This is not a new book, having been published in 2019, so I am probably not the first person to tell you this book is great, but… this book is great! The author, Will Storr, takes a scientific approach to storytelling. By this, I mean he has extensively researched what the research literature is telling us about what makes a good, compelling story, drawing on diverse fields but especially psychology. It started as a successful course for aspiring writers but thankfully Storr has made all this learning more easily accessible through The Science of Storytelling.
Its origins as a course are evident throughout the book. It is clear, it is engaging, it is packed with examples that illustrate the points, and it is exceptionally practical and useful. I initially listened to the audiobook, read by Storr himself, and found it entertaining in a way I have not found any other non-fiction book – his knowledge, his passion, and his belief in the message he’s communicating comes through in abundance and just makes you want to keep listening. I especially enjoyed his renditions of the many quotes from literary works throughout.
The true testament to the practicality of The Science of Storytelling is that once I had finished the audiobook I went straight out and bought a physical copy. My intention is to re-read it and make a whole load of notes. Of particular use is the Appendix, titled ‘The Sacred Flaw’, which is a step-by-step method for writing a novel – an ambition I have harboured since my early teens.
What I did not expect was for this book to help me improve my understanding of the nature of models. Talking about understanding characters and their motivations, Storr draws on the Theory of the Mind, which is our ability to understand how people perceive the world in different ways. Storr describes how we all create our own models of reality, which are not truth but controlled hallucinations. The best stories emerge from characters being faced with the wrongness of their model – the lie of it – and are forced to change as its usefulness has diminished. For a clear and extreme example of this happening to a character, think of the Truman Show. How can we ever build a perfect model of reality when even our own perceptions and understanding of that real world are themselves an imperfect model?
The Science of Storytelling is essential reading if you write fiction or harbour any ambition to write fiction. However, even if you do not write fiction but are involved in any form of science communication, I implore you to read this book. You will not regret it and it will help you craft compelling narratives and stories to engage and enthuse people with science and research. It sits well within a growing body of work that draws on fields like psychology and behavioural insights to make communication and storytelling more effective, such as How to Save the World by Katie Patrick.
Finally, if you are modeller read this book. It will help you appreciate the cognitive biases we all have and how these shape our perceptions of reality. In all good stories change happens, the resolution is achieved, when someone is able to escape from their own personal model land. This is a useful metaphor for escaping from our numerical model lands too.
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Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
Science thinking different: Imagination as a skill – Numerical models – Game-based approaches.
Hello, and welcome to July’s edition of the Imagination Engines. In this newsletter, I share my latest news and the interesting things I have found about the use of imagination in STEM.
This month I have been thinking a lot about the the tactile, analogue world and how it sets alight our imaginations and in this newsletter I share my thoughts. There are two Inspiring Interactions about individuals who demonstrate the power of craft and tactile in science communication – geoscientist and science-artist Lucia Perez-Diaz and science creator and YouTube star Simon Clark – and I review the book The Revenge of Analog by David Sax. Finally, I introduce my new personal making project, Project Prospero.
As you may know, I do all my science communication in addition to, and outside of, a full-time job, working my contracted hours over four days to give me a day to run FloodSkinner. This includes my workshops, the YouTube channel, and of course, the Imagination Engine newsletter. In the last month I have been offered two (very exciting) opportunities that will take up much of my time and headspace until the start of 2026 at least and consequently I can no longer commit to bringing you this newsletter every month. I’ll do my best, but it may not be every month or may be shorter.
It would mean a lot to me if you could support this newsletter. If you can share it, either by sending it to someone you think might be interested or giving me a signal boost on BlueSky and LinkedIn, it would help more than you could possibly imagine. Please, also subscribe below.
Crafting Connections: Science Communication in a Digital Age
I listen to the radio to help me focus on work. The station I often choose is called Absolute 80s and essentially plays the same ‘Best of the 80s’ CD collection on shuffle every day as far as I can tell. During the adverts, a narrator beckons me to join “Real Dating for Real People”. No thank you, I am a happily married man, I reply, and besides, if I was looking I’d be looking for a dating agency just for an imaginary girlfriend. The station’s ident, I think now voiced by Julian Barratt, then tells me “Absolute 80s, where real music matters” before they play the theme from the Ghostbusters film.
I’ve always found the way advertisers use language fascinating. For example, around about when Michael Gove unhelpfully spouted “People have had enough of experts” ushering in the erosion of trust in evidence-based approaches, toothpaste commercials transitioned from phrases like “scientifically formulated” and “chosen by experts” to “pro-expert”, and eventually to “professionally formulated”. The term professional seemingly became more palatable than scientific and expert – I even tried using this on my online profiles, labelling myself as a ‘professional researcher’ rather than as a scientist.
It would seem today that ‘real’ is an favoured buzzword for advertisers. They are usually well informed about the zeitgeist and they are tapping into a genuine desire for experiences that are genuine, authentic, and human. The digital world has transformed the way we live – and artificial/abominable intelligence (AI) is transforming it again – yet this yearning for connection, for authenticity, for realness, will always win through. But in our digital and AI dominated world, what is ‘real’?
Objects are real.
In The Revenge of Analog by David Sax, he described this as “digital is the peak of convenience, analog is the peak of experience.” Sax places this in the context of the renaissance of vinyl records, sales of which have increased year on year for the last 18 years – he highlights a preference for the richer sound quality and being able to hold, and own, an object – a tangible, tactile thing. There is also a connection here – the music is played live, the very vibrations carving the grooves into a master that is then used to press the records, whose grooves return the original vibrations into music. Thus, a record has an echo of the liveness of the performance. You can run your fingers over the surface of a record, feel the grooves on your skin, and be connected with its creator. Contrast that to a CD or digital file. They are just data transformed multiple times and estranged from their creators.
In the realm of games, there has also been a resurgence for analogue, with the market for board games set to grow from $21bn in 2023 to $41bn in 2029. This isn’t at the expense of digital games either, whose market value far exceeds this and also continues to grow.
There is a strong desire for people to make and build. I love Warhammer – I do not play that often but I like to build and paint their model kits. Despite competition from digital gaming, and predictions 3D printing will kill their business model, parent company Games Workshop are posting year-on-year increases in sales and profits. The doomsayers wanting to write the company’s eulogy fail to understand the enduring desire for the tactile – to feel and make things with your own hands and the joy that gives you. Some people call it the Ikea Effect. To me it’s obvious, for example, you cannot replicate the feeling of building a model airplane kit by building a digital model, or even printing out solid components of resin. The experiences are entirely different.
