The Practice of Possibility

A housing researcher at a major university finds herself documenting informal networks of mutual support in her neighbourhood interviews. Rather than simply cataloguing these as 'social capital,' she begins collaborating with residents to map how these relationships already constitute alternative forms of housing security. Her capacity to read existing arrangements differently combines with her participation in documenting new possibilities to reveal complete alternatives that formal policy frameworks can't recognise. Together, they create documentation that reveals how shared childcare, resource pooling, and flexible living arrangements prefigure comprehensive approaches to housing that formal policy frameworks can't recognise. Their collaborative mapping becomes a tool residents use to articulate their own housing needs to councils, while reshaping the researcher's academic framework entirely.

Meanwhile, a climate scientist finds herself collaborating with historians and artists on a project examining coastal change. Their joint workshops reveal that different disciplines have been documenting the same phenomena through entirely different frameworks – ecological data, oral histories, visual documentation. When brought together, these fragments suggest approaches to adaptation that none of their separate methodologies could have generated alone.

In a European think tank, a political analyst notices that conventional metrics miss emerging forms of collective action through digital networks. Instead of writing reports about this gap, she participates in creating hybrid documentation that bridges institutional and grassroots perspectives. Working with activists, she develops new ways of making democratic participation visible that transform both academic political science and activist strategy. Their collaboration reveals that current political structures already contain prefigurative forms of more participatory democracy, waiting to be recognised and actualised through different forms of engagement.

Each practitioner works with what represents a distinctive approach to transformation – one that recognises that within existing configurations of knowledge, relationships, and capacities lie complete alternatives waiting to be actualised through different ways of seeing and connecting.

This approach to recognising and actualising prefigurative possibilities has been developed over more than two decades by Nico Heller (in the art world also known as Nicodemus) through practice at the intersection of art and politics. Working simultaneously as an artist and through his Democracy School, Nico Heller discovered that the same capacity to recognise alternative configurations within existing materials operated across both domains. What began as parallel practices gradually revealed their fundamental interconnection – that both artistic and political transformation emerge through recognising and reconfiguring what already exists in latent form.

Beyond Conventional Responses

This approach to creating change differs fundamentally from familiar frameworks. It doesn't rely on charismatic leadership, institutional authority, or technical expertise – though it can work alongside all of these. Instead, it operates through what Nico Heller calls narrative prefiguration: recognising and articulating possibilities already present in current circumstances but invisible within conventional readings.

In an era when established approaches increasingly struggle with interconnected challenges – climate disruption intersecting with democratic erosion, technological transformation colliding with economic inequality – this reorientation becomes not just useful but necessary.

For those engaging with complex challenges – whether in communities facing displacement, institutions navigating complex transitions, or organisations addressing systemic issues – this represents a crucial reorientation. Rather than asking "How do we solve this problem?" the question becomes "What possibilities already exist within this situation that we haven't recognised?"

Those practising this approach engage differently with complex situations. They listen not merely for problems to solve but for narrative fragments – partial stories, incomplete relationships, unrecognised capacities – that could be reconfigured into new possibilities. They read existing stories while simultaneously helping to author new ones, working with what already exists rather than imposing external solutions. They attend to stories that aren't fully articulated, relationships that aren't yet actualised, and patterns that existing frameworks miss or ignore.

Their questions shift attention toward dimensions of reality that remain unexamined. What connections already exist that we haven't recognised? What capacities are present that current arrangements don't utilise? What stories might help us see each other and this situation differently, enabling responses that feel both realistic and transformative?

Recognising What Already Exists

This methodology can operate across vastly different scales and contexts, taking forms as varied as the situations in which it might be applied. What becomes immediately apparent is how the same fundamental capacity – reading existing configurations for alternative possibilities – applies whether working with individuals, communities, institutions, or international networks. Yet crucially, it doesn't simply scale up from local to global – rather, it emerges differently at each level of engagement, revealing distinct forms of the same underlying dynamic.

At grassroots levels, residents across several housing estates discover that what they've been told are individual "survival strategies" actually constitute sophisticated economic arrangements that operate outside official frameworks. Rather than seeking recognition from authorities, they begin deliberately cultivating these networks, creating systems for sharing skills, resources, and opportunities that function as complete alternatives to traditional employment. Their collaboration reveals that within constraints of precarious work already exists a prefigurative economy based on reciprocity rather than wages.

What becomes visible here is how transformation at the community level emerges not through external intervention but through recognising and strengthening what already exists. For community organisers and local practitioners, this suggests a fundamental shift: from advocating for resources to recognising and actualising the wealth of relationships and capacities already present.

