Episode 36 - Cassie Robinson - Collective imagination, death and designing for social justice

In this episode I’m in conversation with Cassie Robinson. Cassie is a strategic designer and senior leader, currently heading up the UK portfolio at the National Lottery Community Fund. Cassie has been pioneering change in systems and exploring how to serve the most vulnerable, oppressed and least understood in our society and culture since leaving the fashion world as a designer in 2006. An early service and social design practitioner working with organisations like thinkpublic, Participle, 00:// and the Young Foundation, her experience extends to Local and National Government - working with Government Digital Service, the Social Finance team in the Cabinet Office, and the Libraries Taskforce in DCMS. Cassie has also worked with corporates like the Co-op, designing ways national brands can be useful for local, social infrastructure. Prior to joining The National Lottery Community Fund she was the Strategic Design Director at Doteveryone, where her work focussed on ways of strengthening society - people, communities and organisations - to build a new social contract for the digital age. She is also the Co-founder of the Point People, helping organisations work together wisely and systemically to address the large, complex issues of our time. She’s a Fellow at the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL where her research focusses on how society and social infrastructure can be supported to adapt and change as technology alters the fabric of our lives and communities. Social and climate justice sit at the heart of her work. Recorded at the beginning of June, we explore Cassie’s journey, and riff on the converging crises of post pandemic social inequalities, racism, climate and ecology, the black lives matter movement and the role of community led change. We zone in on an emerging thread of Cassie’s work exploring living systems, the dying processes of organisations, and the role of intentional hospicing structures for organisations and ideas that are no longer serving society. We chat about another related and emerging field of work for Cassie around social dreaming, community imagination and collective consciousness and the role of dreaming and imagination in bringing forth a more beautiful world. Cassie is an extraordinary force for social justice and system change, do check out her work. Enjoy. @cassierobinson https://medium.com/@cassierobinson https://www.cassierobinson.work/ http://www.thepointpeople.com/ https://www.tnlcommunityfund.org.uk/ Berkana Two Loops https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQWKmtx8L2s Closing track http://livingcolour.com/