Letter from the future: When art taught science to dream

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OPINION

By Godfrey Mutabazi

I write to you from the year 2075, in a world where the boundaries between creativity and computation no longer exist. It is a time when algorithms compose symphonies, architects grow buildings from living tissues, and designers sculpt the behaviour of artificial intelligence like poets chiselling verses into marble. I write to remind you that the path we now walk was not first paved by engineers or scientists. It was charted by dreamers, artists, and storytellers who dared to imagine the unimaginable.

As Albert Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge shows us what already exists while imagination reveals what could be.” In the creative industries, film, music, animation, gaming and digital storytelling, this principle is clear. Nations advance not by imitating others, but by imagining new worlds and transforming those visions into industries that shape culture, technology and economic growth.

Even in your own century, the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London understood this truth. Consistently ranked the world’s leading postgraduate institution for art and design, it was not merely a school of aesthetics but a crucible of imagination, where creativity shaped technology long before it was built

While Oxford and Cambridge symbolise intellectual authority, the Royal College of Art represents creative authority, the place where ideas acquire form, meaning, and market value. In art and design, RCA’s prestige surpasses even the most venerable academic institutions.

You often believed innovation came from laboratories, research papers, and sterile halls of academia. You celebrated the breakthroughs of science, rightly so. But too often, you forgot where those breakthroughs began. In your time, creative industries, those vibrant sectors of music, film, fashion, literature, design, and digital art, were seen as entertainment, even frivolous. How wrong we were.

Imagination Was the First Innovation. Long before the invention of mind machine interfaces or interstellar propulsion, writers had already journeyed across galaxies. Your storytellers gave us blueprints of possibility. They asked: What if? And that simple question drove everything else.

The earliest concepts of video calls, tablet computers, artificial intelligence, and even biometric scanning were all imagined in novels and movies before they were ever prototyped. It was not just the likes of Asimov or Verne; in Africa, our own griots, animators, and Afro-futurist authors began to reframe the continent’s narrative. They didn’t just entertain, they inspired scientists to turn metaphor into mechanism.

In your own century, shows like Black Mirror didn’t simply horrify, they forecast. They created ethical testbeds for scientists to consider consequences before building the tools. These were more than fictions but were rehearsals for the real.

The demands of visual effects in film led to the invention of new rendering software, which eventually became vital in fields like virtual surgery, architectural simulation, and robotics. Pixar’s innovations, for instance, didn’t just make better animation, they helped hospitals train surgeons.

Music producers and DJs, always chasing better sound quality and rhythm manipulation, pushed the boundaries of audio engineering. The pursuit of perfect beats led to developments in signal processing, data compression, and even AI-generated music therapy.

In the fashion world, the marriage of aesthetics and innovation birthed smart fabrics, energy-harvesting clothing, and biometric wearables, all of which you now find embedded in our health networks. What you saw as creativity was, in fact, engineering in disguise.

By the mid-21st century, the smartest research labs no longer employed scientists alone. They began inviting storytellers, illustrators, and game designers to co-create the future.

The education movement you once knew as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) became STEAM, adding ‘Art’ as a core discipline. That single letter changed everything. It taught young minds that beauty and logic were not enemies but were companions.

Artists worked side-by-side with physicists to visualise quantum data, with biologists to create living sculptures, and with software engineers to make AI interfaces feel more human. The result? Technology that not only worked but it resonated.

In your time, too many innovations failed because they were brilliant in theory but clumsy in use. The reason? Scientists built tools for function. Designers built for feeling. The User Became the Centre, Not the System

Creative industries reminded technology of the human soul. They taught it to listen, to adapt, and to speak our language, not just with words, but with colour, form, emotion, and empathy. User Experience (UX) design, inspired by artists and architects, turned clunky machines into seamless extensions of our bodies.

What you allow into your culture, you allow into your science. Culture drove adoption and policy.

Musicians made data go viral before scientists did. Filmmakers taught entire nations how to dream together. Fashion designers influenced which materials became profitable to develop. Advertisers helped new technologies find markets and scale.

Where science struggled to explain, creatives translated. They turned climate models into compelling documentaries. They turned gene editing into theatre. They turned cybersecurity into comics for children. By shaping public opinion, creative industries influenced policy, and where policy went, science followed.

Video game designers taught us to model complex systems in real-time. Architects worked with animators to simulate cities before building them. Performance artists partnered with engineers to test how people would behave in new environments. These experiments became the basis for entire smart districts and ecological design frameworks.

Support your filmmakers. Fund your painters. Respect your poets. Invite your sculptors into your space agencies. Let your children draw more, dance more, dream more, because tomorrow’s inventions will rise not from equations alone, but from the hearts and minds of those who dare to imagine beyond them.

So, stand up and take your place in the noble procession of nations. Formulate bold, visionary policies. Open your borders to all investors, not merely for trade, but to awaken dormant potential. And never forget: no nation on Earth has ever achieved lasting development without investing in its creative industries. Art, film, literature, music, and design are not luxuries, but engines of innovation, identity, and economic renewal. Without creativity, even the strongest policies fall flat; with it, a people discover their voice, and a nation discovers its soul.

The writer is an Engineer