Be Realistic, Demand The Impossible
That was one of the students’ slogans, borrowed from Che Guevara and shared through graffiti and posters, during the riots in Paris, May 1968. Now it pops up again. Not the riots but the passion for the impossible.
By The Empty Square
Photo: Jill Heyer/Unsplash
Be realistic, demand the impossible was one of the students’ slogans, borrowed from Che Guevara and shared through graffiti and posters, during the riots in Paris, May 1968.*
Now it pops up again. Not the riots, but the passion for the impossible.
In Mexico City, Laboratorio para la Ciudad (Laboratory for the City) was established in 2013 on request by the newly elected mayor. “The idea of the impossible is where we start. We will imagine the impossible school. The impossible economy. The impossible family. The impossible treaty. The impossible planet. Our collective work is to make all of this impossible possible.”
The aim of the laboratory is to invent new models of participation and governance, finding out how to democratize imagination and possibility. Though the lab is, according to its leader, “definitely seen as the weird department” by the rest of the administration, its work has an impact and is respected.
What if your city had a Department of Imagination?
Isn’t it time to repeat the slogan, maybe with a twist: Be realistic, do the impossible - ?
*The content of this note is taken from Rob Hopkins’ book From What Is to What If – Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want (London: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019), p.156ff