We’re going back to School, except the classrooms are cafés, pubs and experimental spaces. Policy games / vegan food / strange materials / bodies / desire / collective intelligence. Serious play is back. 🎒🌱

⚡CAN POLICY SAVE US? // POLICY SIMULATOR

After years of climate declarations, targets, promises and painfully slow everything, it’s reasonable to wonder: can policy actually do anything? :///

So we’re turning climate governance into a playable system.

Across four Saturdays at Jam in the Jar, Turnpike Lane, we’ll explore ⚡ Energy / 🍎 Food / 🤖 Technology / ⛰️ Nature through expert talks + simulation games. We’ll step inside the machinery of decision-making, inhabit competing interests and ask: could we do better?

12 Sept / 19 Sept / 26 Sept / 3 Oct - 12–3pm.

Come to one / come to all. No registration required, although Eventbrite sign-ups help us plan.

Alongside it: Sally Charlton’s Solarpunk Café 🥗☕ will provide affordable plant-based food, hot drinks, conversation, because lunch is infrastructure too.

Policy theory + simulation + vegan snacks + humans around tables = civic participation, but make it fun.

Tickets are free and you can turn up on the day, but registering below helps us with numbers.

Register now

🔨MATERIALS LAB // PELICAN HOUSE

Also on 12 September, we’re getting physical at Pelican House with a Materials Lab.

Matter / experimentation / hands / making / weird textures.

🪚Solarpunk can’t exist entirely in PDFs and manifestos. We need to touch the future. So we’ll be experimenting with materials and asking what different ways of making might teach us about different ways of living.

💋 3. ART + SEX // LET’S TALK ABOUT IT

Then on 30 September at The Haggerston, we launch our new talks series on Art + Sex. Bodies. Desire. Images. Power. Pleasure. Politics. This will be a monthly event on the last Wednesday of each month.

We’re interested in what happens when sex becomes a way of thinking about culture, and when art gives us new languages for bodies, intimacy and liberation. You are welcome to pitch ideas for this series as well by emailing booking@solarpunk.london

September is looking beautifully unhinged.

Come learn / eat / make / argue / experiment with us. <3

See you in school

London School of Solarpunk

Today we have an update for you on our on going social experiments, a vital part of our solarpunk praxis.

Social Experiments Are Our Research Lab

The London School of Solarpunk has never been about waiting for permission. We learn by doing. We prototype futures in public.

Every workshop, dancefloor, conversation and shared meal becomes a tiny social experiment in post-capitalist infrastructure. Clay under fingernails. Sound systems. Shared notebooks. Bodies in rooms. Radical hospitality.

This month we watched one of those experiments travel.

At Reading Climate Festival we joined ReadingCAN and an incredible network of artists, growers, storytellers and organisers to ask a simple question: what happens when climate action feels joyful instead of overwhelming?

Together we filled the day with lectures, future postcards, script writing, conversations and collective dreaming. Families imagined Ecotopia. New friendships formed over affordable plant-based food. New collaborations began with Commando Jugendstil, IncrediGrow Garden Centre, Cinergy Studios and many more.

The biggest surprise? A new Reading School of Solarpunk has now begun to emerge. Seeds travel. Communities hybridise. Futures reproduce themselves.

Next Experiment // Gender Fuck + Summer Party

Next we gather around distortion pedals, bass bins and dancefloors.

On 30 July we launch Gender Fuck, our new feminist punk night at Distillery N17.

Four women and non-binary led acts:

• Lou Reddin

• Dixie Dix and The Rebel Pixies

• The Screaming Violets

• Anserine

You can buy tickets for this event here:

Get your ticket now

Then we dissolve into the London School of Solarpunk Summer Party.

Dub. Disco. Punk. Collective joy. Streetlight / Lens / Salamander behind the decks. Tottenham pirates. Cheap drinks. Loud music. Serious play. Dancing together isn’t an escape from politics.

It’s rehearsal for another world.

Collective Knowledge Is Compost

Another experiment is quietly growing beneath the surface.