Craft is real.
Recently as I was wasting time in the evening by browsing YouTube I was reminded of the simple pleasure of seeing someone who is very good at their job being very good at their job. I watched Sarah Natochenny, the voice actor for Ash Ketchum on the Pokemon cartoon, being asked to improvise voices for characters she has only just seen. I love watching her facial expressions as she processes, imagines, then embodies the character, giving them not just a voice but a whole personality and back story. She has a craft, she is good at it, and its delightful to see her expressing that craft and me then thinking ‘wow, there’s no way I could do that’.
We will always be delighted by talented people showing off their talent and seeing something incredible being done for real. Even though Harry Palmer will always be my favourite spy, I do enjoy the Bond films. A huge part of their appeal is the action and the real stunts. When you see the Hornet X car do a mid-air corkscrew across a river in The Man with the Golden Gun it is because someone actually did that – it was planned on a computer and there is special FX trickery but ultimately, someone got in that car and drove it up the ramp. This was a rule for Bond films – the action was as authentic as possible. This was regrettably forgotten in the resultingly awful, CGI-riddled Die Another Day, something which will have been noted on Bond’s B107.
Both together are super-real.
The first Wallace & Gromit film, A Grand Day Out, was released, rather terrifyingly, in 1989. It used a painstakingly detailed process of stop motion animation and clay models to bring characters to life and tell the story. Each clay model was sculpted and manipulated by hand – a thing, an object, produced and controlled by someone good at their craft. Over Christmas 2024, the latest instalment of the story, Vengeance Most Fowl, became the BBC’s most viewed scripted show since 2002 at a time when live TV viewership is declining. Although now augmented with model digital effects, the heart of its production, and its lasting appeal, is that craft and the things it creates.
I don’t want you to mistake this as a false-nostalgia fuelled rant against the use computer animations and CGI. I love those too and my favourite shows as a kid included the vanguard of these, Reboot and Insektors. The point I am trying to make is that there is a still a space for hand-crafted shows and films to cut through – Recently, the restored 1983 pilot of the original Thomas the Tank Engine show, made using real models of trains and landscapes, has been viewed over 1.6m times in one month on YouTube.
Realness in Science Communication.
Good science communication connects people to science and in particular to the scientists involved. People want to see the ‘realness’ of science, experiencing it in a genuine and authentic way. They want to know the stories of real scientists behind it.
My specialism in science communication has been game-based approaches at festival-style events. The sort of place where you get given a small 3x3m space, a trestle table, and present some form of tabletop activity. I’m probably best known for virtual reality activities in this spaces, such as Flash Flood! and Humber in a Box. There was an appeal for VR in the pre-pandemic era, which I was purposely tapping into but my bet would be this is nowhere near as strong now as it was back then as the novelty has worn off. However, other activities like the EmRiver mini-flume and AR Interactive Sandbox have a timeless popularity owing to their tactile, hands-on approach. If I was doing similar work these days, I’d be focussing on my physical demo work and storytelling, for example Earth Arcade: The Forest.
Science is a craft. It is not easy and it needs years of training, mentorship, and practice to master. We often forget this. Like any craft, people want to see scientists being good at science. In our efforts to make science sharable and understandable we should not lose sight of also needing to amaze people into saying ‘wow, there’s no way I could that’. This may seem counter-intuitive because part of the role of a science communicator is to inspire people to be scientists, but I think this is where inspiration comes from – if I was younger and was better at doing voices, I might instead watch Sarah’s video and say ‘wow, that’s so awesome I want to be able to do that’.
Science communication becomes really special when someone is able to bring together their craft for science and another craft. Sam Illingworth is a scientist and poet and a science-poet. Rolf Hut is scientist and a maker and a science MacGyver. Iris Van Zelst is a scientist and games developer and science-games developer. There is a growing movement of scientists expressing their crafts and research through science-art, including these examples from former colleagues at the University of Hull I had the pleasure of writing about.
As AI becomes more embedded in real-life, as every YouTube thumbnail or LinkedIn ‘thought leader’ relies on increasingly samey AI generated visual slop, and as online writing becomes ever more generic and unimaginative, people will increasing seek a connection to the authentic, the genuine, the real. It might not seem so now, but the desire for tactile objects and demonstrable craft will surge in the future. Science communicators, hold your nerve.
Inspiring Interactions – Lucia Perez-Diaz
Lucia Perez-Diaz is just simply multi-talented. You could describe her a Geoscientist. She has a PhD from Royal Holloway, works as a researcher, has an impressive scientific publication record, and practices geoscience professionally. As an Earth Scientist, of the hard rock geology variety, Lucia specialises in understanding the processes of plate tectonics, describing herself as a detective using clues and computer models to recreate the way the Earth may have been in the long, distant past.
She is also a freelance illustrator and an incredible artist. She has a very distinctive and aesthetically pleasing style that she describes a “fun and whimsical”. Much of what she creates is made using papercut methods and even when her art is digital, whether that’s the beautiful illustrations for the game QUARTETnary or in her book How the Earth Works, it still bears that hand-crafted style. This is why her work appeals so much, it has a tactile quality, it looks like you could pick it up and run your fingers along the edges of each cut piece of paper – like a vinyl record, it is a medium that provides a direct connection between the audience and the creator.
Finally, you could also describe her as a writer and storyteller. She called herself a detective and in How the Earth Works she uses this as a device to draw the reader through the book. The book itself is aimed at children to inspire them with geoscience and learn about plate tectonics, but really it is her own story of investigating the deep past of the planet that she is inviting the reader to join her in. Recently, she has also turned her talents to science-journalism, joining the press team for the European Geoscience Union General Assembly, covering the themes of the conference including gender, AI, and ethics.
I asked Lucia a few questions about imagination and what it means to her work:
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Much of what we do as Earth Scientists relies on imagination. We imagine processes we can’t directly see, and times we can’t travel to. Science, to me, is built on curiosity—and curiosity naturally leads us to create new ideas, to imagine. For me, science, imagination, and creativity are deeply intertwined.
As an artist, imagination plays the obvious role in the creative process, but also in figuring out how to communicate science in ways that resonate with people who may have different perspectives, interests, or relationships with it. It’s about finding new entry points into scientific ideas.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
One thing I started doing a few years ago that really helps keep me creatively fit is taking on projects that are outside my comfort zone. Last year, for example, I created a series of illustrations featuring eight different characters based on various lipids.
