By Nina Simon
In a culture that values productivity and busyness, it’s not easy to take time out to dream.
For years, I’ve used visioning as a tool to step away from the problems and projects right in front of me and imagine what I want to create 5 or 10 years in the future. Visioning is a technique I first learned about from Ari Weinzweig, founder of Zingerman’s Deli. It’s a tool the OF/BY/FOR ALL team uses to empower arts organizations around the world to begin a journey towards more equitable, community-centered work. At the 2023 SVCREATES Town Hall & Conference, I had the honor of inviting 100 Silicon Valley-based arts professionals to try visioning–and now we want to share this exercise with you.
The act of visioning is simple, but scary. You sit down, set a timer for 20 minutes, and write a vision of the future you want to create–your best possible version of what is happening 5 to 10 years from now. You write it in the first person, in present tense, as if you are there in the future excitedly sharing all the things you’re working on, accomplishing, and learning with your chosen community. You can write your vision as a journal entry from the future or as a conversation with a beloved colleague. The important part is to dream BIG–to include everything you want to see happen, no matter how implausible or impossible it seems today. This is your vision of the glorious future you want, and there’s no use in constraining your dreams.
This may sound exciting. It may sound terrifying. No matter what your emotional reaction to it, I invite you to take it seriously. This is not a woo-woo exercise. It’s a challenge to get clear on what really matters to you, so you can say yes to that path and no to all others. As we emerge from the pandemic, many organizations are like overgrown gardens of experiments attempted, goals raised and forgotten, plans rerouted. This messiness can make it difficult to get a clear sense of where you are heading next–let alone communicate it to colleagues, partners, and funders. When you vision, you imagine a specific, focused future. Do you want to create a thriving vegetable garden? A pollinator’s flower paradise, buzzing with life? Or perhaps a community garden shared with your neighborhood?
Picture yourself, 5 to 10 years from now. Maybe you are working at the same organization, or maybe you’ve moved on to a new opportunity. Wherever you imagine yourself, what kind of role do you want to play in your creative community? In your best possible scenario, what are you doing? Who else is involved? What’s the impact?
Set a timer and write. Don’t censor yourself. If an obstacle seems insurmountable, just write your way through it with a sentence like, “It was hard to figure out how to [build a youth-led board, give away 10,000 paintings, launch a food truck, etc.], but once we worked it out, things really started to click.” Keep writing. Put in everything you want to happen, and nothing you don’t.
If you have a team, I encourage you to try visioning with them. You can each write your own private vision, and then, when the timer dings, share what you wrote out loud with each other. This can feel vulnerable, but it is also often an energizing accelerant for change. At the SVCREATES Town Hall, two different teams shared that when they read their visions aloud to each other, they discovered startling similarities–similarities that made them feel more aligned, focused, and excited about their shared dreams.
Visioning helps us describe the future we want to make possible. When we have clarity on the destination we are trying to reach, we can focus. We can go boldly forward. We can build the big, beautiful creative communities of our dreams.
Nina Simon is an author and arts advocate who has been described as a “museum visionary” by Smithsonian Magazine for her community-based approach to design. She has wide-ranging experience as a former NASA engineer, exhibit designer, museum director, and founder of OF/BY/FOR ALL, a global nonprofit that helps civic and cultural organizations become more inclusive, relevant, and sustainable.
Nina is the best-selling author of The Participatory Museum (2010) and The Art of Relevance (2016). Her first novel, Mother-Daughter Murder Night, will be released by William Morrow in September 2023. Nina lives off the grid in the Santa Cruz mountains with her family.