Our Zero Waste Zine is becoming a living commons of practical knowledge. Recipes. Repairs.

Drawings. Photos. Stories. Tiny hacks. Big dreams. Everything we know becomes something we can all use.

Join the Zero Waste Knowledge Share WhatsApp group, browse what’s already growing, and send your own creations to Posthuman Auntie. Together we’re weaving a shared resource that will continue evolving through the Autumn.

Because knowledge shouldn’t live behind paywalls. It should circulate like seeds.

Sign up here:

Join the Zero Waste Knowledge Share

See you in the sun.

London School of Solarpunk

We’re halfway through the Outdoor Lectures and we’re still slightly amazed that this works.

Not because lectures belong inside buildings, they really don’t, but because every week we’ve watched parks become temporary infrastructures for collective imagination. Blankets. Trees. Curious strangers. Dogs wandering through discussions about organising resistance to a climate disaster. Someone always bringing snacks.

We’ve Been Turning Parks into Classrooms

So far, we’ve body-worked our way through relationship anarchy. Drifted into Yoga Nidra while asking what an ecological identity might actually be like. Followed snails towards slower institutions. Treated car parks as contested political terrain before building collective radio stations. Picked apart toxic things, imagined cities that nourish instead of extract and traced the physical structure of the Internet.

Bodies. Moss. Concrete. Sketchbooks. Shared attention. Serious play.

This is education as something we make together rather than something delivered to us.

The Second Half Starts Now

We’re only warming up.

The next run of Outdoor Lectures moves through self-organised neighbourhoods, seasonal time, DIY sketchbooks, new alphabets, sunprinting, solar cooking, stories that shape worlds, camera-less photography, learning otherwise, uncertainty, musical madness, mapping resistance and psychogeography.

Less curriculum. More field experiment.

We’re interested in what knowledge becomes once it leaves fluorescent lighting and returns to sunlight, weather, conversation and the occasional passing pigeon. Every session is another small rehearsal for the kinds of cultures we want to inhabit: decentralised, joyful, practical and impossible to neatly categorise.

Come for one. Come for all. Bring a notebook. Borrow one. Get your hands dirty.

Keep an eye on our WhatsApp broadcast group for details of specific lectures and locations as they’re announced. You can also follow us on Instagram for updates, photos and last-minute park-based adventures.

Next Stop: Scrappy Bookbinding workshop / 18 July

On 18 July, we’re holding our Scrappy Bookbinding workshop for the Haringey Festival of Culture at the All Good Bookshop.

Using recovered materials and gathered scraps, we’ll stitch and staple together (note)books. Our books will be made from forgotten partially used sketchbooks, misprinted paper, cardboard and paper bags.

With a unique combination of materials, no two books will be alike. The nature of this form of bookbinding is meant to be playful. Experimenting is encouraged! No experience needed! Materials will be provided, but feel free to bring along your own paper scraps.

You can buy tickets to the event from the All Good Bookshop website.

See you in the park. Then around the bookbinding table.

The London School of Solarpunk

For the last year we built strange little worlds inside venues. Sound systems, workshops, lectures, rituals, games. High-production experiments in collective imagination.

In the Spring we lost our main home in Tottenham, and summer arrived with a new question. What happens when we take the school outside?

Guerilla Education

Over the next four weeks we’re running a series of short lectures in public parks and outdoor spaces across London. This is a simple experiment in guerilla education. Low-cost. Mobile. Replicable. Human-scale. Just grass, trees, bodies, ideas.

We want to expand our practice of decentralized learning and create temporary post-capitalist social infrastructures wherever we happen to gather. A park becomes a classroom. A patch of shade becomes a research lab. A picnic blanket becomes a platform for collective dreaming.

Late sunlight, notebooks, passing dogs, radical hope.

We’re also using this programme to support new speakers. We provide the infrastructure. We help with organisation. We create the conditions. Then we encourage people to step onto the stage for the first time and share what they know.

Bodies / Relationships / Snails

The first talks already feel delightfully impossible.