“Take cholesterol and design a character inspired by its molecular structure and characteristics” — it doesn’t get much weirder than that! At times I regretted agreeing to it, but it pushed me to think in new ways, and I was really happy with the final result.
Some of these experiments never make it to social media — sometimes because I’m not allowed to share them, other times because they don’t fit my usual content — but they absolutely help keep my imagination active.
What are you currently working on that you would like to shout about?
Following my first book How the Earth Works, I’ve been developing ideas for new books — which I can’t talk about just yet, but I’m very excited about!
Alongside that, throughout 2024 and 2025, I’ve been working on a print series called Adventures in Time. It explores what it might be like to travel through different geologic periods. Right now, I’m working on a piece inviting travellers to the Paleogene—where you can climb Mount Everest while it’s still easy! (The Himalayas only began forming around 50 million years ago, so Earth’s tallest mountain was just a hill back then.)
Inspiring Interactions – Simon Clark
Simon Clark is one of the most successful science communicators on YouTube. His channel, @SimonClark, currently has over 644,000 subscribers and his videos regularly amass hundreds of thousands of views. Although his channel is now focussed on promoting climate literacy it started 15 years ago as a vlog about his experiences as a state-educated student attending University of Oxford. This was significant because Oxford and Cambridge have traditionally been a space for privately-educated students – even today where less than 7% of students are privately educated they make up 30% of student intake at these universities, and historically this has led to a disproportionate under-representation of state-educated citizens in important roles (e.g., 65% of senior judges are privately-educated). It’s clear that his representation of the state-educated voice in that arena resonated with many people.
What I have found inspiring about Simon is how he has managed re-invent and evolve his channel throughout his career. From that original vlog, through his time doing a PhD at the University of Exeter, to going full-time afterwards, and now focussing on climate literacy. He has adapted and grown with his audience whilst remaining true to himself and the content he wants to make and feels is important. Recently, he has been open about struggling with YouTube’s algorithm and the threat that poses to his livelihood – this led to another re-invention and the incorporation of some physical models into his videos. Simon makes these by hand and they are beautiful and he has been rewarded with millions of views. It’s imagination, it’s craft, and it’s realness – all the things I think people yearn for.
I’m also inspired by Simon as he is living my dream in many ways. He gets to be creative, share knowledge, and inspire people to learn every single day. He has already achieved my ambition and written a book (with an excellent audiobook version read by Simon himself). Like me, he’s a big gaming and Warhammer fan and successfully brings these into his work (seriously, check out his awesome Hawaiian Orks). When I put together videos for my YouTube channel, I looked to Simon’s for ideas – how can I put it together, how do I tell the story, how can I film this? Simon also co-hosted a brilliant podcast How to Make a Science Video with Sophie Ward where they chatted to other science creators. It is so jammed with useful insights and ideas that I highly recommend you listen if you want to make science videos.
I asked Simon some questions about imagination and his work.
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Imagination is vital to me for two reasons. Firstly, YouTube is such a crowded marketplace that anyone not being imaginative in how they present their work risks being crowded by any number of content creators making things by the book. By making things that no one has ever made before, you stand out in a competitive niche. But more than that, and this is the second reason, it’s deeply fulfilling. I would never dream of referring to myself as an artist, but I think there is a part of me that clamours to express itself via art. Making videos is of course itself an art form, but trying to innovate and ask “what could I do here that’s unique” provides another level of artistic fulfilment.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
I firmly believe that in order to create art you must consume art, and so I’m almost constantly hunting for new stimuli in the form of videos, podcasts, ideas, films, games, but particularly music. I’m one of those people who absolutely rinses their Spotify subscription. I think being exposed to new ideas in one medium – such as music – makes you question preconceptions and biases you have in other media forms. And doing that is the first step to creating something innovative. Which is the other key component – in order to create… you need to create! So I try to do something creative, whether that’s painting or singing or writing or videomaking, every day.
What are you currently working on that you would like to shout about?
I’m in the very early stages of a mammoth video that’s a sequel of sorts to my tiny Earth video. I can’t say much, but it’s going to be big in scale and involve very small models. And trains.
Reading: The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why they Matter by David Sax
I heard about this book whilst reading Rob Hopkin’s From What is to What if and whilst I was thinking about the importance of real, tactile things to imagination. I immediately knew from the title that I had to read (listen) to it. The book is an exploration of the resurgence of seemingly obsolete analogue formats despite many proclamations to their ultimate demise – think ‘vinyl is dead’ or ‘print is dead’.
Unlike some of the other books I have read – including those I have summarised previously – it does not delve it into the science and psychology of why analogue things are so appealing to people. Although I would have loved to have a more detailed exploration of these topics, that’s not the purpose of the book. It is a book about business and that does not make it any less interesting or worthwhile. The ‘why they matter’ is not quantified, it is qualified through the eyes of people who have learned to make money in areas others have discarded as ‘obsolete’.
It is a narrative told through lived experiences. Author, David Sax, travelled extensively to meet those at the forefront of these movements and tells their inspirational stories. These include Nicola Baldini and Marco Pagni who saved the brand and factories of the famous Italian Farrania camera film company after it closed in 2011, reintroducing production in 2022, and Ben Castanie and Aaron Zack who founded Toronto’s famous and immensely successful board game café, Snakes and Lattes. Success stories from the places most had written off.
A phrase that stuck out for me, and a theme Sax returns to often, is that digital represents the peak of convenience, where analogue is the peak of experience. Sometimes this is literal, for example, to a receptive ear the sound quality afforded by a vinyl record is superior to that afforded by a streaming service. In other examples, it is how an object allows its owner to communicate something about themselves – being seen reading a Kindle on the train does not let you show off your intellectual reading material like a book cover does. Making notes in a Moleskin notebooks lets everybody else in the café know about how terrible creative you are. This reminds me of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why – Apple’s ‘why’ is not to sell tech, it’s to sell a way of life. The analogue pioneers are tapping into that same energy.
Speaking of Apple, Sax covers the popularity and success of their 534 physical stores in the Revenge of Retail. You can buy Apple products online, from your own home, and often at cheaper prices too. Yet, their stores are busy and profitable. It is irrational. And this is where the limits of digital are found – people are not algorithms and we often act irrationally. This is behavioural psychology root of the value-action gap that influences the uptake of environmental actions.