At institutional levels, research teams from different disciplines realise they've been approaching the same phenomena from separate angles – not just similar questions, but different facets of the same underlying dynamics. Instead of publishing separately, they create collaborative methodologies that reconfigure how research itself gets organised. Their interdisciplinary practice becomes a model for how knowledge production might work when different domains recognise their fundamental interconnection, generating insights none could achieve alone.

This institutional manifestation reveals how organisational transformation often requires not restructuring but recognising the connections that already exist across boundaries. For institutional leaders and policy practitioners, this points toward possibilities for change that don't require wholesale reform but rather the actualisation of collaborative potential already present within existing structures.

Moving from institutional to global scales, the methodology's capacity becomes particularly evident in international contexts, where researchers from different countries recognise that their locally specific findings reveal patterns invisible within any single national framework. A research network examining urban informality brings together architects from São Paulo, sociologists from Delhi, and residents from Detroit to collaboratively develop approaches to urban life that emerge from their interaction. Rather than comparing situations, they create shared methodologies that transform how each understands their own context, revealing that within local innovations already exist prefigurative forms of global urbanism.

Here we see how transformation at global scales emerges not through imposing universal solutions but through recognising how local specificities contain universal possibilities. For international practitioners and policy developers, this suggests ways of working that honour diversity while enabling genuine collaboration across difference.

The methodology doesn't simply scale up from local to global – rather, it manifests differently at each level of engagement, as these additional examples demonstrate. A community organiser working with older residents whose benefits have been cut discovers that their informal support networks already function as sophisticated care systems that formal services can't replicate. Rather than advocating for service restoration, she collaborates with residents to strengthen and extend these networks, creating documentation that reveals how community care prefigures alternatives to institutionalised social services. Their practice transforms both community organising and care provision.

An economist studying labour markets begins collaborating with workers in precarious employment to document economic activities that existing categories can't capture. Together, they create new frameworks for understanding work that recognise how informal, collaborative, and care-based activities already constitute complete alternatives to wage employment. Their partnership transforms both economic analysis and worker organising, revealing how current economic arrangements contain prefigurative forms of social economy.

An artist working with patterns of movement and settlement collaborates with migrants to create installations that don't just represent displacement but actively reconfigure how spaces of arrival function. Their collaborative projects transform abandoned buildings into spaces that serve arriving families while challenging assumptions about integration. Through their work together, they discover that within migration experiences already exist prefigurative forms of belonging that transcend nation-state frameworks.

Beyond Problem-Solution Frameworks

What unites these different applications across scales is their departure from conventional problem-solving frameworks. Instead of identifying deficits to be addressed, practitioners learn to recognise alternative configurations already present within existing circumstances. This shift proves crucial in an era when conventional approaches increasingly feel inadequate to complex, interconnected challenges that resist isolated solutions.

For practitioners accustomed to needs assessments, strategic planning, or gap analyses, this represents a fundamental reorientation. Rather than beginning with what's missing or broken, they learn to begin with what's present but unrecognised.

A social policy researcher doesn't start with the question "How do we fix unemployment?" but rather "What forms of work and value creation already exist that our economic categories don't recognise?" This isn't semantic repositioning but a genuine shift in attention that reveals different possibilities for engagement and intervention.

An urban planner encountering demographic change in a neighbourhood begins working directly with residents to understand how they're already adapting spaces to meet changing needs. Instead of developing plans for them, she collaborates in documenting and extending innovations residents have created – informal community spaces, shared gardens, flexible housing arrangements. Their partnership reveals that within demographic transition already exist prefigurative forms of community organisation that planning frameworks miss.

This reorientation proves particularly relevant for educated professionals working within institutions that have become adept at absorbing reform efforts while maintaining essential structures. Academic researchers, policy analysts, and technical experts often find themselves in positions where conventional approaches feel increasingly inadequate to the complexity they encounter daily.

The practice of possibility offers these practitioners new ways of engaging with institutional constraints while identifying transformative potential within existing arrangements.

Working Across Scales of Knowledge

The methodology's sophistication becomes apparent when considered across different domains of expertise. This cross-domain capacity proves essential in addressing challenges that transcend disciplinary boundaries – climate disruption, technological transformation, democratic erosion – requiring responses that integrate different ways of knowing while remaining grounded in lived experience. Where traditional approaches often fragment complex challenges into manageable but disconnected parts, narrative prefiguration works with their inherent interconnections.

