We meant well: living inside the futures our policies imagine

Have you ever asked for help and left feeling oddly grateful, slightly confused, and still not fully helped? Someone was kind. Someone tried. And yet, your problem didn’t really go away. This talk starts from that familiar feeling. Across many countries, new policies promise a better way of caring for people: stronger communities, neighbors helping neighbors, support that feels closer and more human. These ideas are full of good intentions. They describe a hopeful future where help grows from everyday relationships rather than from distant institutions.

In this talk, Vénicia Sananès reads policy texts like science-fiction stories. They don’t just describe change - they imagine a different kind of society that doesn’t quite exist yet. They build worlds with heroes and villains, new social “technologies,” and visions of how society should function. In this future, care runs on goodwill, familiarity, and community spirit. Everything appears to work. She then introduces short scenes from everyday life that show what it actually takes, in human effort, to make this imagined future function. A gap appears between what policy hopes for and what people quietly do to hold things together.

Inspired by ethnographic fieldwork on Dutch social assistance, but not limited to one place, this talk speaks to a wider experience across healthcare, schools, social services, and community life. By stepping into the futures our policies dream up, we are invited to ask: what does it really take to live there?

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Chrystal Macmillan Building, The University of Edinburgh, 15a George Square, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

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