Imagine The Future Inc

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...because we humans can only work for a future we can imagine.

Imagine The Future Inc is a small project-based cultural development and futures organisation founded in 1989/90 and registered as a not-for-profit community association in the state of Victoria, Australia.

Our creative interventions are guided by our commitment to ecological sustainability, pluralism, human rights and social justice. They include the following projects.

- Redreaming Australia, a special double issue of the British journal Futures celebrating ITF's fifteenth anniversary, for publication in 2006-07. more >>

- The Creek, a forthcoming applied futures project, 2007-2009, focussing on an ephemeral stream [pdf >>] in the catchment of Galiyarr, or the Lachlan River [pdf >>]. A prospectus for this three year initiative will be available for sponsors and partner organisations in early 2006.

- Redreaming the plains, an on-going R&D project in multiple stages, which includes the e-journal of the same name.

- the world's first ecoversity and associated sustainability forums.

- Re-imagining your neighbourhood, a youth futures program.

- East Timorese Youth Ambassadors project.

- Painting the future real and the digital possum skin cloak.

NEWS FLASH: REDREAMING AUSTRALIA 2006-07
posted 6 February 2005

Seventeen Australian scholars and activists, most of them past speakers at ITF's ecoversity forums, have called for an intellectual and cultural revolution in their homeland, for "radical systemic change ... a complete renewal of both civil society and our public institutions."

Their call for a total re-imagining or redreaming of Australia is made in a collection of essays to be publishedin a special double issue of the British journal Futures commemorating ITF's fifteenth anniversary.

The authors want "a comprehensive re-assessment of the way we Australians relate with one another, with our unique biophysical heritage and the ecological communities we are all part of, and with other peoples beyond our shores, especially in the rest of Asia," guest editor Merrill Findlay states in her introductory essay, Redreaming Australia.

Contributors to this special issue of Futures are Jason Alexandra, Ian Anderson, Nick Bond, Michael Buxton, Joseph Camilleri, Linda Christesen, Jim Falk, Merrill Findlay, Paul James, Sue Kenny, Peter Kinrade, Sam Lake, Dave Mercer, Alan Pears, Curtis Riddington, Chris Ryan and Tony Stevenson. Their essays will be published online by Futures in April/May 2006, and in hardcopy in late 2006/early 2007, but preprints are now in the public domain and can be viewed from Redreaming the plains.

PHOTOS FROM THE ARCHIVES

Before-and-after photos from the early 1990s of the ecoversity in the old Australian Conservation Foundation building, Fitzroy, Victoria. Including photos of the volunteers who helped build the ecoversity. (Posted 4 April 2004.)

21ST CENTURY TRANSFORMATIONS

Museum Victoria acquired most of ITF's ecoversity fittings and associated artefacts in 2002 for its Technology and Sustainability Collection. Other ITF fittings went on permanent display in the Environment and Planning Program, level 7 building 8 at RMIT University, Melbourne. Archives from ITF's first decade are soon to be lodged with the State Library of Victoria.

ITF is now transforming itself into a more flexible organisation and is seeking new challenges for a new century.

We gratefully acknowledge the support our many sponsors and partners have given us over the years.

ITF is proud to be part of the Netzkraft Movement, an inspiring network of more than 650 socially-committed groups representing most of the planet's nation-states. Netzkraft is associated with the Institut fur Sudtemische Forschung und Therapie, or Institute for Systemic Research, in Xanten, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and is a project of Spix, the Sozial Psychiatrische Initiative Xanten.

Email imagine the future inc
Site administration: Merrill Findlay, www.merrillfindlay.com
Content last updated February 2006.