What are civic imaginaries?
In comparison with social, urban, or political imaginaries, the civic imagination is relatively unfamiliar. Despite growing interest in North and Latin America, and in Bologna, Italy which was home to the Office of the Civic Imagination, in the United Kingdom it remains undeveloped. In this project, we understand the civic imaginary as a realm where the arts, humanities, and social and political sciences intersect. It facilitates exploration of the political consequences of cultural representations and the cultural roots of political participation. In their 2015 book The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life, Gianpaolo Baiocchi and colleagues define civic imaginaries as “acts of inventive, prospective thinking about the societies in which we live.” Civic imaginaries are the ways that people think, feel and dream about the futures of their places.
The civic and some of its problems
Politically and academically, the concept of ‘civic’ is slippery. Claimed by both the political left and right– and mobilised by higher education and other institutions, particularly in the context of state austerity post-2008 and the global financial crash. Yet, as Julian Dobson and colleagues have pointed out, there is no agreed definition of what is really meant by ‘civic activity’. We agree with their argument that being civic is to “actively seek to benefit” local places and people which is not dissimilar to Paul Lichterman and Nina Eliasoph’s view that ‘civic’ is found in everyday action, invoking democracy, solidarity and participation. Nearly ten years ago, Chris Philo and colleagues published a special issue of ACME on Civic Geographies, defining ‘civic’ as what makes people feel connected to, or associated with, something larger than themselves. An assembly of ‘others’, a ‘community’ or ‘society’, with a collective sense of place. It’s perhaps the chameleonic nature of the term that has brought new configurations of partners and actors to ‘civic’ tables. But do these elusive qualities make ‘civic’ a useful tool or an empty signifier? If ‘civic’ is a limiting frame, what alternatives exist, can or have been created? Does the concept need critical re-framing to redefine or recuperate it – or should it be relegated?
Civic as utopia
Narratives, images, and feelings through which civic imaginations are forged, shift across place and time. For the American civil rights movement, it might have been formed around the black church’s talk of ‘crossing the River Jordan’ and entering the ‘promised land’. Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners explores these hopes of emancipation, connecting them powerfully through time by West African tribal dance and drums, Mississippi Blues, and Blues-inspired rock, country, funk, pop, and hip-hop. Throughout history, creative works have informed political and social movements, such as Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels, understood in its time as an experiment in godlessness as well as satire of political parties; Brecht’s play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui which allegorises Hitler’s rise to power; and Ken Loach’s film Cathy Come Home which highlighted the plight of 1960s homelessness and dire social housing. Social change has also been fuelled by more informal cultural resources, ranging from folk practices to personal testimony, that have awoken people to shared perspectives expressing their hopes and fears for the future. The civic imaginary is a utopian endeavour, which escapes ‘the tyranny of the possible’ and imagines alternative paths forward.
Why now?
We must locate and spark the civic imagination now more than ever. Trust in basic public structures has been decimated. Some are turning their backs not only on politics but on the very idea of ‘community’ itself. The Marfleet neighbourhood of Hull, one of our place-studies, is reflective of this wider trend of political disaffection, featuring on BBC Radio 4’s programme The City That Stayed at Home.
How can this be turned around? If people feel they have little incentive to engage with the political system, then populist demagogues thrive. We urgently need evidence of the existing barriers and opportunities that communities face before they can achieve genuine empowerment. Despite the renewed political attention to place, it has revealed the lack of appropriate methods to help understand community needs and ideas.
The civic imaginary is ideal for this challenge. Our research will build on emerging international work on the concept, reframing and advancing it for the UK context. We are working with range of neighbourhood-level partners and local stakeholders to understand some of their civic challenges, that although specific to each locale, are not unique. The scale and duration of the fellowship means that we can do this in a sustained way. We hope to produce longer-term ethnographies with our place-study partners, and from these develop policy-relevant findings that place the civic imaginary as a powerful, humanising tool at the heart of place-based partnerships and decision making.