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Welcome to Emerging Futures -- Vol 201! Speculating on the Histories and Futures of the Newsletter...

Good morning relational becomings of an emerging belonging,
Summer is in full swing, and things are heating up everywhere.
Today is International Nelson Mandela Day, a day worth celebrating for a profoundly creative change-maker worth emulating in a world where there is still an overwhelming urgency for the creative struggles against racism, colonialism, and apartheid globally to continue.
Somehow, in writing this newsletter, we got pulled down into a wormhole of birthdays. And so we have two more we wish to mention:
Finally, it is also World Listening Day. A day that we love to celebrate every day (but especially this day). It is a day for active listening to the world around us. Check out the website for some great projects you can participate in and things you can try on your own. Our own small contribution to this is the type of “worldly listening” we proposed in Volume 199.
This week, we decided to do something different.
We are still in a reflective mood, having just passed two hundred newsletters. We wanted to give you more of an intimate behind-the-scenes look at both the history and how we write the newsletter. And as most of the newsletters begin as a conversation – really a series of conversations – it felt only fitting that we would record a conversation between the three of us on the newsletters.
This week, Jason, Andrew, and I hopped into the virtual world and talked about our individual and collective experiences of writing two hundred newsletters. It was a really exciting conversation that touched upon everything from the evolution of our approach to creativity, the importance of starting without a clear end in mind, and how our experimental practices and ongoing dialogues have shaped the newsletters. We go on to talk about the role of series in exploring complex topics, the politics of language, and the rhythms of the creative process. Then there is a fascinating digression into the topic of qualitative time (which will certainly now become a future series).
It's a longer and looser conversation than we have previously recorded, and we wanted to share with you in a lightly edited form, because in this form it gives you a sense of both how things evolved, and how we work. We hope that you enjoy it and that it gives you new insights into both the newsletter and creative processes in general.
If you have any problems, hit reply and we’ll do our best to help you out.
Enjoy!
Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason, Andrew, and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab
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