Ultimately, for me, in this dawning age of AI, this is a book of hope. I have tried hard to not be an AI contrarian but as my social media feeds – especially LinkedIn – become full of posts and images of the same form and style, increasingly descending into the uncreative slop AI promises us, I have become more and more despondent and angry. No matter the value of the content, my brain is beginning to subconsciously reject anything that looks slightly AI generated. I want to see true creativity, people’s true thoughts, and skilful art and design. The Revenge of Analog tells me I am not alone and people will return to those things that are real and human.
Project Prospero: Part 1
I have been a fan of the Warhammer genre of games for a very long-time. It started with Advanced Heroquest and exploded when I came across issue 166 of White Dwarf in the local Tates shop. It was October 1993, I was young, and there was a free Space Marine model on the cover celebrating the release of the 2nd edition of Warhammer 40,000, the grim-dark sci-fiction fantasy tabletop wargame. That Space Marine was my first Warhammer model and progressed me on from gateway-drug of Airfix model airplanes.
Despite years of “you’ll grow out of it”, Warhammer is still a huge part of my life and who I am. I’ve never played that often, and barely play at all these days, but I love to build the kits and paint the models. It’s the narrative and storyline that fascinated me as a kid, and still does. The fictional universe is deliberately a sandbox for creating your own stories and tales, despite what some of the toxic fanboys in the hobby might tell you about immutable ‘lore’. However, I have found my enthusiasm waning recently and I think this is because I have stop using the models to tell stories. I need a new project.
I have an overly ambitious idea for a Warhammer trainset – a fusion of peak geekdom I could only surpass if I played with it in cosplay (let’s not rule this out). N-gauge is tiny, teeny trains, and Legions Imperialis is tiny, teeny Warhammer. Not quite the same scale but close enough. I love working with this scale as it feels like building model kits of model kits, it’s all very meta. The theme of this trainset will be the Burning of Prospero, a tragic event that occurred prior to the Horus Heresy that pitted two of the Emperor’s gene/warp-crafted sons and their Legions of super-human Space Marines against one another. This will allow me to build a board showing the beautiful city of Tizca and have a variety of models to place around it.
This will be a slowly building and evolving project. As I go, I plan to share some of fiction I create to bring the models to life. Stay tuned for future updates!
About this Newsletter
I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.
Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
Welcome to the April edition of Imagination Engines. My month ahead is going to busy getting ready for the European Geoscience Union General Assembly – I am attending as part of my day job this year whilst also doing my usually Games for Geoscience bits. To get the full lowdown on this year’s (unofficial) EGU Games Day, scroll down the Gaming Environments newsletter at the end of this newsletter.
Building Blocks of Environmental Communication
I’m not the sort of person who starts a project by doing loads of preparation and extensive planning. My neurodivergent brain much prefers to dive right in, try things out, and figure out what works along the way. I think this is quite common with ADHDers, making us well suited to things that require flexibility and rapid ingenuity but less suited to strategic thinking. It is a double edged sword for an academic. On the one-hand, the heuristic mindset and approach is a blessing for experimenting but can often leave you lacking the theoretical framework in which to place and define your work.
My science communication journey started in 2015 at the first Hull Science Festival. Back then I was running a hacked version of my model of the Humber Estuary that allowed people to change sea level in it. It was the idea of my then boss, Prof Tom Coulthard but it was my job to make and demonstrate it. In the 10+ years since, I have gained a lot of experience in science and environmental communication, trying out lots of ideas and exploring a shed load more. Surely, there’s plenty of knowledge stored in my head that would be useful to share with others?
This was my challenge when I was asked to give a two hour session on Environmental Communication to the Geography students at York St John University (see last month’s Imagination Engine to read more about my Visiting Fellowship there). The students will be undertaking research projects in Slovenia and as part of their coursework they will be creating communication materials to share that research, including posters, short-form videos, and social media posts. My session was to prepare them for this.
What I really appreciated from this experience was that it finally got me to sit down and pull my experiences together into a single narrative – a story told through powerpoint. The question I asked myself was ‘what is it that I do when I design an exhibit? What am I trying to achieve when I put a video together? I compiled together my building blocks for effective environmental communications:
Aim for impact – your communications want to change something, what is it, and how does it work towards it?
Embrace a behavioural model for change – work with the way people’s brains work, learn from psychologists.
Avoid robbing people of agency – empower people, don’t drown them in doom and gloom.
Emphasise positive actions – show examples of others doing good work so they won’t feel like Billy no mates.
Structure an engaging narrative – tell a story, don’t give a scientific report.
Share the ‘Hero’s Journey’ – all good stories have a hero who changes and grows, who it is?
Make it resonate with your audience – make your message relevant to the things your audience cares about.
When I reflect on the building blocks I shared, it was apparent that my approach is still that of a practitioner – not that there’s anything wrong with that. I find ideas and I apply them. It is still my ambition to put my work into relevant theoretical frameworks and critically reflect on the literature in the many fields I have drawn from, including psychology, museology, gaming, and scenography. Maybe one day I will study a Master’s degree in science communication to force me to do it!
If you’d like to learn more about my building blocks of environmental communication then Subscribe to my YouTube channel. I plan to turn the session into a series of resources that I will post there, possibly in the second half of 2025.
Inspiring Interactions – Ayo Sokale
Ayo is incredible. She is a colleague of mine at the Environment Agency and I first encountered her when she gave a keynote at my department’s annual face-to-face meeting. Ayo is autistic and her talk that day was the first time I had heard someone talk positively about their neurodivergence, whilst still acknowledging the challenges. I was struggling in the early part of my ADHD journey and I needed this message.
Ayo is incredible. She is a colleague of mine at the Environment Agency and I first encountered her when she gave a keynote at my department’s annual face-to-face meeting. Ayo is autistic and her talk that day was the first time I had heard someone talk positively about their neurodivergence, whilst still acknowledging the challenges. I was struggling in the early part of my ADHD journey and I needed this message.
I remember a colleague asking Ayo what she did to relax and Ayo’s answer was “I’m learning to fly a helicopter”. This last point chimes with my own neurodivergent experience – both myself and Amy relax by doing things. For Amy it is things like learning new languages, for me it is putting together this newsletter. Ayo’s answer helped me to understand this about ourselves and also taught me the power of talking about your experiences. You never know who might be listening who needed to hear exactly that.
