Sir Geoff Mulgan CBE is Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London. Prior to that he was Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation, between 2011 and the end of 2019. He was the first director of the think-tank Demos; and has been a reporter on BBC TV and radio. Geoff has a PhD in telecommunications and has been a visiting professor at London School of Economics (LSE) and Melbourne University. His latest books are Another World is Possible (2022) on reviving social and political imagination, Prophets at a Tangent: How Art Shapes Social Imagination (2023), and When Science Meets Power (2023).

In this session, which took place in May 2024, Geoff reflected on his career working top down in governments, bottom up in social and community projects, and as an academic making sense of the patterns. He talked about what he calls the ‘crisis of imagination’, the lack of good pathways to the future. He also shared ideas on how it can be addressed, whether within governments or through the work of social sciences and the arts.