A public health researcher collaborates with community health workers to understand how locally specific practices for managing chronic illness actually constitute complete alternative approaches to healthcare. Rather than studying their practices, she participates in documenting and extending them, creating resources that bridge medical and community knowledge. Their collaboration reveals that within community health practice already exist prefigurative forms of care that could transform medical intervention.

For health practitioners working within institutional constraints, this demonstrates how transformation might emerge not through challenging medical authority but through recognising and integrating forms of expertise that already operate alongside official systems.

Similarly, an environmental scientist working with indigenous knowledge holders doesn't simply supplement scientific data with traditional knowledge, but discovers that their different ways of understanding ecological relationships reveal possibilities for environmental engagement invisible within either framework alone. The collaboration generates insights that transform both scientific method and traditional practice.

This example illustrates how transformation in science and environmental practice might emerge not through choosing between different forms of knowledge but through recognising how their interaction generates possibilities neither could achieve alone.

These examples illustrate how narrative prefiguration enables what might be called "cognitive justice" – recognising that different ways of knowing reveal different aspects of complex realities, and that bringing these into productive relationship generates possibilities that no single framework could achieve alone.

Drawing on this understanding of how reading and rewriting reality can work systematically across different contexts, Nico Heller developed specific methodologies including Narrative-based Action Learning and Narrative Coaching. Through the Democracy School, which he founded and directs as a platform for this work, these approaches demonstrate how practitioners can engage systematically with narrative fragments and ecological relationships. To explore how this integration of interpretive and creative agency operates as a systematic methodology, readers can consult 'The Concept and Methodology of Narrative Prefiguration', which shows how transformation can be enabled at both individual and collective scales.

Institutional and Cultural Manifestations

At institutional levels, narrative prefiguration manifests in ways that reveal how transformation might occur within existing organisational structures rather than requiring their wholesale replacement. This proves particularly relevant for practitioners working within established institutions who seek meaningful change while navigating institutional constraints – a challenge that becomes more pressing as external pressures for transformation intensify.

Research centres deliberately bring together disciplines that rarely collaborate, creating conditions where new questions become possible. A centre studying artificial intelligence includes philosophers, anthropologists, and community organisers alongside computer scientists, not to add different perspectives to technical questions, but to recognise that AI development prefigures social relationships that require engagement across these domains.

For institutional leaders and programme directors, this suggests possibilities for transformation that emerge through recognising and actualising collaborative potential already present within their organisations.

Cultural institutions engaging with this methodology create platforms where different kinds of knowledge can encounter each other productively. A museum creates collaborative platforms where glaciologists, poets, and climate activists work together not to educate each other but to create new forms of engagement with climate reality. Their collaborations produce exhibitions that function as spaces for ongoing experimentation rather than information delivery, revealing how within artistic, scientific, and activist practice already exist prefigurative forms of climate engagement that transcend their separate limitations.

Publishers and media organisations create platforms where investigative journalists, artists, and community researchers collaborate in producing accounts of complex issues that no single medium could achieve. Their collaborative publications become spaces where different forms of knowledge encounter each other productively, revealing how within existing media practice already exist prefigurative forms of communication that could transform public discourse.

These examples demonstrate how transformation within cultural and media institutions might emerge not through abandoning established forms but through recognising and actualising collaborative possibilities already present within their practice.

International and Collaborative Dimensions

At international scales, narrative prefiguration enables collaborations that transcend conventional divisions – North-South, expert-community, theory-practice – that often limit the effectiveness of global initiatives. This capacity proves particularly crucial as practitioners worldwide grapple with challenges that require genuine collaboration across difference rather than the imposition of universal solutions. The increasing interconnectedness of global challenges makes this collaborative capability not just valuable but essential.

These collaborations require sophisticated coordination and genuine reciprocity. Practitioners develop skills in working across languages, institutions, and cultural contexts while maintaining the methodology's core commitment to recognising rather than imposing possibilities. They learn to create spaces where different kinds of expertise can encounter each other without hierarchies that privilege certain forms of knowledge over others.

For international development practitioners, diplomats, and global policy professionals, this suggests approaches to collaboration that honour local knowledge while enabling genuine shared learning and innovation.

Digital platforms enable forms of international collaboration that previous generations couldn't imagine, allowing practitioners to recognise patterns across contexts in real-time. Climate researchers sharing data across continents discover that what appears as local adaptation in each location actually prefigures global approaches to environmental change.