I asked Ayo a few short questions about what imagination means to her.
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Imagination is about creativity, and creativity is about thinking in new ways. It’s not always about generating entirely new ideas but rather about connecting existing ones in ways others might not see. It allows us to apply knowledge innovatively, solve problems effectively, and add unique value. My interest in a wide range of areas allows me to do this effectively and imagine a whole new world.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
Learning. I think it is important to always keep learning but most importantly following those organic glimmers and curiosities as they strike you as that feeds your imagination and enables you to think in wild and wonderful ways.
What are you currently working on that you would like to shout about?
I am focusing my energy currently on my AI coaching app, with the hope everyone in the world will try it and find value in coaching tools which I think helps us all to realise our potential.
A bunch of new research publications
I have a whole bunch of new papers recently published to tell you about. I can’t take (all) the credit though as they have been led by amazing colleagues. First, a huge shout out especially to Josh Wolstenholme who has been working hard to publish various bits of his PhD research.
The first paper in this update led by Josh covers the modelling work performed for his PhD. He used an enhancement of CAESAR-Lisflood I wrote that allows users to represent leaky woody dames in the model, including those with flow gaps underneath. This provides an ideal tool to simulate the long-term changes natural flood management can cause in rivers. Josh’s research demonstrates the feasibility of this including verification against field observations.
This is the second paper Josh has produced from his PhD research, currently under review but you can access the pre-print. Whilst the paper above covers his modelling work, this one covers his fieldwork. This includes some enjoyable, yet very cold, trips to Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire, and the installation of trail cams. The field work observed changes to the river before and after natural flood management interventions had been undertaken.
I cannot tell you how happy I am to see this paper out! Five years ago this was going to my big paper, the one with significant findings rather than some niche model sensitivity tests. But every time I made progress something in the model popped up to frustrate me. After I left Hull in 2021 I let it sit. Last year, Josh picked it up again and brought fresh eyes and energy to it. He has done a brilliant job and made it his own.
The way we assess flood risk assumes rivers do not change shape during floods. In the majority of cases this is a reasonable assumption, however, the modelling work here shows that it is not always the case. Large amounts of sediment can be transported downstream and deposited, increasing flood inundations and volumes during later stages of the same event.
This paper, led by Katie Parsons, describes the work we did co-creating educational materials to support the Help Callum and Help Sali 360 videos. The videos came about when I worked with Alison Lloyd-Williams to use my immersive storytelling research to tell the real-life stories of flood-affected children that were shared through Alison’s research. Katie brought her education expertise to work with children, young people, and teachers to create resources to use the videos in the classroom.
I have been so privileged to get to collaborate with amazing and wonderful researchers like Josh and Katie. It’s also great to see them work together on the HedgeHunter’s project too. I had nothing to do with this but it is really cool work:
Back in 2020, just before the lockdown, Katie took part in my NERC-funded Earth Arcade Academy project with a project called INSECURE and it grew massively since (nothing to do with me!). Katie used creative methods to foster intergenerational engagement in communities at risk of coastal erosion. Even though my contribution was tiny and remote, it is such a great project I am going to pretend I had a small hand in it!:
Both Josh and Katie are now at Loughborough University and working on new projects together. I cannot wait to see what they will produce next.
Good Morning – A Solo Roleplay Game
Those who work to plan and prepare for disasters will often use a method called counterfactuals. It proposes ‘what if?’ questions to the planners and they work out how they would respond if that circumstance arose. Similarly, after something bad happens we often look back and think about what we might have done differently.
Downward counterfactuals combine these two methods. It looks back at something that happened and asks ‘what if this other thing happened too?’. For example, planners might look back at how they responded to a disaster and then ask what they would have done if they lost power to their operations room, or if the phone network went down, for example.
Good Morning is a very simple solo roleplay game. It asks you to first generate a task and then generate a complicating factor. You respond by writing down how you would respond to these. Then, generate a further complicating factor to add to your scenario. How does this change your response?
To generate a task or factor, roll two 6-sided dice, one after the other. The first roll is the first digit and the second the second digit. For example, roll a 2, then a 3, your result is 23. Then find that number on the corresponding table.
This isn’t meant to be serious, just a bit of fun to get you thinking – and imagining – how you might act is some very normal and some very odd circumstances. I hope you enjoy!
FloodSkinner YouTube Update
It has been an unusually busy month on my YouTube channel with the release of three new Shorts. The first was a test of my new kit, having recently purchased an Insta360 x4 and a Rode Wireless Go 3 microphone set. The mic receiver handily attaches to the side of the camera, allowing me to film in 360 and have two people radio mic-ed at once. I’m exciting about what I could do with this set up.
I’ve been desperate to test it, so during a quick trip to Hull I had a play around near the barrier and later put this video below together. Unfortunately, my desktop PC really struggled editing the 8K video, so a new PC is on the shopping list (don’t forget to check out my Ko-fi link at the bottom of the newsletter!).
I am very pleased to bring my series on the Sustainable Development Goals to a close this month! A total of 18 videos, covering the 17 goals and a ‘half-time’ summary, which I started in October 2023. The reason I chose a series on the SDGs was because it would give a sustained amount of content in order to practice and learn filming and editing videos and hopefully you can see that progression through the series.
The video are from having gone viral but at last count the series has been collated over 1300 views on YouTube and about the same again on Instagram. I just need another 2,998,700 views on them to be eligible to be a YouTube partner!
I have enjoyed making these short form videos so will continue to do so but I have to admit, I’m pleased I don’t have any more SDG to cover!
Gaming Environments
Gaming Environments contains all the news I have found relating to the nexus of gaming and the environment. This news is also published on the Games for Geoscience website each month and can be found here.
The (unofficial) European Geoscience Union Games Day is back for 2025! As is now traditional, the middle day of the General Assembly will host both the Games for Geoscience sessions and the world famous Geoscience Games Night.
Games for Geoscience Poster Session – Weds 30th April, 14:00-15:45 CEST (display until 18:00), Hall X2 – In-person online.
Games for Geoscience Oral Presentations – Weds 30th April, 16:15-18:00 CEST, Room -2.41/2.42 – Hybrid in-person and Zoom.
(The World Famous) Geoscience Games Night – Weds April 30th, 18:00-19:30 CEST, Foyer D – In-person only.
