Discovering Partners, Generating Community, Connecting for Results
Team Building Day October 24, 2009 Fort Worth, Texas

The Imagine Movement

The Imagination Movement is a social movement inspired in the 1990’s by Imagine Chicago and now active globally. The core practice of the movement is Appreciative Inquiry, a strategy to reach into the world you want to impact and use that world’s language and experience to create a future that had only been imagined.

The Imagination Movement has been tracked to numerous countries and its powerful impact documented by programs in (at least) South Africa, India, Singapore, Australia, England, Scotland, Denmark, Canada, U.S., Chile, Sweden. The Imagination Movement is the name loosely applied to community-based groups that are intergenerational and cross cultural, that use Appreciative Inquiry as a context for learning about what matters in a community, and then get to work on it.

The process gets altered by each community but basically consists of the two steps [Imagine-Nation Texas Two Step]; that is, find out what could be possible by inquiring into the best of the past, use what’s best from the past to provide a safe, committed context, and create a future. At each step, expansion of ideas and individuals is accomplished by the practice of Appreciative Inquiry.

Imagine Chicago, the oldest and strongest Imagine city, lists these elements that are usually found in Imagine Movement communities: [the practice of] appreciative inquiry, asset-based community development, [a commitment to] learning communities, imagination as a resource for public good, [the link between] spirituality and leadership, [and] generative public dialogue that bridges difference.


Links:

http://www.imaginechicago.org/

http://www.imaginedallas.org

http://www.imagineindia.org.au/