We’ll hear from Cat on reforming institutions. Aitan will guide us through body-work and embodied knowledge. Alex & Mimi will be speaking on relationship anarchy and the structures that support collaboration, collective processing and creativity.

Other upcoming topics include eco-identity, Yoga Nidra, snails, collective radio, reimagining cities and the politics of car parks.

Dates for the diary

• 23.06 - Let’s Body-work / Relationship Anarchy

• 24.06 - Eco-identity / Yoga Nidra

• 26.06 - Snails / Reframing Institutions

• 01.07 - Car Parks: How & Why / Collective Radio

• 02.07 - Toxic Things / Reimagining Cities

What We’re Building Next

We’re interested in what happens when education becomes lightweight enough to travel. When knowledge doesn’t need permission. When learning can happen beneath trees instead of fluorescent lighting.

These lectures are small prototypes for a bigger question: how do we create resilient networks of collective intelligence during a time of climate crisis, institutional failure and social fragmentation?

Keep an eye on our WhatsApp broadcast group for details of specific lectures and locations as they’re announced. You can also follow us on Instagram for updates, photos and last-minute park-based adventures.

See you in the shade,

The London School of Solarpunk 🌻

For four days in April we gathered inside The Tabernacle and asked a question that felt both impossibly huge and urgently practical: what kinds of worlds are we actually trying to build by 2030? Not in theory. Not in white papers. In rooms with other people. Through workshops, sound, conversation, cardboard, cables, bodies and collective imagination.

We built a temporary future in Notting Hill

Making 2030 wasn’t an “arts festival” in the normal institutional sense. It was a prototype. A pop-up living room, strategy lab and anti-capitalist social club where artists, organisers, scientists, poets, musicians and local residents could actually touch the future together.

Community art. Media technologies. Local economies. Sound & celebration. Each day became its own little microclimate of possibility. Bass frequencies vibrating through gallery walls. Human bodies sat in circles trying to imagine a liveable decade ahead.

Serious play as infrastructure.

The research wall and the collective brain

One of the most chaotic-beautiful parts of the festival was the collective brainstorming wall where we started imagining entirely new roles for the culture sector and beyond.

Not “content strategist.” Not “brand consultant.” We wanted roles designed for a more cooperative, emotionally intelligent and ecologically grounded society. So people invented things like:

Head of Atmospherics

Chief Encouragement Officer

Venue Change Animator

Hope Instiller

Trespass Facilitator

Gatekeeper Flexibility Consultant

Solarpunk Visual World Builder

And then things got even weirder in the best possible way:

Repair Café Workers. Human Alarm Clocks. Tech Exodus Herders. Pop-up Music Jam Starters. Street Board Gamers. Charity Shop Innovators. Zine Makers. Cop Watchers. Makerspace Sip and Sorters.

Somewhere between speculative design exercise and communal hallucination, we started asking what kinds of labour actually make life meaningful. What kinds of roles increase dignity, conviviality, beauty and connection instead of just optimising extraction.

Turns out the future job market might need more Social Life Conductors and fewer LinkedIn gurus.

What we’re building next

Making 2030 confirmed something we’ve suspected for a while:

People are hungry for spaces where creativity, ecology, technology and collective care are allowed to collide where they can imagine a greener, more just future.

So we’re building further. More workshops. More events. More solarpunk infrastructures for everyday life. More experiments in art-as-organising and pleasure-as-political-methodology.

And we’re already cooking up the next cycle.

This includes our head of storytelling, Alastair Ball, delivering a mystery talk at the All Good Bookshop on the evening of the 15th of May. The talk will certainly touch on solarpunk, but he’s not saying more than that. Come on down.

Meanwhile Bel is hosting I’ll Hold This For You: An exhibition of ongoing research at the boundaries and interstices of art education, culture, and practice. Featuring London School of Solarpunk’s pop-up zine library and making space!

Please note last day is May 21st (not 22nd)

Bel has been doing a research placement with the school. They’re now bringing the solarpunk to the not-very-solarpunk realm of higher education with a DIY, chilled out, cosy set-up for relaxing and low-pressure zine-making, with materials, prompts, activities, and zines of all kinds to inspire anyone and everyone to get a bit creative amidst the displays of research practice.