Want to go Into Model Land? Join this workshop at the European Geoscience Union General Assembly (Wed, 30 Apr, 14:00–15:45 CEST. Room -2.82) to learn how to use tabletop roleplay games to explore the bizarre world’s created by numerical models. It is inspired by Escape from Model Land written by Erica Thompson. More details here.
The current issue of Consilience, the “online journal exploring the spaces where the science and the arts meet” is out. Issue 20 is themed about Change and can be read here. Submissions for Issue 21 open on 31st March 2025 with the theme Chaos.
I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. The newsletter also includes a copy of Gaming Environments, the monthly news relating to the nexus of gaming and the environment that I collate for the Games for Geoscience website. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.
Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
Welcome to the March edition of Imagination Engines! How is it March already? I’m starting this newsletter with some personal news I have been eager to share with the world but have been holding in since before Christmas – I have been appointed a Visiting Fellow at York St John University!
This is a voluntary role, supported by Associate Professor Pauline Couper, Associate Head of Geography and the Liberal Arts. The role will see me supporting students in the area of environmental communication through lectures and project co-supervision. I can’t wait to start working with the students and helping them develop their ideas.
York St John, or YSJ, is my local University. My wife has been working there since last year and I have had the pleasure of visiting the campus many times now. I have been deeply impressed by their commitment to sustainability and also social mobility. It is currently the Good University Guide’s 2025 University of the Year for Social Inclusion. Their ethos aligns with my own and I am proud to join the YSJ family.
As joyful as I am at joining YSJ, I am equally sad to be saying goodbye to the University of Hull at the end of this month. I was an undergraduate at Hull, I did my PhD there, and progressed from research assistant to a research fellow in the Energy and Environment Institute there before leaving to join the Environment Agency. For the last four years I have been a visiting researcher there. Nearly 20 years in total!
I have been pleased to contribute over those four years as a visiting researcher but over time – as people move on, projects finish, and leadership changes – my links have grown very thin. With Amy leaving and us moving to York, now feels the right time to finally say a reluctant goodbye. The University of Hull will always feel like ‘home’ to me but I imagine I will visit in the future to see friends, see how the campus has changed, and for one more piece of the ginger flapjack.
You will never know how much I loved you…
Inspiring Interactions: Sam Illingworth’s Games, Science, and Poetry
Ideas do not come out of nowhere. We are all influenced by the environment around us. We absorb information and experiences that shape our mindsets. The people we encounter will bring us new ways of seeing the world and inspire us. In this new item, which I hope to make a regular feature, I introduce you to someone who has been an inspiration to me and ask them a few questions about their thoughts on imagination. I’m going go to start with legendary science-poet, Professor Sam Illingworth.
Sam is a Professor in Academic Practice at Edinburgh Napier University. After completing a PhD in Atmospheric Physics at the University of Leicester, Sam instead chose to pursue a career in science communication. He is best known for his poetry, with his science poetry blog attracting over 100,000 readers a year.
He is dedicated to service in scicomm too. He is the Chief Executive Editor for Geoscience Communication and founder of science-art journal Consilience. He was a convener for the popular EGU science communication session, which was where I first met Sam after I presented my work with Humber in a Box.
Sam shares my love for games and has published many himself, including a climate change hack of Settlers of Catan and Carbon City Zero. He gave me a hugest of legs up in my career when he and Rolf Hut approached me about starting Games for Geoscience at EGU – it wouldn’t have happened without them.
I refer to Sam on how science communication research should happen: innovative, blurring boundaries, fun, yet thoroughly evidence-based. Every so often, I revisit his presentation from when he accepted the Katie and Maurice Krafft Award to remind me of these things.
Why is imagination important to the work you do?
Imagination is at the heart of everything I do – whether it is writing poetry, exploring how students interact with GenAI, or making games. For me, poetry is a way of stretching thought, a means of making connections between ideas and disciplines that might not otherwise meet. It is also a space for possibility, for imagining the world not just as it is but as it could be.
How do you keep your imagination sharp?
Writing poetry is one of the best ways I know to keep my imagination alive. The constraints of form – whether haiku, sonnet, or something more free form – force me to think differently, to approach ideas from new angles. I also find that collaborating across disciplines, whether with artists, scientists, or educators, pushes me to engage with new perspectives and ways of thinking.
What are you currently working on you would like to shout about?
Two projects I am particularly excited about at the moment:
Student x GenAI ( https://www.studentxgenai.co.uk/) explores how students are using generative AI, giving them a platform to share their experiences and perspectives. It is an ongoing, collaborative project funded by the Leverhulme Trust that raises some fascinating questions about creativity, authorship, and learning in an AI-shaped world.
Rooted in Crisis ( https://rootedincrisis.com/) is an incredible project at the intersection of science, art, and environmental storytelling. It uses games and narrative to explore climate change, and we should hopefully go live on Kickstarter later this year. We also have some new artwork to share very soon!
Failure of Imagination in Flooding (2)
In a previous post, I looked at how a failure of imagination potentially contributed to a tragic loss of life in the 2021 floods across Northern Europe. Because people were not able to grasp the potential impacts of the flood that they were being warned of, they did not take appropriate action to keep themselves safe. Professor Hannah Cloke of the University of Reading described the role of scientists here as “helping people see the invisible”.
Recent research led by Joy Ommer, part of Cloke’s research group, begins with the line “What’s the worst that could happen?“. The paper, ‘Surprise floods: the role of our imaginations in preparing for disasters‘ – published open-access in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences – looks back at those floods in 2021 and explores the role a lack of imagination played. Crucially, it also shows the role we as scientists have in helping people understand risks.
Ommer places imagination in the context of this research as “the ability to depict a particular situation in your mind and your actions linked to that situation“. We use this cognitive ability to visualise in our everyday decision-making and for trying to work out what the future might hold. It is informed by our experiences and our ability to imagine – Ommer describes people as having different abilities to imagine, which may be cultivated, but does not explore it as a skill that can be trained. Importantly for disaster preparedness, imagination plays a key role in risk perception by adding to our reality and existing knowledge of a situation.
The research used a survey of people who were affected by the floods to better understand their perspectives. As highlighted in the paper, many of those affected reported that their ability to understand the impacts of the flooding was lacking – it was unimaginable or they did not have the imagination to understand the scale of it. Several linked their inability to imagine the flooding to a lack of preparedness for it. To many, it was only when they saw videos of flooding happening, and feeling empathy for those in the videos, that they started to comprehend the potential consequences for themselves.
