Designing Hope
By Sarah Housley
Friday 26th September
6pm-7.30pm
£5 or pay what you can
Book here https://thenose.org/products/author-talk-designing-hope

When did we stop dreaming of a better future?

What happened to the sci-fi golden age of the 1950s, when futurism flourished as a discipline and drove innovation?

As a society, either we struggle to imagine something good for the times to come or we fail to picture any future at all. Our world is in polycrisis; we face climate breakdown, societal fracturing, governmental collapse, war, and rising inequality.

The exciting outcomes we dreamed of, from the space race to the wonder material plastic, have brought contingent problems of their own. We haven’t yet developed mainstream and accessible new narratives to replace these failures, and if you ask someone to imagine ‘the future’, they’ll probably still picture flying cars.

Designing Hope resets expectations. Through the lens of four emerging futures, Sarah Housley shows us visions of hope that inspire action and critical thinking about how we’ll live in the decades to come. 

‘We need some adventure in the fight for a workable future--some stuff to be aiming at and dreaming about. This book will fire up your imagination!’ — Bill McKibben

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Housley is a design futurist and trend forecaster, and the former Head of Consumer Tech at WGSN. She has consulted for numerous brands on topics ranging from the future of water, to the changing role of pets within the home, and our future relationships with robots, and spoken internationally at events including Dutch Design Week. She has contributed to BBC Radio 4 and CGTN, as well as print and digital media including The Globe and Mail, South China Morning Post, FT Weekend, The Guardian, Dezeen and British Vogue. She teaches Futures & Innovation at the London College of Fashion.

Hear Sarah talking about the book:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjHWfbi0tuQ

Designing Hope
By Sarah Housley
Published by Indigo, September 2025
Price £14.99

Find more out about the book.
https://theindigopress.com/product/designing-hope-visions-to-shape-our-future/