Come along any time the exhibition is open: An exhibition of ongoing research at the boundaries and interstices of art education, culture, and practice. Featuring London School of Solarpunk’s pop-up zine library and making space!

Please note last day is May 21st (not 22nd) [include that if you use the image]

Bel has been doing a research placement with the school. They’re now bringing the solarpunk to the not-very-solarpunk realm of higher education with a DIY, chilled out, cosy set-up for relaxing and low-pressure zine-making, with materials, prompts, activities, and zines of all kinds to inspire anyone and everyone to get a bit creative amidst the displays of research practice.

Come along any time the exhibition is open.

We’re also planning on hosting a series of lectures in London parks, bringing guerilla education to the masses. Watch this space for more on that.

The future is not arriving fully formed from Silicon Valley. We are making it ourselves.

See you in the greener future.

🌲

The London School of Solarpunk

Cycle 4 of Solarpunk Foundations just wrapped, and honestly? It felt less like a course and more like a temporary autonomous laboratory.

Pens and paper, reading lists, notebooks, social experiments, laughter. Ideas becoming tangible. Visions for a better future emerging. What we’re building together is bigger than a class. It’s a decentralised node of collective joy.

⚡ Solarpunk Foundations: Energy, Space, Knowledge, Exchange

We started with energy. Week 1 was about asking the big question: What even is Solarpunk? Not as a Pinterest aesthetic. As energy culture. Solar panels. Power grids. Human bodies. We talked about how energy underpins our entire society and how we can imagine a future where it’s shared more fairly.

Week 2 zoomed into the city itself. Shipping containers, cooperative housing, third spaces. Tiny interventions that quietly mutate the urban landscape.

Week 3 was knowledge. Libraries. Archives. Folk wisdom. We talked about knowledge as a commons, not a commodity.

Week 4 was exchange. Cognitive archaeology. Ancient barter systems. Local currencies like the Brixton Pound. Economics as culture.

Find all our slides and more in the School’s catalogue.

🧪 Social experiments

We’re an art-action School, so our students didn’t just study this stuff, they played with it. They joined our social experiments. Planning the graduation ritual. Your Capital immersive game. The library project, slowly growing book by book. A plant-based feast for the passersby of Tottenham High Road.

Huge love to our teachers and students who shaped the course in real time, and to Chats Palace, a queer-led cultural space with radical history and just the right amount of scuffed floors and possibility.

🌱 What We’re Building Next

This Saturday 21 March we celebrate one year of the London School of Solarpunk. So we’re throwing a party / experiment / gathering.

Join us anytime at Post Bar. From 4pm – 3am:
🎭 4–6pm - Your Capital immersive role-play on barter and exchange*
🎓 6–8pm - improvised graduation ceremony / crafts / music
🧆 ~7pm - communal plant-based feast (pay what you can)
🎵 8pm onwards - 50/50 Soundsystem: old school reggae + dub classics

Art. Food. Basslines. Collective dreaming.

Building a better world sometimes looks like people in a room together, sharing food and sound waves and dangerous ideas.

*You can get tickets for Your Capital on Eventbrite. Use the code celestialsolarpunk to get in for free.

See you on the dancefloor.

❤️

The London School of Solarpunk

This isn’t just another art workshop or activist training, it’s both/and, a hybridized space where we’re learning to become artist-activists who can actually make the future we’re talking about. Four sessions. Four pillars. Energy / Space / Knowledge / Exchange. Each one a node in the network we’re building together.

What we’re doing

Sessions that blur the line between theory and practice, lectures that spark ideas, then we get our hands dirty.

We’re talking power grids and street murals, community spaces and post-capitalist exchange systems, knowledge-sharing that doesn’t replicate hierarchies. Solar panels, soil, sound, solidarity. The physical stuff that makes utopia tangible.

The vibe

Radical imagination meets practical tools. Fierce optimism grounded in material reality. A room full of people who believe that art is infrastructure, that beauty is resistance, that we can build decentralized nodes of collective joy while dismantling the systems that are killing us.

