Nowhere Isn't So Far Away:
What William Morris Got Right About the Future of Work and Community
What if we built a world where work felt like art, communities shared more than sidewalks, and nature wasn’t something we escaped to but something we lived within? Over 130 years ago, William Morris imagined that world in News from Nowhere. His utopia wasn’t filled with flying cars or robots. It was something much more radical: a society where labor was joyful, beauty was woven into daily life, and people weren’t defined by wealth, speed, or hierarchy.
This vision wasn’t abstract for Morris. He was a maker. A designer. A weaver. He co-founded Morris & Co. in 1861, where he helped revive the art of hand-dyed textiles, block-printed wallpapers, and medieval-style tapestries. He believed that beauty belonged in everyday life, not just in museums or palaces. His workshops didn’t just produce goods. They trained apprentices, revived lost techniques, and treated craft as a form of resistance to industrialization.
In Morris’s imagined future, money no longer exists. People work not because they have to, but because they want to. Because it brings them meaning and connection. Cities have softened into villages. Workshops replace factories. Nature winds its way through communities. No one’s job is more important than another’s, and everyone contributes in a way that feels natural to their gifts.
That sounds far off. But is it?
Today, we’re starting to hear echoes of Morris’s dream. From the rise of maker culture and slow living to the growing push for regenerative design and universal basic income, a shift is happening. People are waking up to the idea that work doesn’t have to drain us. That beauty belongs in the built environment. That maybe progress isn’t about productivity, but about presence. Morris understood this long before we had the language for burnout or the bandwidth for a four-day workweek.
At its heart, News from Nowhere is a reminder that the systems we live under (capitalism, industrialism, consumerism) are choices, not laws of nature. They can be redesigned. Replaced. Regenerated. Morris didn’t just write about that idea. He lived it. He stitched it into fabric. He carved it into furniture. He patterned it into wallpaper. And he challenged others to build a world where work, art, and life are one continuous thread.
Maybe nowhere is exactly where we need to start.
I’m Chris Moeller, and I help build #ResilientCommunities. Ask me how.
#TotalTenancy™ #RegenerativeDevelopment #OrionGrowth #PathwayCommunities
My wife loves William Morris and the Art Nouveau movement that followed his work.
(I prefer Art Deco, but then I'm more a dwarf, and she's more of an elf).