the number of examples demonstrating how science centers and museums are creating programs and exhibits that inspire imagination as part of efforts to promote planetary health. The resource board and profiles are dynamic parts of the suite, designed to grow, change, and feature new materials useful for creating and revising planetary health exhibits, programs, and content. New material will be added to the suite early in 2026.
To be notified when new materials are available and receive updates on Seeding Action’s work, join the Seeding Action network or subscribe to receive Seeding Action emails. To participate in shaping the next updates to the imagination suite, we invite you to share your examples of science center and museum initiatives that underscore the power of imagination (especially as they pertain to planetary health) or recommend your favorite resources for cultivating imagination. Upload your comments and recommendations via this Google Form or write to the Seeding Action team at info@seeding-action.org to offer feedback.
Endnotes
* Our use of the term “active hope” emerges from the work of Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. See Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power, rev. ed. (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2022) or visit Activehope.info.
^ This association between imagination and mutability is reflected in multiple writings on imagination. As two examples, see Kathryn Yusoff and Jennifer Gabrys, “Climate Change and the Imagination,” WIREs Climate Change 2, no. 4 (2011): 516–534; Christopher Wright, Daniel Nyberg, Christian De Cock, and Gail Whiteman, “Future Imaginings: Organizing in Response to Climate Change,” Organization 20, no. 5 (2013): 647–658.