Why it matters

We need artist-activists who can wire a solar panel and paint a vision of energy democracy. Who understand that a community garden is post-capitalist social infrastructure. Who know that the revolution needs both manifestos and making.

This is for us, the builders, dreamers, tinkerers, troublemakers. The ones who refuse the false choice between “serious politics” and “serious play.” Who know that our work is urgent, physical, joyful, and necessary.

We’re creating the foundations. Together. Now. More details coming soon. Stay tuned. Stay ready.

To sign up for the next Solarpunk Foundations course, register your interest here.

In solidarity and serious play,

Alastair Ball

Head of storytelling

The London School of Solarpunk​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Solarpunk Foundations - Cycle 1 completed!

The first cycle of our Solarpunk Foundations course is over... and it was more magical than everything we imagined. 🪄🪄🪄 Thank you all for taking part in this big experiment💘

From energy to abundance, knowledge to light, food to rebellion, exchange to co-operatives, we learnt so much from each other on how to prepare for our solar future ☀️

So what's next? Over the next couple months, we'll be supporting all solarpunks to run social experiments and community projects. We're starting a Campus Radio to inspire and unite London's co-operative movement. And more....Get involved!💖

Register your interest for the next cycle of the course this summer: tinyurl.com/5n6n7ytx

Solarpunk Sounds Wednesdays at Post Bar

Every Wednesday in March we converted the Post Bar into a public living room.

And we’re doing the same in April. Wednesdays is the day for creative collisions at Post Bar - so bring your thing!

So far we have: showed people how to use USB decks, made scoubidou’s, created a huge brainstorm on a piece of fabric, played RAVE BINGO, ran a subvertising workshop, dressed up in hats, created solarpunk soundscapes, dreamed up new utopias and danced to disco.

Bring your crews, your projects and your ideas. This is a place for people who run and organise activist, cooperative and artistic events to network together, test out new concepts and generally develop a community of practice.

Culture, Power, Protest - at SPACE4

The ‘Culture, Power, Protest’ module is a forum lecture experience and has been the bassline of the London School of Solarpunk.

We have looked at the work of these key thinkers: the posthuman philosopher Rosi Braidotti, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, the poet Jay Bernard, the novelist Tom McCarthy, the visionary William Blake, the music critic Mark Fisher, the political activist Tony Benn and, in particular, the socialist Raymond William.

We have danced around these themes: romanticism, pirate radio, queer utopia, creative gatekeeping, poetic questioning, subvertising, and gamification.

And we have generated five major resources: a list of posthuman concepts, a list of protest methods, a user guide to design research, a model for cultural mapping and a series of open syllabuses.

In this third session of season one, we ask: how might we use creativity to refashion protest tools to match the power systems we must confront? Join us on Monday 14 April at 6pm: Culture, Power + Protest: How Might Creativity Refashion Protest?

[em]Powering Creativity workshops in April

We’re partnering with the iconic Chats Palace in Clapton to run a series of workshops and community community art exhibition on energy, light & heat ⚡⚡

We need people to help us organise this special event. If you came to our Creative Energy Exhibition last October, you’ll know what to expect.

Sign up here and we’ll be in touch:
https://forms.gle/Q7v5v4NBapiY5SKm7

This reflects a transition we are going through: from a collective to a school.

Stay tuned for things to participate in, and to help us make art school available to all.

The Wednesday Hangout - Starts Tonight

Every Wednesday in March, the Post Bar in Tottenham will be a living social experiment as we cultivate community under the banner of solarpunk.

You can expect: weird activity zones, open mic, a disco, sound experiments, fancy dress, solarpunk conversations... and anything else you want to bring to the mix!

Bring your crews, your projects and your ideas. It feels like this is a place for people who run and organise activist and artistic events to network together, test out new concepts and generally develop a community of practice.

Culture, Power, Protest - at SPACE4

Don’t worry if you missed the first part of our cultural studies course. You can still come along to part two.

We will survey some key thinkers from struggles such as racial justice, queer liberation, workers’ rights, climate action, indigenous landback efforts and multi-species struggles, and make links between them.

