Futuring Is… with Sophia Cheng

In which we learn about Future(s) Dreaming and its usefulness in building personal resilience, explore storytelling as a tool for power and agency, and ponder on why this works is best done with others.

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Just three things:

Obviously we talked about more than three things, but if you only remember three things about this episode, here they are:

Storytelling is a tool for power and agency

Changing the narrative changes what we believe is possible.

Future dreaming builds resilience

The ability to imagine a better world helps us stay hopeful and take action.

No one should do this alone

The best futures are co-created, not built by solitary heroes.
“This work didn’t start as an intellectual exercise. It started as an act of personal resilience.”

—Sophia Cheng / Facilitator, connector, changemaker

The discussion explores:

  • How Sophia came to futures work as an act of personal resilience during the uncertainty of 2020.
  • The power of collective imagination—how dreaming up alternative futures can inspire real-world action.
  • The role of storytelling in making climate solutions more accessible, engaging, and emotionally impactful.
  • Future(s) dreaming as a tool for transformation, both in personal life (e.g., Sophia’s decision to become a mother) and professional settings (e.g., corporate workshops, sustainability leadership).
  • The importance of collaboration—why we should reject the lone-hero narrative and instead embrace collective action in shaping the future.

Sophia shares insights from her work with With Many Roots and the CFI Imaginarium, a creative space for collaborative future dreaming. She also discusses her experiences bringing futures thinking into corporate and NGO spaces, including a pilot program with the Woodland Trust designed to help employees develop resilience through creative storytelling and futures exercises.

The conversation ends with a powerful reflection on play, agency, and hope—and why imagining hopeful futures is not just an intellectual exercise but a radical act of resistance in uncertain times.

“The Hell-in-a-handcart narrative is seductive. It lets us give up responsibility. Future dreaming makes you realise you have power. We all do.”

—Sophia Cheng / Facilitator, connector, changemaker

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Meet Sophia Cheng

With 15+ years of communications experience across the for-profit and nonprofit sectors, agency and in-house Sophia is a facilitator, connecter and changemaker. Her varied career to date includes communications work all over the world, with organisations of all kinds; from grassroots indigenous activist groups to multinationals working in the heart of extractive capitalism. Sophia has made a habit of making ‘the hard stuff’ more accessible and focuses her work on the comms, training and engagement to address the climate and ecological crisis.
She has facilitated 150+ systems thinking sessions such as Climate Fresk and Biodiversity Collage. She also designs and delivers bespoke workshops and retreats for organisations she loves, including Climate Outreach, Green Alliance and the Woodlands Trust. More than any particular tool or approach, Sophia specialises in having sticky conversations and bringing disparate groups towards consensus, working with often emotionally charged subject matters.

Firmly putting roots down in York, UK, she co-holds spaces locally including YorkCliConnect, People Planet Pint and Widening Emotional Resilience circles for women.

She balances her mitigation work with adaptation; exploring what it means to also thrive in these times. She has been fact-based, group-dreaming the world we know is possible via the Cli-Fi Imaginarium since 2020 and it’s having present-day consequences. As Gloria Steinam puts it, “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” She is now part of York’s first co-housing project, Lowfield Green Housing Cooperative and she is figuring out what parenting in the Anthropocene looks like with her one-year old…

Reach out to Sophia to:

  • Explore a Future(s) Dreaming workshop or session.
  • Invite her to deliver talks and workshops about climate causes, consequences and solutions.
  • Participate in the Cli-Fi Imaginarium.
  • Learn more about parenting in the Anthropocene and York’s first co-housing project.

Links:

LinkedIn
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/sophiacheng

 

Sophia Cheng

Meet your host, Suzanne Whitby

Suzanne Whitby is a “futurer” and futures researcher, facilitator, communicator, storyteller and the host of the Futuring Is… podcast. She is convinced that it is possible for humanity to co-create hopeful, sustainable futures, and this shapes everything that she does. She brings 20+ years of international experience to her work as the founder of Futures & Foresight consultancy, Futures Fit and the award-winning science communication consultancy, SciComm Success. She leads the initiative, klimafit, where she delivers talks and workshops about climate change, climate solutions and sustainability. She created the popular sustainability event format, People. Planet. Prosecco. Suzanne developed the senstoryscapes approach to climate and sustainability communication and she researches its efficacy at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She lives a life full of awe and wonder with her (rather marvellous) husband, and in her free time can be found telling stories, sailing, walking, playing with puppets and attempting to play the ukulele.

Links:

 

 

Suzanne Whitby

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