AIME & IMAGI-NATION
Town Hall Sessions with Jack Manning Bancroft
In these sessions, Jack will explore what imagination looks like in action through a series of themed town halls with partners, friends and collaborators. Each town hall session will contribute to building the 2023–2032 imagination infrastructure for the IMAGI-NATION Network.
NETWORK PROBLEM
Networks we've inherited are sick.
So here’s the deal: we made something called AIME, been 20 years on the trot, working with kids outside the margins, getting them into mentoring relationships that actually work. We took imagination seriously, like seriously seriously, and found out that if you let people who’ve been overlooked lead, they can flip systems. We started in Australia, backed by the world’s oldest living culture, and now we’re in 52 countries. That’s not bad for a bunch of misfits with hoodies and big hearts.
Then we thought, what if we made a whole nation? Not with borders and flags, but one built on imagination. A virtual space stitched together through stories, knowledge, and the kind of relationships that money can’t buy. We called it IMAGI-NATION. It’s not in one place, it’s everywhere. It’s a nation made of mentors, custodians, kids, thinkers, weirdos, and wise ones. We’re flipping the script, taking Indigenous knowledge and marginal wisdom and putting it right at the start of the design queue.
We’re not selling attention. We’re claiming time together. Trading in knowledge, care, and wonder. Our currency is kindness. Our economy? It’s relational. It’s five people in a circle who shouldn’t have met, building something that couldn’t exist without each other. That’s the UNCx5. It’s the heart of it all. From mentoring lessons to digital embassies, from Hoodie Economics to kids becoming Presidents of their own destiny this is the work.
And like all good things, this has an end date. March 2033. We’ll shut the doors, pass on the notes, and give the IP back to nature. No forever-ever bullshit. Just a good death, with a legacy built on unlikely connections. So if you feel the call, pull on a hoodie, join the network, and come build the future with us. It’s messy. It’s magic. And it just might work.
NETWORK SOLUTION
A relational network, built on UNCx5 — a driving governance model based on unlikely connections, designed to connect people from inside and outside the margins.
At its core, this solution disrupts traditional hierarchical and siloed systems of governance by embedding connection, reciprocity, and creativity into the structure itself. Instead of centring power in the usual places, UNCx5 reframes the idea of leadership through distributed influence, where trust and imagination travel across boundaries — social, economic, cultural, and geographic.
This network operates on the principle that real change happens when:
Marginalised voices are brought to the centre of decision-making.
People who would never normally meet collaborate to solve complex problems.
Creative tension and difference are embraced, not avoided.
Governance is relational - built through trust, care, and accountability, not just policy.
UNCx5 acts as a scaffolding for this vision: 5 universal constants that guide how we orient, act, and govern across time. These constants enable a dynamic, adaptive, and values-driven infrastructure that can evolve with the challenges it faces.
This relational network isn’t just about building a new organisation - it’s about building a new kind of future, where the governance model itself is the change-maker.