The first one was a dynamic forum - a space for both introverts to listen, and extroverts to share. We’ll keep that vibe for this next session.

Book your spot here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/culture-power-protest-how-might-culture-respond-to-power-tickets-1110139259409

Put simply: across 2025 we are going to design experiences that creatively merge learning with joy and hedonism. Why? Because, if we’re going to build a better world, we will have to want it first.

Please help us. Seriously - come along, share your knowledge, and invite your friends by sending them a link to this newsletter.

Here is where we are at with our cultural programme…

Cultural Studies Masterclass Series - Monday 10th February @ 7pm

Join us for our first course of the year - a cultural studies Masterclass at Space4.

If you have never had the experience of studying arts/humanities/culture at an advanced level, this is your chance. And if you have, then you know what to expect from this: deep meaningful conversations, inspirational concepts, and powerful meaning-making tools.

This masterclass is a collaboration with our friends at Space4, and supported by the incredible Raymond Williams Foundation. This is serious stuff…

In the first class we will look at the theory of key thinkers Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton, then move our thinking towards advanced technology and posthuman philosophy through the lens of network anarchism. We shall set some fun homework ready for the next class in March.

It is free to join, please let us know you are coming by registering here

London School of Solarpunk (LSoS) - Saturday 22nd February

This is the big one. Our big piece of social art. A new school for punks!?

Born from our ‘Creative Energy Exhibition’ last year, we have spent the last few months incubating our interpretation of the solarpunk genre. And we are busy designing a four week programme for those that want to help us steer the movement.

To register your interest, complete this form - details below:

LSoS Pop-Up Lectures

As part of our London School of Solarpunk, we are running a less structured programme of experiences: pop-up lectures.

These are spontaneous experiences that happen at different spaces around the city whenever the call comes. So get ready to react whenever a new interactive lecture drops…

We’ve done three so far - the first was at a weekend social and was entitled ‘What is a poem’, the second was at our Potzilla canteen, and the third was at the (see below to learn about Potzilla).

These are posted on the London School of Solarpunk Instagram and WhatsApp group

TONIGHT (Mon 27th): Brian Eno and Bette A - Live Stream @ Studio61 HQ

Our favourite ambient innovator, Brian Eno, is delivering a talk at the British Library titled ‘What Art Does’. Tickets sold out a long time ago, but we’ll be streaming it live in our cinema room. Come along to 61 Mildenhall for 18:30 for a 19:00 start, followed by snacks and chats.

Potzilla Season One Complete

Thanks to everyone that has supported our experimental canteen - Potzilla! Why a canteen? save money, time, food and plastic waste for everyone, experiment with collectivising, and enjoy more food and time together :)

We have eaten a feast of stews, salads, dips and curries over the past three weeks, with the final one happening tomorrow (Tuesday 28th). Join the WhatsApp group here to stay in the loop:

The Anti-Book Club 2024 Finale - Thurs 28th Nov

Don’t worry if you’ve not been to one of these yet, you are more than welcome to come and experience your new favourite book club. The rules are simple: come and talk about whatever book you happen to be reading. S61’s very own Nida and John will facilitate and bring the magic! There will be some festive treats, so come along :)

Feel free to register on the Space4 website (£5 refundable deposit): https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-anti-book-club-last-thursday-sep-to-nov-tickets-940225057457

Solarpunk Ecosocial Meetup - Tues 17th Dec

The London School of Solarpunk is going to be one of our big edutainment projects in 2025. Come and join us as we start stirring and scheming at this informal hangout with a bunch of fellow solarpunks in an old schoolhouse-turned-workspace right in the middle of Camden! Chilled chats, new friends, and, probably, some mince pies.

Free tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ecosocial-solarpunk-meetup-tickets-1084035562549

Streetlight Xmas Special Reggae Dance - Sat 14th Dec

We have a very special edition of the Streetlight residency at Lucy 1st in Brixton this December. Special because there will be dollops of free food! We have received funding to throw a party for the people of Lambeth - and we have a special guest MC from our India connection…

We will be installing the Streetlight soundsystem at The Post Bar in Tottenham on Friday - come and join us! Expect a mixture of musical genres, a few fun activities and lots of conversations about the future of decentralised and autonomous learning.

