More Utopias Now! (2017)

2016 marks the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. His pioneering account of an ideal society (the original meaning of the word utopia being both no-lace and good-place) set the template for numerous literary, artistic and filmic speculations in the centuries since about the best way to imagine and order the perfect society. Its impact is immeasurable, and while the counter point, dystopia, is perhaps more familiar to our troubled times, the book’s call to imagine a better possible future has never been more relevant or necessary. My version of Utopia speaks with the voices of primary school children imagining their own Utopia. A lesson to us about the world we made for them.