Choosing Hope Over Dystopia
Tory Stephens & Ada Cuadrado-Medina chat about radical imagination and storytelling as a climate solution
BY ADA CUADRADO-MEDINA
Headshots of Tory Stephens (left) and Ada Cuadrado-Medina (right) overlaid on illustration collage of a night sky, stars, plants, and a hummingbird feeding.
SEED THE FUTURE This season, we’re inviting folx to dive into radical imagination and storytelling as tools for seeding a food future rooted in care and mutual belonging with us. We’re featuring conversations (like this one) with people who are doing this work with their communities, holding dreaming & strategy workshops with food & culture workers, offering virtual liberatory story workshops, and activating artistic collaborations with our creative community.
What is possible when we share stories of hope and joy over stories of doom and gloom?
We’re living through a time of escalating crises, inundated with narratives rooted in our worst fears. We know what we don’t want. But what if we made more space for imagining the world we actually do want to create for those who come after us? And how might we start building that future together? How might our storytelling be part of our food and climate solutions?
Back in April 2024, Tory Stephens of Grist‘s Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction Series, and Ada Cuadrado-Medina of Food Culture Collective chatted on IG Live about the power of choosing hope over dystopia in stories about our collective future.
Listen to the full conversation
Watch the full conversation
What follows are some highlights from this energetic conversation, as well as some thought-weaving. You can read and listen through the whole piece, or pick and choose based on the questions you’re most drawn to. This was a 21 minute conversation and we encourage you to tune in to the entirety with the media above. Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
Why climate fiction?
The stories we tell ourselves and share with each other shape our world. Yet, so many of the stories we hold today are stories of doom and gloom. What if we made more space to share and spotlight stories rooted in our hopes and joyful dreams?
Ada asked Tory what brought him to climate fiction, and he shares the journey of how the Imagine 2200 climate fiction initiative was born from a game.
“We're not using stories as much as we could to help us imagine how we get out of this climate crisis”
Tory Stephens: I started as a fundraiser and was a storyteller for many nonprofits for years, and during the pandemic, I was charged with leading a conversation around how to talk about climate fiction at Grist. So we explored that through a visioning game called Imagine 2200—and the visions that people were sharing…they were beautiful. They were focused on how we get to a clean, green, and just future. So we asked, how do we make something that is full of hope and solutions?
I fully believe that climate storytelling is the solution that we need to use more. But we're not using stories as much as we could to help us imagine how we get out of this climate crisis. I hope that we can have a million stories bloom around how do we get to the clean, green, just world that we live in.
Ada Cuadrado-Medina: I love that. At Food Culture Collective we lean into radical imagination—a collective practice of letting ourselves dream into the future together. It has deep roots in Black feminism—think Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Octavia Butler—all these folx imagining and storytelling about worlds where we are all free. It starts with that what if…
We use the framework of food and land and community, but I think it's the same exercise as climate fiction and climate storytelling. It's a question of, what's your entry point?
Art by Anjali Kamat
What do you want to see more of in climate storytelling?
Ada asked Tory to share more about the growing edge of climate fiction and storytelling. From who is imagining and telling stories, to media types, and the transformative power of “what if we get it right”— Tory and Ada discuss how stories from the folx living on the front lines of climate change should be centered.
“ I would love for there to be a lot more stories about what if we get it right?”
Tory Stephens: We need more stories from folks that are on the front lines of this climate crisis, and have been thinking through solutions and built-in resiliency in their own communities. I want to hear their stories around what the world looks like, and what is possible in this beautiful future that we could have if we get this right.
I love a good dystopian story, but I think the balance has shifted so far that it’s just one violent and traumatic story after another. I would love for there to be a lot more stories about what if we get it right?
Ada Cuadrado-Medina: I think it's beautiful to—I'm doing a garden metaphor here—prepare the soil as best we can, to make healthy soil to grow our future in. We have to weed and tend to it in all these different ways, not just put water on plants.
Tory Stephens: And we can't do it alone—it has to be with a community.
What comes to mind when you think of a future rooted in care and reciprocity instead of extraction and exploitation?
“Once you ask people about hope, and you explore that, there's a possibility for you to learn and share something new.”
Riffing off of the radical imagination exercises from the Food Futures Dream Labs, Ada invited Tory to imagine forward several generations into the future to a world rooted in care. Tory shared a vision inspired by an experience he had at a community gathering led by elders about hope.
Tory Stephens: Years ago, I was in Vermont, and there were a whole bunch of elders who were coming together to talk about how much their community has changed in this great big old barn. It was basically a bring your leftovers, and let's talk about everything that's changed and what we liked about the past and where we want to go thing. They wanted to discuss hope for their community.
Ever since then, I've been trying to have conversations with people around hope and what it means to them. And once you ask people about hope, and you explore that, there's a possibility for you to learn and share something new.
And so I hope that in the future, it's easy to have this and complex and hard conversation with people you don't know that well.
There are so many more tasty nuggets from this conversation, and so many more threads to follow. To watch this full IG Live conversation, tune into this video. You can also find the full transcript here.
We have so much gratitude for Tory—for the gift of his time, openness to sharing and exploring together, and his invitation for all of us to lean into hopeful stories. To keep up with Imagine 2200 and Tory’s work be sure to follow them on social media at @grist. And be sure to follow @foodculturecltv and subscribe to the Food Culture Collective newsletter to keep up with the latest happenings, offerings, and community invitations.
Learn more
Image ID: 2024's Imagine 2200 Collection image, illustration of a woman with metallic structures around her neck, looking up at the surface in a colorful underwater aquatic environment. Art by Taj Francis.
Imagine 2200
Browse Grist’s Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contest. This collection celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. These stories are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead, but offer hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world.
Image ID: Food Futures Dream Lab image, photo and illustration collage of people chatting, contemplating an idea board, and holding up a sunflower for a hummingbird against a stylized night sky and moon.
Food Futures Dream Labs
Learn more and join an upcoming Food Futures Dream Lab from Food Culture Collective. These creative workshops grow our collective capacity to bring our dreams for the future into reality with collective visioning and mapping. Alongside fellow food, land, and culture workers, participants listen to stories of community food sovereignty, and then immerse in guided visioning and mapping sessions to get specific about the liberatory futures they want to create and how to seed them today.