This research by Ommer and co-authors highlights and breaks down key aspects about how imagination is linked to risk perception and preparedness for disasters. The solutions they propose include using forecasts and warnings designed to trigger imaginations. They also argue that we need to work with those at risk to cultivate their imaginations using creative approaches, such as local storylines, and helping them to visualise potential impacts.
This is a really important and interesting paper for understanding the important role imagination has to play in disaster preparedness.
Deskinning ‘Environmental’ Games
Back in 2019, at the peak of my work on the Earth Arcade, I picked up a board game called Photosynthesis. I am not a big board game player but I was attracted by its beautiful, and very ‘green’, aesthetic and its tactile tree playing pieces*. I was also drawn by its promising environmental messaging, with the publisher’s, Blue Orange, motto proudly stated ‘Hot Games Cool Planet’.
I also remember playing it with Amy. Each turn the sun moves around the board. You plant trees. Those trees collect light energy and cast shadows on other tree to stop them collecting energy. You use energy to grow your trees or plant new ones. You score by chopping grown trees down. We remarked how it was bizarre how you won an environmentally-themed game through deforestation but then thought no more of it. I went on to use the game as an example of an environmentally themes board game as part of my Earth Arcade Academy launch event.
Dr Chloé Germaine and Prof Paul Wake of the Manchester Game Centre think about games on a whole different level to most people. Certainly more than me. Recently, I was very happy to be invited to the University of York’s Environmental Sustainability at York (ESAY) by Director of Education, Prof Lynda Dunlop, to hear Chloé and Paul talk about their research. And Photosynthesis was right in the heart of their work.
Games can be broken down into their components: the mechanisms of the rules and systems that dictate how it plays; the dynamics of player inputs and decision-making; and the skin of aesthetics and story that add flavour to the game. They saw through the skin of Photosynthesis to what it was hiding underneath. It isn’t an environmental game at all, it is a war game and they were going to show it by peeling back the game’s skin and revealing its true nature.
Chloé and Paul took the game back to its bare bones. They created a new narrative based on the siege of Bastogne during World War 2’s Battle of the Bulge. New artwork was commissioned for the board and all of the game assets. The rule book was reproduced but not rewritten – only names were changed. Suppressive Fire was created. Functionally, the game was completely unchanged yet visually it was unrecognisable. When they tested it alongside Photosynthesis, audiences preferred the deskinned version as the narrative fit the mechanism more comfortably.
The presentation taught me valuable lesson about the importance game mechanics. The way a game works, the decisions it compels players to make, are a huge part of what they take away. Assuming good faith from developers, the mechanics of their game will be leaving players having learned the wrong message. A pretty, green-coloured skin is not enough to make a game environmentally-themed, especially when it is rooted in a system that is creating the problem.
You can read more in Chloé’s chapter, Nature’ Games in a Time of Crisis, in Material Game Studies: A Philosophy of Analogue Play. More publications based on this work are in the pipeline and will likely be included in the Gaming Environments newsletter in the future.
The Imagination Muscle by Albert Read
A few years ago we started a new Christmas tradition in our house. On We would each buy each other a book – we’d say what we wanted – and on Christmas Eve we’d exchange them and read them in bed with some nice hot chocolate. We turn the lights day, put on some fairy lights, and snuggle up warm under the duvet to read our books, accompanied by our cats. I’m not going to claim originality, The exchange of books is a common tradition in Iceland that inspired the term Jólabókaflóðið, or Yule Book Flood, which refers to the release of new books at this time of year to fuel the demand. The duvet, the lights, and the hot chocolate is inspired by the Danish concept of hygge, its meaning elusive but involves coziness and warm atmosphere.
The problem is, unlike my wife, I have never been an avid reader. It is something I find hard to focus on and get easily distracted and frustrated. For what I can now see as a form of accommodation, I chose a graphic novel the first time round, the first volume of Scott Pilgrim series (I’m a big fan of the film). In 2023, I reached the end of the series and I had to recommend something else. In the last few years I have discovered audiobooks and they have revolutionised my reading habits – I’ve always wanted to read but it just was not accessible for me – I have read more in these past couple of year than I have in the rest of my life. I wanted something to inspire me and my imagination and settled on The Imagination Muscle by Albert Read.
I did not anything about this book or its author. I was drawn to the title and its promising subtitle of “Where good ideas come from (and how to have more of them)”, which perfectly resonates with my journey of seeking imagination as a skill. At 7 hours and 51 minutes long, I did not consume the whole book on Christmas Eve and it kept me inspired until mid-January whilst I sorted the kitchen and the cats at the end of the day.
I must admit, it did not meet my expectations. But that is not a negative. From the title and the blurb, I was expecting something that would be more of a lifestyle guide, with a stronger focus on the “and how to have more of them” angle. I thought it would be packed with helpful tips and exercises you could do to practice and strengthen that ‘imagination muscle’. This is not that book but I am pleased it was not.
In the book, the author takes us on a deep dive of human imagination, both individual and collective, as it has developed in concert with society – a symbiotic relationship. He weaves this narrative, from the earliest cave paintings to the latest technological developments, showing that society has developed because of imagination and that imagination has developed, and been allowed to flourish, because of the advancement of society. He shows how historical leaps, like the emergence of language and the inventions of the printing press and the internet, born from imagination and building on chains of individual genius, have facilitated great expansions of imagination. The journey Albert Read takes the reader on is enlightening and enriching.
But that is not to say there is not anything helpful in here on how to build your imagination muscle. There are explorations of what made people so imaginative (and what can lead to deterioration of the muscle). For example, Read demonstrates how the ‘beginners mindset’ is fertile ground for imagination and good ideas – that space of uncertainty and needing to learn creating a breeding ground of problem solving. Maybe ADHDers tend to be creative and imaginative because we are always trying something new! Connection with nature, the rhythm of walking, and the power of coffee as both a stimulate and its role in networking are all discussed.
I was very pleased I chose this book. I really enjoyed listening to it and found myself both informed and inspired by the human story of imagination laid out by Read. The imagination as a muscle is a useful metaphor and a different, yet complimentary, way of thinking to imagination being a skill. Both attest to it being something that gets better with practice and advocate for us to make time to do just that.
YouTube Update
In the last month I have released two new YouTube Shorts onto my FloodSkinner channel. Both are part of my Sustainable Development Goals series, covering the progress of the goals at their half-way point to 2030.
