A unique fusion of scholarship and art, pairing Barbara Adam’s concrete prose with Seth Oliver’s striking abstract artworks.

In Drawing Futures, the authors engage with the contemporary globalised, interconnected and interdependent world and its future making. To make sense of the complexity, Adam and Oliver explore the intangible realms of time and the future as they are lived, approached, used and abused. They delve into those realms with words and drawings, abstracting and extracting essences in their efforts to make invisible change-processes visceral, drawing on lived experience, drawing out new meanings and drawing in their readers.

An adventure in communication, this beautiful hardback book invites readers to participate in the sense-making as they explore, meander, dream and meditate on Oliver and Adam’s collaboration in visual art and theory.

Barbara Adam is a social theorist, academic and author. She has been Emerita Professor at Cardiff University since 2011, having also held Fellowships in Italy, Germany and the UK. Adam’s interest in trans disciplinary collaborations and working with artists to help overcome the shortcomings of rationalist and scientific ways of engaging with the intangible future led to the formation of the Future MattersCollective in 2012. Adam has worked with artist Seth Oliver for over 20 years.

Seth Oliver is a multidisciplinary artist whose work bridges art, ecology and social change. Born to nature-loving artists in Birmingham, whose paths first crossed at the same art college where he would later complete both his BA and MA in Fine Art, his practice spans film, design and consultancy. He has collaborated with author Barbara Adam since 2005.

"Such a lovely and special event to launch the beautiful ‘Drawing Futures’ by Barbara Adam and Seth Oliver. The book was born of a rich collaboration between Barbara and Seth, between image and text, between art and poetry, so it was only fitting that the launch should comprise an exhibition, films, music, dance, pictures, and spoken word. " Professor Peter Madden, OBE

“Drawing Futures by Barbara Adam and Seth Oliver masterfully bridges the precision of decades-long research on time with the evocative ambiguity of artistic expression. This remarkable collaboration does not merely explore temporalities and futures — it enacts them, inviting readers into a richly layered dialogue where theory and image converge to reveal the unseen rhythms that shape our shared existence.” Frederic Hanusch, Professor of Planetary Change and Politics, Giessen University, Germany

“This work dissolves the artificial boundary that tends to separate scientific-scholarly discourse and inquiry from other modes of writing and thinking. Adam’s words and Oliver’s images in combination engage our faculties of thought and perception deeply, offering a different and illuminating way of approaching and appreciating time, life, and change.” Sabine Gross, Professor emerita of literature, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

“The author’s thought-provoking meditations on time and futures demand to be read. Through visual poetry and art, they amplify not just the words, but our ability to use both sides of our brain to open our minds to new possibilities.” Jane Davidson, author of #futuregen: Lessons from a Small Country

“Abstraction for these authors equals Mystery. Not foggy trips but Mystery of the enlightening and positive kind where you go through something and come out changed. What the two make themselves into, maybe we all could be? Hope made manifest.”Matthew Collings, Artist, Art Historian, Broadcaster