Another World is Possible
by Geoff Mulgan
(Hurst, £17.56)

GEOFF MULGAN, UCL professor, former director of the strategy unit at 10 Downing Street, (1997-2004) draws on the arts, social sciences, philosophy and history to confront today’s world where so many of us desperately want transformational social change, yet are resigned to fatalism.

Powerful interests, he argues, deliberately resist, confuse, disrupt any trends they find threatening.  

In order to bring about change, Mulgan urges us to find new ways of seeing that will prompt new ways of doing, and by using our creative imagination, a wider range of options open up.

There are compelling historical references to the moments in history when this re-emerging of collective imagination took place, where new ideas became part of the furniture of everyday life.

Understanding why some ideas survive and prosper means looking at how they are both pushed by their advocates and pulled by the needs of society.

Embedding a new idea is almost certain to require agitation, campaigns and disruption.

In the 1980s, I, along with thousands of other women, took part in the demonstrations at Greenham Common, where many times we formed a human chain around the nine miles of Greenham’s fence and pinned up peace images, most created by our children.

Thatcher’s reaction, like so many governments before and since, was to change the law, making it a criminal act to place  pictures on the Greenham fence. Consequently, the police toughened their response.

The present government is doing likewise to quash climate change activists. Making a noise on a demonstration could become illegal.

Chanting: “What do we want? The right to choose. When do we want it? Now!” could send you straight to the jailhouse.

Mulgan makes detailed analysis of past, present and future activism, how we can take action, and the role arts, music, literature, song, creativity helps by enabling people to see the world through other eyes, reigniting social and political issues.

There are no clear answers as to what works, but the structural analysis of necessary components required to assure change makes fascinating reading.

This book is quite simply a plea that we must keep pushing back boundaries and, as both individuals and members of pressure groups, this means using our creative imaginations.

Although I didn’t agree with everything I read, it got me thinking about change, and the possibilities around actions and active participation.

There’s no such thing as never, no such thing as always. Another world is possible.