How do we imagine the future? 

We are in a pause, a hiatus not of our own making, a time between worlds. We wonder when we will emerge from isolation and lockdown and whether the world as we knew it will be the same.

This week I have been making a new world of my own imagination. Filled with rich blues and greens, that image of the jewelled planet as seen from outer space. I am imagining it filled with clean air, seas teeming with fish swimming in unpolluted waters, birds and not so many planes flying overhead. Forests everywhere, animals valued for sharing this world with us.

I have been stitching jigsaw pieces of ocean and sky onto circles of blue and green. Gradually the orange of corona virus clusters fragmenting countries has given way to creating worlds and oceans and now the white space of emptiness as my thoughts expand into the ether. 

Circles within circles, overlapping, stitched together first with red thread, then blue and now white. These threads track my thoughts as I have journeyed through this time of isolation.

The fog of anxiety is clearing. I am adjusting. We are resilient. 

I believe that as creatives we are holding the world together while a new one is in creation. With our collective energy, we bear witness and hold hope. It is the one thing left in Pandora’s Box when all the evils escaped into the world. With hope we create and the build the world anew. Are you with me?