Protopia and Imagining the Future: What We Learned From Sarah Housley
We were delighted to welcome Sarah Housley to our London office last week for our latest With the Team event. Sarah’s talk invited us to pause, reflect, and reframe how we think about the future. Not as something fixed or out of reach, but as something we are all actively shaping, every day. Rather than defaulting to dystopian headlines or unrealistic utopian visions, Sarah introduced a more grounded and empowering concept: protopia.
Protopia is the idea that we build the future through small, incremental improvements over time.It’s achievable, conceivable and it’s got us thinking.
How our present shapes our view of the future
Sarah explored how our expectations of the future are deeply shaped by our present experiences. As Hermione Redford reflected, “We base our understanding of what the future will be on our present lives and world.”
This lens helps explain why visions of the future vary so widely across cultures, industries and even generations.
Pete Merritt built on this, recalling Sarah’s point that 20th-century sci-fi reveals more about how people felt about the future than what actually happened. This shows how fear, hope, and imagination shape narratives.
Protopia: small steps, collective progress
The concept of protopia resonated strongly across the team. Unlike utopia (perfect but unrealistic) or dystopia (deeply pessimistic), protopia focuses on practical progress; small steps that move us forward.
Elena Mosley summed this up perfectly, sharing how empowering it felt to realise that “we are all futurists”, capable of making incremental improvements both professionally and personally. Shane Lowes echoed this, noting how refreshing it was to think about the future in a way that isn’t defined by extremes, but by steady, achievable change.
This idea also sparked wider reflection on collaboration. Sarah highlighted how collective brains coming together play a vital role in improvement, progress isn’t about one perfect idea, but many ideas evolving together. Ryan Miller said he was reminded that “dilution of ideas isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”
Optimism, agency and shared futures
Perhaps the most powerful takeaway from Sarah’s talk was the renewed sense of optimism and agency. In a world where the future can often feel overwhelming or out of our control, the session was a reminder that curiosity, tools and perspective matter.
As Ryan put it:
– The future doesn’t need to be negative if you have the tools and curiosity to help shape it.
Sally Tarbit captured the emotional core of the session, highlighting how hopeful it felt to be reminded that shaping the future isn’t beyond us. Sarah closed with a quote that stayed with many of us:
Talk, loudly and in detail, about the future you want. You can’t manifest what you don’t share.
Looking Forward
Sarah’s talk gave us space to reflect, re-energise and rethink our relationship with the future. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It doesn’t need to be fully defined. But with openness, optimism and collective effort, it can keep getting better.
A huge thank you to Sarah for such an inspiring session and to the team for the thoughtful conversations that followed. We’re already looking forward to the next With the Team event.
