34. Reimagining Impact: Professor Lisa Grocott on hosting Tomorrow Parties to bring future impact to life

View the full show notes, including a summary of practical tips on the Amplifying Research website: https://www.amplifyingresearch.com/podcast/34-lisa-grocott

Imagine stepping into a future where your research is creating the impact you've always hoped for. That's exactly what happens in a Tomorrow Party – an innovative method where researchers and stakeholders physically experience their desired futures rather than just planning for them. In this episode, Prof Lisa Grocott explains how this approach helps close the "imagination gap" that often prevents meaningful change. By creating spaces where people collectively imagine themselves already living in their preferred futures – speaking, feeling, and celebrating as if those futures are real – Tomorrow Parties generate the emotional connection and collective hope that traditional planning methods rarely achieve.

Lisa is Professor and Co-Director of WonderLab at Monash University and an Honorary Professor of Play at Design School Kolding (DSKD) in Denmark. Born in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Lisa is of Ngāti Kahungunu descent on her mother's side, with whakapapa from the UK on her father's side.

Her approach to designing for impact draws on both her co-design practice and Indigenous knowing, and is centered on creating transformative experiences that shift perspectives and unsettle everyday norms.

"What we realized at the end of the three days together was that almost every good idea we'd come up with had been seeded in that 30 minutes of us goofing around at the beginning... We realized that every time we tried to make it look a bit more like this intentional strategy it took away from something that the guests were telling us was the most important part of it, which was this idea that they never got to practice engaging with the future with their imaginations." -- Lisa Grocott

The Tomorrow Party began as a playful exercise before a funding application and evolved into a formal methodology supported by the Wellcome Foundation Trust. Unlike traditional planning methods that use scenarios or economic models, Tomorrow Parties invite participants to speak and act as if they're already living in futures 1, 3, or 5 years ahead. As Lisa describes it, participants don't just envision these futures cognitively – they actually feel them, creating emotional connections that drive genuine motivation and action.

Whether you're looking to align your research team around impact goals, engage meaningfully with diverse stakeholders, or simply break free from ineffective planning approaches, this episode offers a practical methodology you can start using immediately. Lisa walks us through the three-act structure of a Tomorrow Party and shares powerful stories of transformation – from Aboriginal community leaders finding their voice to cynical academics surprised by their own capacity for hope – demonstrating why this playful yet profound approach might be the missing element in your impact strategy.

Our conversation covers:

• How researchers can use imagination to bridge the gap between knowledge and meaningful action

• The origins and evolution of the Tomorrow Party methodology

• How emotional engagement and "felt experiences" create more memorable and motivating visions for the future

• The connection between imagination, hope, and collective action

• How to host your own Tomorrow Party to align teams, engage communities, or develop partnerships

• Why unsettling established perspectives is critical for transformation

• How to transform the feeling of possibility into practical action

• Ways to keep the energy and vision of imagined futures alive in daily work

Find Lisa online:

• WonderLab (Monash University) -- https://www.monash.edu/mada/research/project/wonderlab

• The Tomorrow Party -- https://tomorrowparty.org