In the re-launch of The Alternative UK in March, we created six entry points into transforming politics for the current age. See here and join a Loomio Action Forum to participate in any one of the groups now forming and collaborating.

One of the least obvious entry-points is our inquiry into the ‘feel’ of what we are giving rise to. The old politics might be evoked by sitting on hard chairs in straight lines, listening to a group of political types (interpret these types as you will) at the far end of a room. So, what would the new feel be like? It was one of the first things we noticed when we started to engage with Alternativet in Denmark—that the ‘feel’ of it was vibrant, playful, radical.

Much of that was created by removing the boundaries between people and politicians. Founder Uffe Elbaek put himself repeatedly on the line, confessing he didn’t know the answers to unfathomable questions on live TV. At the same time, he gave a platform to entirely new forms of political expression.

At the end of every day in the annual Folkemodet political festival, inside the Alternativet tent, he would invite artists – from circus performers to opera singers – to sum up what happened that day. The ‘feel’ was radical, creative, energetic, while at the same time infused with the ‘six values’ that guided Alternativet.

That emphasis on ‘feel’—the word itself implies both emotions and ontology—seems very alive today, as we enter into Week three of lock-down. Much of the language in chat rooms of all kinds has been about the strangeness of this moment. How what we have taken for granted as reality – the way things are – seems to be shifting. Not necessarily for good or bad, but in unexpected ways that are causing us to observe, think and question.

To start with, the changing landscape we’re apprehending. Instead of being in the midst of a bustling reality, we are sitting at home looking out of the window or into our screens. In the news we see pictures of the places we used to frequent, now empty of citizens. The architecture is more obvious, the empty shops suddenly having no purpose.

The surreal public space. Here, the sound of gratitude for the NHS.

On line, people are posting remarkable pictures of a changing environment. Los Angeles before the virus, and now – from grey, polluted skylines, to a deep, azure blue in two weeks.

Animals that have been hidden from view, have started strolling into ‘our space’: goats walking the streets of a Welsh town, deer sitting on suburban lawns (much of this is captured in a DA blog this week). Many have expressed how birdsong now seems louder, as if suddenly emboldened. Distant drills - once the normal soundscape - now sounds like the intruder.

Framing every beautiful animal and natural scene is the dark shadow of still-rising human infection and death. Every day we are confronted with numbers of the sick and dying that cause us to think, with great discomfort, about our mortality. Given the much greater vulnerability of older people and those with previous illnesses, anxiety predominantly takes the form of worry about others.

Preparing for our daily tasks is increasingly shaped by our possible impact upon anonymous people. See this video that underlines why wearing a mask is a social act, as much as a personal one. We’re all being stretched to move out of our bubbles of self-care into broader fields of action.

Within that, the news that we are experiencing the most rapid drop in carbon emissions since the second world war is a different kind of shock. It’s as if we are in someone’s idealistic B-movie about tragedy leading to miracles. No-one knows what will happen next, but we are certainly having our deep yearning for a better future activated by small snapshots of possibility.

Can we influence what happens in this dream? Ten years ago, in a two-year project called Re-imagining Social Work (pdf and Guardian article) Pat Kane and Indra Adnan—the co-initiators of A/UK—took teams of social workers on a journey which included dreaming up the future. Using tools like AQAL maps, and inviting participants to write a social-work soap opera, the process ended by considering what first, concrete steps the social workers would take to get to a future they could look embrace. We currently use a similar method in the Inquiry stage of the collaboratories that prepare communities for building Citizen Action Networks.

And during this lockdown, all kinds of prototyping seems to be going on, opening up this space of ‘feeling different’. Most notable is how work now feels different. Before—at least for the non-freelancers— a clear separation between home and office. Now, there’s a distinct blurring of boundaries, manifested in our behaviour, the spaces we occupy and hours we spend there (again, something that the creatively self-employed are long used to). Executives are alarmed at how much time is required to deal with children at home. At the same time, we have heard many stories of new relationships between parent and child springing up.

A new work/life balance—so often heralded over the last two decades—seems to be finally forming in the corona-crisis. Men without ties, women without heels, both in domestic backdrops where, on video calls, you might end up paying more attention to what’s on their walls than what’s being said. Both are often disturbed by cats or children they seem increasingly at ease with. It’s as if we are all on holiday, but we’re not.

