Welcome to IMAGINE

Welcome to IMAGINE, the digital magazine celebrating the art and culture of the human imagination. Launching on the first-annual Imagination Day on October 9, 2021, in honor of John Lennon’s 81st birthday and the 50th anniversary of his song, Imagine, IMAGINE brings together many of the world’s most imaginative people to speak on the power and importance of the creative imagination.

As a manifesto and Declaration of Imagination, IMAGINE is a call to imagine and re-imagine the role that imagination can play in creating a better world and enhancing the quality of our lives. What is imagination to you? What does it mean to imagine? Why is imagination important? How are you applying imagination in your life and work? How does imagination help us become better people and live better lives? IMAGINE collects and presents inspiring answers to these questions and more from today’s global thought leaders.

Submissions have poured in from visionaries across many fields, ranging from scholars of the imagination, creativity, and the arts, to philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, mythologists, neuroscientists, and astrophysicists, to cultural policy experts, science authors, and science fiction writers, to creative artists, social entrepreneurs, museum designers, Disney executives, and Grammy®-winning musicians.

Collectively, they represent some of the most influential names in the world of creativity and imagination coming from all cultures, nationalities, and countries, such as America, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, India, Malaysia, Australia, Argentina, Russia, and beyond.

This group includes America’s foremost creativity coach, Australia’s leading science writer, one of America’s strongest advocates for lifelong learning, and authors and editors of some of the most important and popular books on creativity and imagination, including editors of The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, as well as two whose books were released as feature motion pictures.

It also includes Founders, Presidents, and Directors of institutions such as The Heroic Imagination Project, Institute of General Semantics, The New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, The Centre for Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred, Center for Partnership Systems, World Culture Project, Co-Intelligence Institute, Creative Potential Institute, Existential-Humanistic Institute, Center for Future Consciousness, Chicago Wisdom Project, Philosophical Research Society, Museum of Lost Wonder, Scientific and Medical Network, Arts at CERN, c3: Center for Conscious Creativity, Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research, Imagine If, House of Imagination, Creativity and Education, Turnaround Arts California, Awakening Arts Academy, Orphan Wisdom School, New Wilderness Society, Rumtiden Idea Lab, Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, and The Owen Barfield Estate.

Through the lens of the creative imagination, IMAGINE probes deeply into important topics, subjects, and fields including anthropology, art, astronomy, awe, consciousness, courage, culture, creativity, discovery, education, empathy, heroism, hope, innovation, invention, the future, improvisation, literature, magic, meditation, music, myth, perception, psychology, philosophy, poetry, religion, science, science-fiction, the senses, sound, spirituality, storytelling, thinking, and the unknown. Essentially, The Great Ideas and everything that really matters to us.

Who would have thought that our imagination could be so incredibly inspirational and broadly all-encompassing, yet so eminently practical and useful? Who would have thought that it would have so much to offer that it can both supply the hard-nosed realist with solutionary tools to the problems of our day while simultaneously satisfying the most inscrutable questions and deepest yearnings of the human condition.? Who would have thought that the human imagination could do all of this and more, while still being so much fun?

I did, for one, and it all started with an idea and a dream. All I did was open my mind’s eye and imagine. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope you will enjoy this inaugural issue and join us, and IMAGINE too.

Mark Riva is the Founder, Publisher, Editor and Designer of IMAGINE Magazine.