Talks & Events
Interested in booking me as a speaker for your event? Get in touch.
Upcoming Events
17-19 August 2012 - Uncivilisation: The Dark Mountain Festival, The Sustainability Centre, Hampshire. Join us for our third festival - a weekend of conversations, stories, ideas and music, campfires and (doubtless) hexayurts. Last year's festival sold out, so if you're planning to come, do book early.
20 April 2012 - Keynote at Network Knitting in the Visual Arts, Turning Point Network, FACT, Liverpool.
19 April 2012 - Keynote at Network Knitting in the Visual Arts, Turning Point Network, BALTIC, Gateshead.
18 April 2012 - 'The Practical Power of Stories', keynote at Ecocultures 2012, University of Essex, Colchester.
Past Events
29 March 2012 - 'The Invisible College', Think Infinite with Google, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
27 March 2012 - 'The Invisible College', Think Infinite with Google, Sao Paulo, Brazil.
25 March 2012 - 'The Guild and the Garret: A Resilients Salon' as part of Timelab's System Error springcamp, Ghent, Belgium. Ben Vickers and I will be hosting this event, as part of my role as artist-in-transience with The Resilients project.
12 March 2012 - 'The Measurable and the Unmeasurable', Aston Business School, Birmingham. A talk and discussion with Green Information and Operations Management students, exploring the buried assumptions behind quantitative approaches to getting out of the mess we're in.
28 February 2012 - 'How to Change the World (In the Absence of Progress)', Institute for Creative & Cultural Entrepreneurship, Goldsmiths University. I want to think about how we disentangle the theory and practice of "social innovation" (or, "how new stuff enters social reality") from the ideology of "Progress" used to frame it by many of its leading British proponents. This is the ICCE's regular salon for their postgraduates, so you'll need to contact Maria Irurita (m.irurita@goldsmiths.ac.uk, 020 7919 7955) if you want to come. 5.30pm.
25 February 2012 - 'What's art got to do with it?', Warwick Climate Forum, University of Warwick. As part of the university's Go Green week, I'll be speaking about the paradoxical relationship between art and the mess the world is in today. My talk is at 1.30pm and is part of an afternoon conference running from 12.00-5.30pm. (Audio of this talk now online here.)
15 February 2012 - Professional (Reality) Development Programme, Brighton University. My friend Ben Vickers is running this programme to help students orient to the realities of finding work, making ends meet and creating mutual support in precarious times. I'll be one of a series of guests he is inviting to share their own working experience. The intention is to talk about the difficulties, rather than the achievements - and also, I guess, about the hacks by which we make life work. Morning. More details to follow.
2 February 2012 - Research seminar on Euroaxaca project, Department of Journalism, Media & Communication, Stockholm University, Sweden. I will be joining Professor Karin Becker, as well as Robert & Geska Brecevic from Performing Pictures, for a session about the Euroaxacan Initiative of Transformative Cultures project. 10.00-12.00.
30 January 2012 - Workshop on "Propaganda", Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Hosted by Robert Brecevic of Performing Pictures. 10am-4pm.
24 January 2012 - A Dark Mountain conversation with Paul Kingsnorth & Dougald Hine, Theatr Cymru, Mold. This evening is part of The Absurd season of spoken word events, organised by Sophie McKeand. There's support from the poet Lorraine Mariner, as well as an open mic session at the start of the evening. Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Yr Wyddgrug - 7pm.
19 September 2011 - 'The Internet isn't here to help us get rich, it's here to help us get poorer in less painful ways' at ISEA2011, Istanbul. I'll be speaking with a great bunch of people on a panel called 'Share Workers: Techniques and Meanings of Sustainable Digital Networking'.
19-21 August 2011 - Uncivilisation 2011: The Dark Mountain Festival, The Sustainability Centre, nr Petersfield, Hampshire. Come and join us in the woods for our second festival of stories, ideas, songs and encounters, looking for the possibilities on the other side of the end of the world as we knew it. Among much else, I'll be taking part in a session on the Saturday afternoon reflecting on the 200th anniversary of the Luddite rebellion - and weaving this together with the thoughts about Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth mythos I'll have presented at 'Nature Inc?'.
28-31 July 2011 - Future Perfect, Karlstad, Sweden. The organisers of this festival have invited me to speak as part of their Exploration programme. I'd like to explore how we live with the imperfections and uncertainties of the future. (I'm also hoping to take part in a Dark Mountain meetup in Stockholm around the time of the festival.)
20 June 2011 - Education for Uncertain Futures, The RSA, London. A panel with Keri Facer, Carolyn Unsted and Patrick Hazelwood. I'm intending to talk about the New Public University project - and we're also hosting an informal meetup afterwards in the RSA bar, from 19.30, for anyone who's interested in continuing this discussion.
28 June 2011 - A flourish of Meanwhiles: Do 'pop-ups' offer real long-term possibilities?, RIBA, 66 Portland Place, London. As part of a series called Re-Shaping London, this is a panel with architects, designers and decision-makers about the role of temporary use of space in the city's social and economic future.
30 June 2011 - 'It's wrong to wish on space hardware: the power and failure of Stewart Brand's Whole Earth mythos' at Nature Inc? Questioning the Market Panacea in Environmental Policy and Conservation, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. This conference promises to be a crossing point between some interesting networks, including the academic end of Dark Mountain and the friends and co-conspirators of Ivan Illich. I'll be giving a Dark Mountainish talk about the deep cultural roots of the story underlying the Whole Earth Catalog and the axis within environmentalism, technology and culture which Stewart Brand represents.
26 May 2011 - 'Redefining Innovation: How new stuff enters social reality', Aston Business School, Birmingham. Can we break open the jargon usage of "innovation" by comparing modern innovation theories to the ways in which other cultures have understood the processes by which 'new stuff enters social reality'?
11 May 2011 - 'Economies of Scarcity', University of Westminster, London. Economics defines itself as the study of how we make decisions under conditions of scarcity. I want to go deeper into the assumptions behind this and how we might reframe economics for the times in which we find ourselves. I'll be speaking alongside Andrew Simms of the new economics foundation, as part of the Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment project, led by Jeremy Till at the University of Westminster.