Power of your Imagination Workshop and Ideas

A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive… Einstein

My Imagination Workshop

I have created a workshop, though I do hate the term ‘workshop’ as it is neither work, nor a shop. Instead, it is a show about the power of your imagination. Where I speak, perform, introduce, my audience to their imagination and ask them to try to discover what it is that drives them.

What are your passions? What are your dreams? What are your fires of fuel?

Because, I know one thing that is true for many people, it is not sitting at a desk and pounding at a keyboard for the benefit of an ungrateful hierarchy.

Maybe it is just me, but I want us to soar!

I am a father and I struggle watching my children’s minds become mushed from their wonderful dreamlike youth to a more dejected and troubled teen. Because, for me, and for others in the world, getting older does not mean you should let go of your dreams.

Your dreams are your link to you.

So, my show (workshop) is about reconnecting to your imagination, and I preface this with giving an insight into all the brilliant minds that we have had in our history who have held onto their dreams and given us a slice of their magic.

If we did not have these dreamers and doers, we would not have Sgt Pepper, The Magic Flute, St Paul’s Cathedral, The Dictionary or Hollywood.

I use influential artists and history-makers to convince my audience that it is entirely possible to follow your own path and not the one that is being laid out before you.

Just think what it would have been like had John Lennon slumbered away in a warehouse and not taken the plunge into his imagination.

Too many of us are told, and my experience of school is exactly this, that we can’t do something because of some reason or another – SOME EXCUSE. After expressing an interest in theatre, television and film, I was told by my school careers adviser that I had no chance of doing that. A few years later I worked in the theatre and then got a job with the BBC. Ever since I have acted and appeared in a film and worked on location sets; I have created my own plays and projects and have stories produced. So much for that Mr Know-it-all!

If that is the message, we are giving each new generation, then what chance of making the world a better place? All it takes to change something is someone to think it, if that is followed through who knows what the end result could be. We need change, and our imaginations are where all that starts.

Dr Mark Vernon wrote an interesting piece for The Idler; when individuals, organisations or countries fall into a time of crisis they lose the power to imagine. The feeling is of being trapped and unable to see any way out of the situation. This leads to panic, perhaps breeds fear and ultimately can be disastrous, causing decisions to be made which won’t work.

There are many organisations in the UK with this problem, one of which is an organisation I work for and I imagine most county councils are in the same boat. This is also relevant to the Brexit debacle. But it also happens in our own lives with stress and anxiety, times of depression.

His article highlighted and gave strength to my own philosophy of the power of our imaginations and how important it is to our well-being and our future.

Logic only gets us so far, and only shows us what has been; imaginations can take us further and show us what could be. I would rather live for the future, than to be reminded of the past. Especially when most leaders of our current world do not acknowledge previous mistakes and plough forward with no thought or imagination.

So, my workshop is just about ready to go; to inspire and encourage; to lead and to embrace and to do all of the things our government should be doing for our people instead of bashing them down with a brick. I hope to open up minds to the ideas within our heads, and to explore the possibility to make them a reality.

After all, there is nothing wrong with playing, that is what shapes our future.