These two videos cover Goals 14 and 15, Life Below Water and Life on Land respectively. I think the UN must have been getting tired when naming these later goals as the full titles just keep getting longer. For example, Goal 15’s full name is:
“Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”
Catchy, right? With Shorts needing to be under 1 minute long, these longer titles are causing me problems as they are beginning to take up a significant chunk of the videos!
With each tranche of videos in this series I have sought to push myself a little further. For these videos I tried out my green screen for the first time, having let it sit unused for a few months. It took me an afternoon to figure out the editing to make it work but I got there in the end. I’m really pleased with the results too. The greenscreen allows me to film anywhere, so I can film in a larger room and actually set my lighting rig up in a way that works.
I am pleased with these videos and really happy with how the greenscreen turned out and what it will allow me to do with future videos. YouTube disagrees though, as my video for Goal 15 is currently my worst performing video on the channel! Even worse than the Fog one…
The footage for Goals 16 and 17 is ‘in the can’ and I hope to get these edited up over the next month or two and get this series finished off.
Gaming Environments
Gaming Environments contains all the news I have found relating to the nexus of gaming and the environment. This news is also published on the Games for Geoscience website each month and can be found here.
Games for Geoscience 2025 at the European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly is looking to be another strong and exciting session! Thank you to all our contributors who submitted 21 abstracts to the session. The convenor team is now working behind the scenes to assign oral and poster presentations to the submissions and the schedule will be posted on March 14 2025.
The infamous Geoscience Games Night will also be returning to EGU in 2025! The date, time, and location will be confirmed on March 14 2025. Any attending is free to bring and host or game or just turn up to play. If you are bringing a game, please contact the convenors so they can add it to the list of confirmed games.
Former Games for Geoscience convenor the awesome Dr Jazmin Scarlett recently presented at An Evening of Unnecessary Detail. In her late hearted and humorous talk, Jaz describes the good and the bad of Lava Flows in Video Games. Check it out on YouTube below.
The current issue of Consilience, the “online journal exploring the spaces where the science and the arts meet” is out. Issue 19 is themed about Insects and can be read here. Submissions for Issue 21 open on 31st March 2025 with the theme Chaos.
Environmental Sustainability at York’s environmental games meeting is returning for 2025. Play for the Planet 2 will be held at the University of York, April 25 2025. The deadline to register is March 14 2025, and you can do those things here.
The 6th Workshop on Tabletop Games, FDG 2025, is taking place April 15-18 2025 in Vienna and Graz, Austria. The workshop aims “to address the gap between research and practice, looking at the ways in which academics can apply their tools to the discussion of analog games“. You can find out more here.
There’s a new roleplaying game exploring governance of water pollution, published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. Debating Solutions to Water Contamination: a Role-Play Game is inspired by the ‘Model UN’ and is available for free here.
Power of Play is a global report on the reasons people play games. Produced by Videogames Europe, the survey found that whilst “having fun” was the main reason people played games there were many more, including for wellbeing and having an outlet. Find the full report here.
Games for Change have released their Games for Change: 2024 Impact Report. It covers the annual festival attended by over 2300 people, the 2024 Games and SDGs summit, and 10 years of the G4C Student Challenge. Find it here.
In other Games for Change, the 2025 Games for Change Festival will be held on June 26-27 at the Parsons School of Design, New York, USA.
Looking to make your games as accessible as possible? Check out these free Games Accessibility Guidelines, a “collaborative effort between a group of studios, specialists and academics”. Find them here.
The journal Media and Communication has published an open access special issue: Digital Games at the Forefront of Change: On the Meaningfulness of Games and Game Studies. Articles cover the use of Cities:Skylines (one of my favourite games) for urban planning education, emotions in commercial war games, political discourse in games, and the experience of women, and playing women, in games. You can access the special issue here.
About this Newsletter
I am Chris Skinner, a science communicator, STEM professional, and ADHDer. I am on a mission empowering people to unlock their full potential by transforming imagination into a powerful, actionable skill. This newsletter tracks my journey. I would like you to join me, so please subscribe. The newsletter also includes a copy of Gaming Environments, the monthly news relating to the nexus of gaming and the environment that I collate for the Games for Geoscience website. This newsletter is free and I do not offer a paid tier. If you would like to say thank you and/or help me in my mission please buy me a coffee using the link below.
Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
It is commonly considered that imagination is something some people have and others are born lacking. That it is something that artists, poets, and storytellers are blessed with whilst the rest of us philistines have not been bestowed our fair share. I do not believe this to be true. Instead, I believe we all have an imagination, or what Albert Read would call an imagination muscle, that can be exercised and strengthened.
In fact, my belief is backed up by research. A 2022 paper by Dr Andrea Blomkvist, a researcher in philosophy of cognitive science at the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience, University of Glasgow, showed empirical evidence that our imaginations demonstrate the hallmarks of two key qualities of a skill:
1. It can be improved through practice.
2. It can be controlled.
A key piece of evidence given by Blomkvist for imagination being improved by practice comes from mental rotation tasks. People are shown a test object and a number of images that could correspond to the test object having been rotated. They are asked to mentally rotate, i.e. to visualise, the test object and answer which of the images is correct. As participants practiced the visualising, they got better and faster at completing the task.
We control our imaginations by constraining them to reality. An example used by Blomkvist is imagining moving a bedframe up a staircase. To imagine this usefully, you have to imagine the bed and the staircase as the right sizes and also not being able to change shape or size or even vanish altogether. Our imaginations can visualise them doing those things but we can control it to help us achieve our goal. In exercises with children of different ages where they were asked to plan for imagined events, it was found that older children were better able to constrain their imaginations to reality.
There is much in this paper about imagining that reminds me of modelling and dealing with assumptions and uncertainty. Imagination is described as always involving simulation. When we simulate, either numerically or imaginably, we make assumptions, we have biases, and we miss potentially important information. Modellers can develop their imaginations to better understand the limits of their outputs and better communicate where they, and are not, useful.
How will you develop you imagination and your control of it?
This post was originally published in the January 2025 issue of The Imagination Engine. You can get first access to these articles by subscribing to the posts using the box below.
Views expressed in this newsletter are mine and do not represent those of my employer. Content and links are provided for informational purposes and do not constitute endorsements. I am not responsible for the content of external sites, which may have changed since this newsletter was produced.
GeoSkinner 