by Rob Hopkins
Review by Alison Bordes
The two qualities which are most important to children of today are hope and imagination. Hope to believe they can change the world they live in and imagination to find ways to do so.
Janet Galbraith 1986 (Quaker Faith and Practice 23.85)
At the start of a new decade when there is a great deal of gloom around, here is a book to lighten the spirit and give a glimmer of hope.
Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transformation Movement shows how change is possible if we can embrace the idea that by using our imagination and creativity, new perspectives and solutions can be found in facing up to the multiple challenges which confront us. He has experienced transformation in his own community in Totnes and instances around the world where people come together with a common purpose to find new ways to combat personal loneliness, prejudice and negative beliefs about how to deal with a fractured world.
Hopkins exhorts us to use our innate creativity to think beyond what we see in front of us to find better ways of living and behaving. He uses multiple examples of how communities have shown how they have the drive and enthusiasm to achieve realistic solutions.
Climate change, extreme governments and ideologies, loss of biodiversity ecosystems, insecurity both personal and global are all confronted by the author. He has a well-founded belief that we humans have it within us to bring about change if we combine and pull together and each contribute using our imagination. An inspiring book that will be available in the Redland library soon.
What Is to What If by Rob Hopkins (2019) Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing