The Great Salt Lake in Utah is an ecological behemoth.

Tens of millions of birds and hundreds more species rely on the body of water for their migratory and breeding patterns. It supports Utah’s economy and prevents millions of residents from being exposed to toxic dust storms.

But the lake is dwindling: over time, human consumptive use has led it to lose 50% of its volume. Since 2020, 40 billion gallons of water have been draining from the lake every year.

The current trajectory is catastrophic — perhaps imminently so, with forecasts that it will run dry in just five years.

The structure of the Salt Lake problem exists in different policy contexts, particularly in relation to nature-based systems. Current (hard to change) behaviour patterns put a system on a trajectory toward bad, potentially catastrophic outcomes. Ambitious policymakers don’t just want to avoid catastrophe; they want to reimagine and remake flawed systems and deliver transformative policy that serves society in a sustainable way.

The question, as ever, is how.

In October, Sanjan Sabherwal and Neha Sharma from Policy Lab UK came to Design&Delivery to share their latest work in a thought-provoking and inspiring session. They presented two experimental methods — moral imagining and using art — which can help open the window for radical transformation in policy design. Here’s what they shared.

Thinking outside the cycle

“Transformations, in their truest form, are hard to imagine. The current system suppresses our ability to conceive of something we haven't seen before being materially realised.”

The limitations of the traditional policy cycle has been a recurring theme at previous Design&Delivery sessions. Andrew Knight talked about the absence of ‘delivery’ in the UK’s ROAMEF model. Pia Andrews pointed out the lack of adaptiveness in others.

In this session, we saw how it can constrain transformative thinking.

It’s hard to reimagine a system thirty years into the future if you’re also thinking about monitoring methods and evaluation metrics. Neha Sharma said that the moment to “stretch” policy thinking and really imagine “what else could be possible” is before the policy development process begins in earnest.

Stepping back from the intricacies of formal policy development and instead spending time in the expansive, provocative space of what’s possible can seed small new ideas and experiments which have the potential to take on a life of their own. Over time, these ideas and experiments can grow new narratives, perspectives and evidence that can ultimately contribute to transformational change. That’s the theory of change, depicted below, outlined by Neil Fitzpatrick and colleagues in a 2022 paper and used by the Lab to guide their experimental work — the seeds framework.

Fitzpatrick, et al., 2023

But what methods can policymakers use to ignite their thinking and seed new ideas? Policy Lab recently developed a toolkit of eleven experimental methods for policymaking. In their presentation, they focused on two in particular: moral imaginings and using art in policy. These methods are presented below.

Expanding moral imagination in policymaking

The red-eyed eared grebe is a unique species of bird: for ten months every year, it can’t fly. Instead, it relies on the ecosystem around the Great Salt Lake for its food and protection during this recurring vulnerable period of its life.

There aren’t many salt lakes for it to choose from. As 40 billion gallons drain from the Great Salt Lake every year, the grebe’s vulnerability increases.

How would Utah’s policymakers adapt their water use policies if they had to listen to the concerns of the grebe directly. Better yet, what if Utah’s policymakers each had to speak on behalf of a different species affected by the dwindling lake at an interspecies meeting. Humans, shrimp, grebes and other species all in the same room on an equal footing to represent their shared interests in the lake’s precious resources.

It sounds a little outlandish. However, as we watched a snippet of the interspecies council, led by Moral Imagination’s Phoebe Tickell, it was clearly evident how bringing together a diverse group of human stakeholders to speak-up for other species starts to expand viewpoints in a really powerful way.

PL Roding screenshot

Using Moral Imagination’s three pillars framework, the same approach for non-human species could be applied to imagining the perspective of unborn generations and even ancestors. There’s rich scope for teams to use this framework and apply it in different ways.

Using art in policy

Emotions are an inescapably powerful driver of human decision-making. Whether it’s consumers choosing brands or clinicians making treatment decisions.

As Sanjan Sabherwal explained, bringing art into policy practice is about embracing and using this reality as an advantage and complementing it with data and evidence, rather than trying to ignore or overwhelm it.

In 2018, the Danish artist Olafur Eliasson transported twenty-four giant ice blocks from the Arctic and left them to slowly melt outside a London museum. The art work was a visceral way to connect people with the distant reality of melting ice sheets. A spreadsheet with data could explain the same facts but with far less impact.

"The assumption is that using the arts to translate scientific findings would increase participation by engaging a wide audience and create a greater gravitational pull towards issues that otherwise go unseen or are not fully understood. Today, understanding of the rivers and other freshwater bodies often relies on an ability to access and interpret complex data. In this future, knowledge is hypothetically made more accessible to all."

People respond to stories and visuals. It’s why the most compelling data presentations use narratives, contextualisation and effective visualisations. Using art could just be a more immersive way to do this. But it’s not the only application — check out this thread from the Apolitical community on the different roles art can play in policymaking.

__What role can artists play in policymaking?.💬

Watching the seeds grow

Sabherwal and Sharma were part of the Policy Lab team which tested these two experimental methods on a live policy issue. Working with the futures team at the UK’s Department for Environment and Rural Affairs, they explored what a potential transformation of the UK’s waterways would look like in 2043.

The work was deliberately speculative, even provocative at times. As Sharma said at the end of their presentation, the aim of this process wasn’t to produce detailed policy proposals to bring to ministers. Instead, it was about stretching the horizon of what’s possible. Sowing ideas, narratives and experiments which can germinate within the department and materialise over time in exciting, unpredictable ways.

A few months into that work, validation for their theory of change is emerging. High-level proposals for some of the speculative ideas are being worked up; they’re bringing senior leaders into the conversation; and engaging with the wider policy design community to spread the word.

Picture credit: Unspalsh