(I must admit, first off, that I am cheating ever so slightly. What follows is an idea, not a report from a completed project. However, it is an idea that a number of people are behind and, once the opportunity and resources present themselves, I plan on manifesting as soon as possible.)
‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ - Gandhi
My start as a professional historian began in my early teens. I had, by this time, been performing and fighting at Renaissance Festivals around New England for several years, and thus had a respectable spread both of historical costumes and appropriate weapons and equipment. Since many of the women in my family are teachers, I began going into their schools and, in costume (and sometimes even in character), giving presentations on what life was like for a soldier/knight/etc. in the Middle Ages or Renaissance. I always had a lot of fun, and the kids seemed to enjoy it as well. I’ve continued this off and on over the years, both in the US and the UK.
What would please me most, however, were the comments from the teachers in the days or weeks following. The letters, emails, or comments passed on by family members in the school all tended to say much the same thing: they were surprised and delighted that the students seemed to have learned more about that period of history in my two-hour presentation than they did in the week or so in class that covered the same subject. When kindergarteners remember words like landsknecht from your talk, you know you must be doing something right.
I think what happens there is that having a person (even someone portraying a person) from an earlier period in history standing right in front of them makes that period less alien, easier to relate to and grasp. Historical re-enactment works in much the same way. Patrons drop in on encampments where medieval soldiers talk about life on the march, or perhaps they visit an 18th century farm where traditional crafts and skills are demonstrated. You can see it in their eyes: ‘Huh. He’s dressed a bit funny, and he has some different ideas about some stuff from us, but apart from that he’s not that different from me.’ From that point, 500 years ago becomes just an earlier period in the history of us, not of some people who are so different from us that they may as well be from Mars. Once they see it in the flesh, it becomes familiar, graspable, real.
People have a tendency to view the future as just as alien a place as the past. We can visualise the future as a continuation of now easily enough, but when trying to imagine substantial changes (for good or ill), we seem to have a hard time making it real in our minds. This impacts the way we regard what may be ahead for us. Even if some people have some very clear ideas about how things could or should be, they have a devil of a time getting others to wrap their heads around it.
I think we need to utilise these same techniques with our visions of the way people will or may need to live in the future.
We get a group together and come up with a scenario. We do the research on what that scenario would actually, practically, look like; gather data, crunch the numbers, make informed hypotheses. We experiment, and see if some of our theories actually work. Then, armed with what we’ve come up with, we set up a place where we will portray that scenario, as accurately as possible, and invite people to come, see for themselves, and ask questions.
We make it real for people. Palpable. Dare I say, possible?
There’s a certain degree of theater involved with this. Ther e are certain aspects of some scenarios that it may not be practical to accurately create. We may not be able to set up a composting toilet, for example. So we may have to get creative in order to create a particular impression or represent something rather than actually portraying it 100% accurately. The trick is doing this so that whatever compromise we make for practicality doesn’t derail the environment we’re trying to create. There are more creative ways of making a toilet appear to be a composting one than leaning a sign on the tank which reads ‘This is a composting toilet. Trust us.’ LARPers and historical re-enactors deal with this all the time, so they would be very useful collaborators. It’s also helpful if the participants are ‘in character’. Within the designated space, the chosen scenario is reality, and participants need to act accordingly. This provides a total immersion for visitors, and even for the participants. Both parties have the potential to get useful insights from this sort of undertaking.
It could be a portrayal of a London flat living a 1-planet lifestyle, an off-grid and fully self-sufficient farm, or even an entire neighbourhood operating on an alternative currency. Best perhaps to avoid scenarios that could be prone to progagandizing or alarmism, but ultimately the sky is the limit. The important thing is that people will have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the experience, ask questions, put suppositions to the test, and get an idea as to what living in that scenario might actually be like. The hope is that this could make potential futures more familiar, and thus less frightening.
Want to make changes in the world? Live them for yourself, even if only temporarily for a start, and show others, and yourself, what it’s like.
