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USC Civic Imagination Project

To realize the full potential of our communities, build on our past, and chart paths forward, we need to be able to imagine what better worlds look like … even now, especially now. Responding to this imperative, the Civic Imagination Project activates people's visions for what a better tomorrow might look like as a necessary step to connecting with others and taking action to achieve real-world goals.

Over the last six years, our project team has built tools with people from all over the world, helping them build action plans to realize imagined solutions. We enable individuals and communities as they think creatively, connect with others in new ways and tackle challenging issues with imagination.

Much of the thinking and work on the Civic Imagination Project is done by members of the Civic Paths Group at the University of Southern California. The Civic Paths Group explores continuities between online participatory culture and civic engagement through outreach, creative work, research, and academic inquiry.

Support Provided By
A blank notebook lies splayed open on green and brown grass with a blue ballpoint pen resting on the lefthand-side page, under soft lighting with a blurry border
Imagining With Plants: Activating the Civic Imagination
Here are four activities from the Civic Paths' Civic Imagination group at USC to help place plants and nature — and the stories they inspire — at the center of our conversation to help enact real-world change.
White light trails spell the words WHAT IF? across a paved road that runs through a forested, green canopy with fallen leaves littering the shoulders.
In Conversation: An Experiment in Changing Our Thinking to Help Address the Climate Crisis
USC's Henry Jenkins and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats explore how imagining with plants might lead to more participatory, radically-democratic and sustainable futures — particularly at a time with a worsening climate crisis. Here's their conversation.
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