Unlocking social imagination: reawakening the public sector’s capacity to transform

Posted on: 17 June 2025 by Mark Swift in Blog

Across the world, public institutions face crises that defy conventional responses. From the aftermath of COVID-19 to the climate emergency, from widening inequalities to eroding public trust - today’s challenges expose the limits of traditional policymaking. In this moment, we need not just better answers, but better questions - and a collective reawakening of our capacity to imagine fairer, more sustainable, and inclusive futures.

Imagination is not a luxury. It is a vital human faculty that enables us to think beyond current constraints, envision better societies, and create lasting change. Every breakthrough - social, political, or scientific - begins with an idea, often sparked by an individual but realised through shared vision and collective effort.

Neuroscience is beginning to demystify imagination, revealing four interrelated forms:

• Reproductive - which recalls past experiences.
• Creative - which drives insight and innovation.
• Perceptive - which shapes how we interpret the world.
• Cultural - which reflects shared stories, beliefs, and traditions.

Though individually experienced, these forms are deeply shaped by our social and cultural environments. When imagination is shared, it becomes something more expansive: social imagination.

Social imagination is more than the sum of individual imaginings. It is a collective capacity - our shared ability to envision and shape better futures. It asks not “What’s likely?” but “What’s desirable?” - and invites us to build toward that together. By expanding our sense of the possible, social imagination enables us to reimagine governance, public services, care, and community life.

Sociologist Professor Ruth Levitas describes utopian thinking as a method for interrogating the present and envisioning alternatives. Similarly, Professor Geoff Mulgan - a leading thinker on public innovation and former CEO of Nesta - defines social imagination as a bridge between aspiration and action: a shared skill that can renew public purpose and possibility. He explores this idea in Another World is Possible, where he argues for rebuilding our collective imaginative capacities. Social imagination is not just about envisioning what could be, but about harnessing “the power of that vision to catalyse action today.” It is cultivated through storytelling, dialogue, prototyping, and co-creation - a practice we must deliberately nurture.

Public institutions are often constrained by short-termism, rigid structures, and risk aversion - conditions that breed institutional fatalism: the belief that transformative change is improbable. Yet history shows otherwise. Universal healthcare in the UK, South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution, and the civil rights movement in the US were all imaginative acts - initiated by those who dared to propose new visions of wellbeing, governance, and justice. These weren’t merely reforms; they were born of expanded belief in what could be.

Today’s challenge isn’t a lack of ideas or data - it’s what Mulgan calls an “imaginary crisis”: a breakdown in our shared capacity to visualise meaningful alternatives. We have ideas, but too few that open space for bold change. Social imagination shifts us from managing decline to cultivating possibility. It helps public institutions reclaim their role not just as service providers, but as stewards of shared futures.

At Wellbeing Enterprises CIC, we’ve seen the power of imagination when communities are trusted to lead. We’ve supported people to define what a good life looks like - and co-created strategies to bring those visions to life. In Halton, we convened over 50 stakeholders to reimagine early intervention for children at risk of behavioural challenges. Families and professionals used storytelling and creative tools to co-design pathways of support, drawing on Levitas’s Utopia as Method. This led to improved access to parental training and emotional literacy programmes, GP information resources, police awareness of exploitation risks, and the inclusion of children’s and families’ voices in service innovation and policy recommendations.

We also led the UK arm of Ashoka’s Reimagining Community Health project, working with Positive Health International (Netherlands and Belgium) and Soignons Humains (France). Together, we supported health professionals to shift from treatment-led to prevention-focused, community-rooted approaches. Practitioners are now embedding these models into local strategies. Meanwhile, we’re training leaders to apply social imagination in service design and decision-making and producing resources for policymakers and practitioners. These efforts show that social imagination is not abstract - it is tangible, structured, and catalytic.

Embedding imagination into public systems requires deliberate structures and supportive cultures. Key conditions that help social imagination thrive include:

• Creating adaptive spaces - such as Living Labs or Imaginariums, where citizens and professionals can safely explore and refine ideas.
• Fostering psychologically safe workplaces - where compassion and kindness unlock creativity and learning.
• Building imaginative capabilities - through systems thinking, visualisation techniques, and tools like De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
• Collectively visualising desired futures - using creative inquiry and tools like vision boards to articulate shared goals.
• Encouraging experiential learning - through storytelling, simulation, and prototyping that build adaptive mindsets.
• Involving citizens as co-creators - ensuring that policies reflect diverse experiences (Citizens UK is a strong example).
• Celebrating bold thinking and curiosity - embedding learning cultures that embrace complexity and uncertainty through relational approaches, as exemplified by the Human Learning Systems
•  Supporting experimentation - such as the UK Cabinet Office’s £100 million Test and Learn initiative, which enables teams to tackle complex challenges iteratively.

This isn’t a peripheral activity. It represents a fundamental shift in how institutions think and work - making imagination integral, not incidental to public purpose.

Social imagination lives between us - in our conversations, communities, institutions, and movements. It is not given; it is built. In uncertain times, imagination is not escapism - it is how we orient ourselves toward hope, creativity, and justice. By reconnecting the public sector to its imaginative capacities, we can move beyond survival and begin shaping futures that reflect the values we truly care about. What might be possible if every public institution treated imagination not as optional - but as essential to its mission?

Image credit: Bhautik Patel on Unsplash