These technological possibilities reveal how international collaboration might evolve beyond traditional models of knowledge transfer toward genuine co-creation and mutual transformation.

Developing Practitioner Capacities

Working with narrative prefiguration across different scales develops distinctive capacities valuable regardless of specific domain or context. These capacities represent not just techniques but fundamental reorientations in how practitioners engage with complexity, uncertainty, and possibility – reorientations that become increasingly necessary as traditional approaches reach their limits.

They learn to read situations for signs of alternative configurations rather than focusing primarily on deficits or problems. This shift in attention proves crucial for practitioners operating within resource-constrained environments or facing seemingly intractable challenges.

They develop sensitivity to fragments – partial expressions, incomplete initiatives, emergent relationships – that conventional frameworks miss or dismiss. This proves particularly valuable in contexts where formal systems fail to capture the full reality of how people live and work.

They cultivate what might be called "configurative imagination" – the ability to see how existing elements might be related differently. This isn't fantasy or wishful thinking but disciplined attention to latent possibilities within current circumstances. For strategic thinkers and organisational leaders, this capacity enables innovation that emerges from existing resources rather than requiring external investment.

They practise working with multiple timescales simultaneously, recognising how past experiences and future possibilities exist within present configurations. This temporal sophistication proves essential for practitioners addressing long-term challenges while needing to demonstrate immediate impact.

Perhaps most importantly, they develop comfort with uncertainty and incompleteness. Rather than seeking comprehensive understanding before acting, they learn to work productively with partial knowledge, allowing understanding to emerge through engagement itself. For practitioners operating in rapidly changing contexts, this capacity proves essential for maintaining effectiveness while navigating uncertainty.

The Contemporary Relevance

This methodology proves particularly relevant – indeed, increasingly necessary – at a moment when conventional approaches feel inadequate to contemporary challenges. Climate disruption, democratic erosion, technological transformation, economic inequality – these interconnected challenges require responses that can work across scales and domains, integrating different kinds of knowledge while remaining grounded in lived experience. The convergence of these challenges creates what many recognise as a time of fundamental transition, demanding approaches that can navigate complexity without being paralysed by it.

The current global context presents practitioners across domains with a distinctive challenge: how to respond effectively to complex, interconnected crises using approaches designed for simpler, more contained problems. Narrative prefiguration offers a way forward that doesn't require abandoning existing expertise but rather recognising how that expertise might connect to other forms of knowledge and practice.

Nico Heller formalised these insights into systematic approaches that maintain this cross-domain integration while being applicable across vastly different contexts and scales of engagement. This development emerged from recognising that the same capacity to work with alternative configurations operated across artistic and political practice – revealing a methodology of broader relevance than either domain alone could provide.

Narrative prefiguration doesn't promise to solve these challenges but offers ways of engaging with them that reveal possibilities invisible within problem-solution frameworks. It enables responses that honour complexity while remaining practically actionable, that work within existing constraints while opening space for fundamental transformation.

For those engaging with today's challenges – whether in community organizing, climate science, policy research, or cultural work – narrative prefiguration provides a methodology for working with rather than against the fragmented conditions of contemporary life. It offers tools for recognising and actualising possibilities that exist prefiguratively within the very circumstances that seem most constraining.

The practice of possibility reveals that transformation often begins not with grand interventions but with recognising what already exists in a different light. Like recognising that the same landscape can be seen as agricultural land, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and cultural heritage depending on how you read it, narrative prefiguration enables practitioners to recognise that current configurations contain multiple alternative futures, each waiting to be actualised through different forms of engagement.

Rather than waiting for external change or permission to act differently, practitioners can begin immediately by shifting how they read the situations they already inhabit. This shift in reading often reveals possibilities for action that were present all along but invisible within conventional frameworks – opening pathways for transformation that emerge from engagement with what already exists rather than requiring wholesale replacement of existing arrangements.

Continue the Conversation

To explore narrative prefiguration more deeply, you can read the full theoretical framework that underpins this methodology. To learn about specific applications, visit our pages on Narrative-based Action Learning for collective transformation and Narrative Coaching for individual development. To begin a conversation about how this approach might serve your context, get in touch through our contact form.

Note on Illustrations

The examples presented in this document were developed to illustrate the principles and potential applications of narrative prefiguration across different contexts and scales. They demonstrate how the methodology might be applied in various domains while embodying its core principles. These illustrations are designed to help readers recognize similar patterns and possibilities within their own contexts rather than documenting specific historical projects. For information about actual applications of narrative prefiguration, please contact the Democracy School directly.