Nesta, the UK innovation agency for social good, is about “bringing together a range of experts and thinkers to address the defining issues facing the country”.

The focus of its work is innovation, and as such it put on its annual Future Signals event – all about “the signals we’re watching in 2024“, which were about the environment, digitisation and AI.

Out of this came a piece on Signals, Solarpunk & Sci-fi: How our imaginations can save the future. Here are a couple of excerpts:

If the trailers for some of this year’s most anticipated blockbusters are anything to go by, Hollywood holds a bleak outlook for the future. In cinemas this year we have, to name just a few, a Mad Max prequel, a Dune sequel, the latest from the Planet of the Apes, and a 2024 US Civil War – all showing a future marked by societal collapse, resource scarcity, and power struggles as humanity grapples with the dynamics of drastic change.

Mainstream movies and other art forms can tell us something about wider public sentiment; in this case, the dystopian-themed films correspond with reports of a national mood of pessimism and worry. But whilst Hollywood is trailing some of our worst fears, Nesta premiered Future Signals 2024, our annual look ahead to the innovations and ideas that could shape the world this year and beyond. Signals suggests that very different stories are possible.

When we looked at the big trends for the future, we didn’t find despondency, we found an international appetite for tackling society’s biggest challenges, reflecting a growing public focus on environmental sustainability and digital technology – and most importantly a belief that things don’t have to get worse, they can get better.

Some challenges, like the climate crisis, can feel insurmountably large. Others, like the ailments afflicting the NHS, seem frustratingly persistent. Future Signals features ideas that might help to address them, from literally out of this world solutions like space-based solar power to radically reimagining old practices, such as using the latest technology to allow patients to recuperate at home whilst being treated in “virtual” hospital wards.

Future Signals 2024 – Beam us down, Scotty: space solar power straight to Earth – YouTube

So if our Signals are slightly at odds with Hollywood’s calamitous vision of things to come, they do instead find common cause with an alternative creative vision: solarpunk. This emerging sci-fi subgenre projects a vision of the future where nature, technology and humanity operate in harmony. As Solarpunk Magazine puts it, “solarpunk stories are decidedly not dystopias”. Likewise, the big themes of Future Signals 2024 were the environment, digitalisation, technology and an optimistic view of the world we can shape…

Signals, Solarpunk & Sci-fi: How our imaginations can save the future

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