How did you experience the masterclass in Brussels?

“It was at the top end of my expectation, for a group of very diverse people. We went through the entire Imagine methodology in two days, using the people in the room as the temporary organisation which had to use the tool to consider its own sustainability. By applying it themselves, they learned how they could then use the tool on local communities or organisational communities or communities of practice.”

“The approach started off in 1999. It was called ‘systemic sustainability analysis’. It was published in a book which I co-authored with a colleague from the University of Reading, Steven Morse. The book was called: ‘Sustainability Indicators: measuring the immeasurable’, published by Earthscan.”

Morse and Bell both thought sustainability was the key issue of their age, yet, not everyone seemed to share that enthusiasm.

“The issue of sustainability had two effects on people. They either felt it did not relate to them, or they felt it was hopeless because everything was already destroyed and gone. In my view, this is a very depressing way of thinking about the world. The chain of our thinking was that sustainability was the key issue of our time. But the only way we can understand sustainability is by measuring things. Therefore we had to make measurements of sustainability interesting to local people, so that they will take an interest in their own sustainability. However, it is very difficult to get local people interested in books on statistics or lots of depressing stories in newspapers. Therefore the methodology was an attempt to develop a participatory way for communities to engage themselves in their own sustainability. Also, it was a way for them to project forward from that into possible futures and think about how those futures could be achieved and sustained. That was the original idea.”

Bell tells that they were fortunate enough to work with a French organisation called ‘Blue Plan’; an organisation that works with regional activity centres around the Mediterranean on sustainable coastal management projects. Bell worked with ‘Blue Plan’ on projects in Malta, Lebanon, Algeria, Cyprus and Slovenia.

“In all of these projects we adapted and developed the methodology. We kept the basic structure the same, but it changed a little bit each time. We were working with very mixed groups. Groups would be comprised of local officials from the municipality, pressure groups, tourist board people, fishing cooperatives or farming cooperatives. A very big range of ordinary people, if you like. We ran this methodology with them over a period between six months and eighteen months.”

Bell explains how the workshops function.

“Five separate workshops occur in sequence around a cycle. You start off with workshop one, which is about understanding the current situation. In workshop two, you start to think about how you might measure the current situation. In workshop three, you actually produce some simulation or real diagrams of the current situation. Here it is very important that the vision of sustainability arises from the agreement of the community. The people had to be trusted to develop their own vision of sustainability.

People do two things in the third workshop. They have either simulation or real figures for their sustainability and an idea of what would be sustainable according to those measures that they have themselves developed. Then, they can make a comparison of where they would like to be and where they are now. This in turn creates quite a lot of conversation.

In the fourth workshop we do scenario making. People project forward five, ten or fifteen years, to where they think the current trends are going. And then in the fifth workshop they have to work out this projection. The question they have to deal with is that they now have to live with the fact that they have understood their current situation. They have agreed on the indicators and how they measure it. They also have a vision of where they are right now and where they would like to be in the future. They have to figure out what to do with this information. ‘How do we make the bad things we think are happening stop and how to we make the good things we want to happen begin?

In that fifth workshop, participants also devise means by which they can publicise and market the messages they are trying to develop. So as a complete cycle, it takes you from a perception of where you are, through to how you want to change policies or politics to make things more sustainable. The whole thing is based on the experience and the understanding of the local community or the community we are discussing with.”

During the workshop in Brussels you had participants from different parts of Europe. Was this difference reflected in the situation that various European cities are in?

“We did indeed have a wide diversity of attendance: from Oslo to Amsterdam, and from cities in Britain to cities in Romania. That was something that was very interesting in itself.
We separated into three multinational groups. One group in particular, which had a clear distinction between Western Europeans and Eastern Europeans, developed two very separate sustainability visions based upon their Western and their Eastern experience of their own environment. And that was not just that the Western cities were more advanced or better. It was actually quite interesting that in some cases the Eastern cities, because they were less populated and less polluted in some ways, actually had a sustainability advantage over some of the more densely populated and more materialistic Western cities.”

Bell continues by illustrating an interesting anecdote.

“We had one man turn up representing a major Western European city. His opinion seemed to be that his city had all the answers, and the other cities should all learn from him. However, over the period of the first day, it became very clear that everyone did not share that idea. This was like the old method. Most of the people in the workshop wanted to work on their own perceptions of sustainability. The workshop was also an invitation to share thinking and to share ideas. There were some fantastic things done. I was really impressed by some of the insights and inspirational thinking that happened in some of the groups.

Of course, it had to be a simulation exercise, because it was a masterclass. We were not dealing with Amsterdam, London or Rome, but we were dealing with twenty people from all over the place. So everything we did in a sense was simulation, everything was unreal. And yet, on the second day, everybody was incredibly engaged, excited and thoughtful about what they were discovering and learning about their own sustainability by using the Imagine methodology. We could not get real data because of a lack of time, but the methodology encouraged people to really engage thoughtfully in the consideration of where they are and where they want to go. And that creates some of the best outcomes.”

During the masterclass you were confronted with different approaches by European cities. Do you think there are also any generic skills that European communities or cities need?

“The origin of the Imagine methodology is from what I would call the soft systems approach. Soft system skills are generic in themselves and they are really needed. Imaginative processes, group dynamics, systemic reflection, holistic analysis, holistic project planning, inclusive imagining – all of these are completely generic skills and they are desperately needed in organisations which are trying to cope with the 21st century: professional bodies trying to imagine where they are going to be in twenty years time, or local communities that are trying to work together.

One of the best examples I have got is a series of workshops I ran in Beirut, in three coastal municipalities. In each case we had diverse groups of people including Muslims and Christians and people who were not religious. These people came together in those workshops, which was a great opportunity for them to find a space where they could talk, think and create some sense of a vision of their future together. I think that is very inspiring. When I run these workshops, I run them purely as a facilitator of a process. I do not provide solutions or answers. I only have a process which takes people from one place to another. So to me, the best of the whole thing is watching other people imagining and developing visions and ideas and sharing concepts. They come up with ideas that they have not thought of before and could never have thought of by themselves. They could only have come to those ideas through the kind of group thinking which the methodology allows them to do.”

“At the risk of sounding arrogant, I think the UK is ahead of the game here. But it is also necessary, because we have amazingly diverse communities in the UK. We are a small geographical island, with a very high population. On top of that, we have very intense urban mixed populations: mixed ethnically and mixed religiously. We have had huge urban problems and conflicts in the last twenty years. So the need to grasp and understand the way that mixed diverse ethnic groups can come together in a sustainable way in a sustainable urban context, is maybe a little bit more important for the UK than in some other parts of Europe.

I think there are two big forces here. One force is the mixing of ethnicity and the mixing of groups in small urban spaces. The other is the whole environmental debate about the need for the greening of the environment. If you put those two things together, then generally speaking, you have a good idea of despair. This is because people say that ‘cities are falling apart, we cannot be green and we cannot do these things.’ So I think that any approach which can come into that debate, and help that debate to move forward, such as the Imagine methodology, is obviously useful.”