Our Collective Futures: RSA Fellows Planning Day Report

15 Fellows met at the Centre for Alternative Technology on 30 January 2023 to explore possibilities and priorities for our programme in 2023.

With the theme of “our collective futures”, we considered what a hopeful future would look and feel like in Wales in 2030. Presentations from the Centre for Alternative Technology about their regenerative futures work helped inform and shape our conversations.

Fellows shared their hopes for: holistic education reform, community hubs supporting social enterprise, stronger friendships in communities, more Welsh being heard in shops and pubs, renewed connection to nature and rewilding, more organic farming… and across all of these, new narratives to support change.

Through the themes of the Wellbeing for Future Generations goals, we identified topic areas we would like to focus on through RSA events across Wales. Fellows who were not able to attend sent their ideas and suggestions emerging out of one-to-one conversations over the last few months were also included.

Considering the RSA’s facilitatory role, we listed possibilities for event discussions around support for young pupils recently out of education, models for public banking and community land trusts, strengthening cohesive communities, user-centred design for social housing, future heritage of churches, human rights, affordable transport and zero carbon economy.

Between them, the resonances were wellbeing (both health and economic), learning from nature and creativity, with the commitment to continue an emphasis on young people as agreed at Caban Mawr and bringing people together to think about how to design innovative systems fit for the future.

We agreed that we would like to link events in different places across Wales with the thread of encouraging mindset and behaviour shift to a regenerative way of working. To support this, we will progress the idea of a longer workshop to equip Fellows to explore this approach, deepen our understanding and plan further.

We closed the afternoon with this powerful poem by the Future Generations Commissioner’s Poet in Residence, Taylor Edmonds, that imagines a Wales in the future where ‘everyone is paid enough to truly live’.