Practical Utopia Directorate

This is a big question but really, it is the only question. When we look at the question, some main words appear; “we” and “world”, as well as “want,” as opposed to “I”, “lifestyle”, “must.” A series of events as part of the Cabinet of Futures invites an interested public to explore options and possibilities about our actual needs and wants and how we want to live in the world. The temporarily established “Practical Utopian Directorate” asks all people from Malta to be part of a collective, playful and easy accessible imagination of what sort of world we want to live in and to consider ways of getting there.

The quality of our lives are not measured by a single number, whether that be income or calories or numbers of friends or books read.  We have multiple “bottom lines” in the sense that we all want food, shelter, family, friends, jobs, hobbies, entertainment, challenges and meaning in our lives. This workshop series invites us to investigate parts of those bottom lines and the ways in which we, as a society, can make us, as people and communities, happier and better off, living in a fair and desired world. How does work, society, politics, education and the rest effect us as humans having a good life, undertaking good work, on a human scale rather than as anonymous masses of profit seeking consumers suffering mindless jobs to satisfy financial systems that often bring us nothing but burnout and frustration.

Multiple bottom lines appear important to society on all levels. Sometimes one speaks of Financial, Social and Natural bottom lines. We must not impoverish ourselves, we must not hurt people and we must maintain the planet - the source of our living.  We can go further and translate these bottom lines into economic, social and planetary well-being and to imagine the ways in which we can not only sustain but also develop, foster and regenerate these factors.

Thus we invite you to train your practical utopian capacities in a series of events, workshops and activities. We divide them into three thematic blocks – consisting of three different formats per block - allowing participants to think out loud about possible futures, engaging with these, imagining them and sharing them, asking questions and imagining ways forward, to allow a better today.