The new personal realm is difficult to quantify – for those who are not used to it, it’s unexpected. Spending hours on Zoom for example, might have been anticipated as a cool, disconnected activity – like being in a meeting but much further away. Instead, these meetings are new hybrids between screen and live interaction: the person you are talking to sits up close, you see their eyes, their skin. It’s intimate. One colleague reported moving closer to the screen with one person, but backing off with another – although both were nowhere nearby.

One friend tells us of how the change of scene for her team is causing a greater attention to the private realm: how each member was coping with change became an explicit topic. Relationships that were previously dealt with at arms-length - brief catch-ups around the kettle, a nod in the corridor – have suddenly moved up-close. Individuals are sharing intimate, sometimes difficult, domestic details on Zoom. Others are showing care and a willingness to respond. One of our friends notes that this added ‘emotional agenda’ makes it more difficult to achieve the goals they set previously, and she is now considering working at the weekend to catch up. Or maybe revising the work goals.

The UK cabinet making the same mistakes as the rest of a public new to Zoom on-line meetings

Outside of the home, there seems to be a shift of what is understood as authority. Boris is in quarantine, not looking like himself. He’s using Zoom as if he were in exactly the same learning curve as the rest of us and making the same mistakes on security.

Seeing media images of his cabinet in their video-conference meeting, alongside hundreds of other citizens in theirs, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’ve moved into a new form of decentralised, distributed governance. That’s just a fantasy of course…or is it? The whole ‘feel’ is certainly less the Machiavellianism of House of Cards, and more the strange alternative reality of His Dark Materials. As if Covid19 was the “subtle knife” by means of which we have cut through to a new Universe.

Attempts to capture this moment as a battle, evoking wartime levels of unity and spirit, abound. The Queen addressed the nation on Sunday evening—one of only five times outside of the annual Christmas message, asking us to step up in this hour of need. But we have already done that in so many ways, without needing to be asked.

Neighbourhood networks of ‘mutual-aid’ frsprung up spontaneously. People – and businesses - are giving away their skills and resources for nothing, just to keep each other going. And in those moments when people hang out their windows to clap the NHS, our visceral experience of the public space comes alive. It’s poignant and filled with gratitude.

In moments like this, reputations can be made or destroyed, according to how well you go with the caring zeitgeist.

Mike Ashleigh kept his Sports Direct stores open to catch the trade, but had to quickly apologise for putting his staff in danger. Tim Martin first refused to close his chain of Weatherspoon pubs, then let his staff go without pay, before quickly changing his mind again and keeping them on furlough. News that the owners of the ExCel business centre that has been turned into Nightingale Hospital was charging the NHS millions of pounds in rent, was quickly addressed and a U-turn effected.

What will we do with this new feel of shared, public agency, as we face the future? Some of the most inspiring conversations I had online this week was with people for whom the felt sense of a better, more diverse, more emotionally literate democracy is not new, but something they have been cultivating for decades.

For them, the only thing missing in their plans for transformation has been public and political will. Is this a moment to develop that more actively?

Amongst those long-term visionary actors are all the people we platform on the Daily Alternative, a small group of whom will be spotlighted in our Elephant series, starting this week.

Some are already in acceleration mode. Jeroo Bilymoria and the global crew of social enterprises known as Catalyst 2030 who committed to accelerating all efforts to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals, just before Covid19 broke. Steve Waddell, Katherine Trebeck and all those in the Transformation Forum, who have so many well worked out plans for rapid action already in place. Karen Downes, Scilla Elworthy, Lynne Franks and others who have been developing the ethos and architecture for new, more feminine, ways of working together that would deliver more flourishing communities. The CtrlShift group of actors who have built the community infrastructure for a more independent kind of resilience.

The groundwork needed to shift to a better future is already there. But it needs more attention from the previously disengaged.

For now, this remains a moment of feeling our way into what’s possible. Of dreaming about futures we might actively choose, when the doors to the public sphere are open again. And, to the best of our ability, linking that back to what is possible on the ground. In our Action Forums, we’re plotting and designing with those conditions in mind. Join us.

Image from His Dark Materials TV series. Who does that look like with the polar bears?

Alternative Editorial: Feeling Our Way Forward