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Keynote Talk

Experiments in Utopia

Figures are dancing in a dark room lit by yellow, green and blue lights.

In a climate of fear and division, how do we forge communities of hope to enable experimentation and imagine better futures? Discover more at this keynote talk. 

This roundtable discussion, part of Experiments in Utopia—a day of events centred on imagining a better world—is chaired by co-curator Nicholas Hadfield, with artists and thinkers Aditi Jaganathan, Amahra Spence (Hood Futures Studio), Anouchka Grose, and Charlie Waterhouse (Hard Art).

The panel will explore communal paradigms, including Black imagination, polyamory, and collective ownership, considering emancipatory visions of the future and how cosmo-local networking can instigate cultural change.

Considering how alternative approaches to space-making and self-organising enable experimental practices of imagination, art, and visions of the future, the conversation will reflect on lessons from historical experiments in intentional community building, while considering contemporary spatial, social, and digital infrastructures.

Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes

 

This event is part of Experiments in Utopia, a day of programming centred around imagining liberated worlds and models of governance through sound, movement, and conversation.

Tickets
Tickets to this event are £6-£12. A ticket to this event includes free entry to our Experiments in Utopia Conservatory Takeover

£6

*Excludes £1.50 booking fee

About the panelists

Amahra Spence 
Amahra Spence is an artist, curator, and systems designer, and the founding director of MAIA, a Black-led organization using culture as a strategy for liberation. In 2025, MAIA will launch Hood Futures Studio, addressing hood displacement through spatial, climate, and economic justice. The studio supports Black life, community wealth, and interdependencies. Amahra also helps organizations transform their systems and strategies across cultural, community development, built environment, and wealth distribution sectors.

Dr. Aditi 
Dr. Aditi is a thinker, creator, and educator whose work intersects law, culture, and politics. Motivated by a politics of refusal, she fosters spaces of (un)learning through music, film, and visual culture to challenge ideologies of oppression. Aditi teaches "Rhythm, Race, Revolution" and other courses in London, exploring creativity as decolonial praxis and examining how Black and Brown cultural production resists racialized norms through self-determination. Her work is guided by an ethic of jazz.

Anouchka Grose is a London-based psychoanalyst, writer, lecturer and climate campaigner. Her published books include: No More Silly Love Songs: a realist’s guide to romance (Portobello, 2010), A Guide to Eco-Anxiety: how to protect the planet and your mental health (Watkins, 2020), Uneasy Listening: notes on Hearing and Being Heard (Mack, 2022) and Fashion: a Manifesto (Notting Hill Editions, 2023). She also writes about art, and has contributed to The Guardian, Granta, Harpers Bazaar, and Radio 4, as well as appearing in Josh Appignanesi’s documentary, My Extinction (2023).

Charlie Waterhouse is an interdisciplinary creative strategist and co-founder of Absurd Intelligence and Hard Art, created to promote cultural solidarity and narrative leadership in the face of democratic and climate collapse. Part of the teams that started Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil, he is also on the advisory boards of the AKO Storytelling Institute and Foxglove. While on the board of the Brixton Pound he founded the nation state-of-mind, Brixtopia.

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