Bring your comrades and your causes - we encourage you to share your campaigns, creative projects and collective dreams. Let’s help each other find potential collaborators, and start stirring up the new social order.

Sign up here!

The Post Bar is a wicked venue, hospitable to experimental thinking, and the perfect spot to cradle our first Antiuniversity x Streetlight collaboration.

And, although this is a closing party, let’s think of this as a new beginning as we ask ourselves: what should an antiuniversity party look, sound and feel like?

London School of Solarpunk - Assembly Report

We held our first LSoS open assembly in a perfect setting: as part of the antiuniversity festival, and at the London Night Cafe…

We packed out the place, proving that Solarpunk is a trending topic. We split into two groups and explored how Solarpunk exists in both the popular cultural imaginary and the academic imaginary:

And we had a thought-provoking set of prompts to discuss:

What are your responses? Let us know at the party :)

In this newsletter we’ll look forward to our next big event: the Antiuniversity Festival where we will be launching our new art project: the London School of Solarpunk!

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Anti-Book Club THIS THURSDAY 26th

Join us at our favourite co-op in Finsbury Park, SPACE4, on Thursday 26th Sept for a fun and informal alternative book club. There is no designated book to read, just bring yourself and a book you like/dislike and enjoy some homemade vegan food. Don’t forget to register here.

Antiuniversity Festival 2024

It’s that time of the year again - the Antiuniversity Festival is back! There is a new crew organising it this year and Studio61 are getting involved with the festivities. This is a great time for old and new members to get involved! So put the following three dates in your calendar:

Wednesday 9th Oct: Antiuniversity Warmup Social

We are taking over our new favourite late-night chill space - the London Night Cafe in Aldgate - for a pre-festival hangout with the antiuniversity community.

Drop in to:

• Discover more about the programme of events

• Discuss the history and organisation of antiuniversity

• Make new friends to attend antiuniversity events with

Register on Eventbrite here.

Tuesday 15th Oct: London School of Solarpunk Assembly

A meet-up and facilitated discussion about the style and philosophy of solarpunk. This conversation will float around the fields of genre theory, metamodernism, urban design, aesthetic intensity, energy humanities and cultural studies.

You’ll be hearing a lot more from the London School of Solarpunk, so get involved now :)

Register on Eventbrite here.

Friday 18th Oct: Antiuniversity Closing Party

Come join us for the grand finale of the Antiuniversity Festival! We're wrapping up the week-long celebration of creativity, learning, and community with a bang. Streetlight Sound will be providing the tunes for the night, so get ready to dance and groove with us.

This is your chance to mingle with fellow festival-goers, share your experiences, and make some lasting memories. Don't miss out on this epic party to close out an amazing week of events and workshops.

Register on Eventbrite here.

Creative Industries UAL

Nida and Oli ran another successful iteration of the Creative Industries London short course at UAL’s London College of Fashion. An intensive, immersive and experimental 3-week experience, the course explored everything from the aesthetics of grime-punk and the ethics of biodesign to Situationist-style derives and innovative models of organising.

Check out the whiteboard moral the students whipped up on their last day of a ‘life-changing’ course :D

Get in touch with our chief pedagogy officer Nida or creative director Oli if you would like to be a speaker/guest/collaborator with us next time we run the course :)

Our big exhibition is on Friday: the ‘Creative Energy Exhibition’.

We are doing what S61 do best: creating a ‘third space’. It currently feels like a hybrid combination of art gallery, maker space, public living room and a secret solarpunk headquarters.

If all goes according to plan, it will be a space where unexpected collisions between people and ideas will happen.

It will be a non-ordinary space. A dreamlike space. An optimistic space. A connective space. A DIY space. A thinking space. A space of aesthetic intensity. A meditation space. A space that offers you a contract: the more you put in, the more you will get out.

We hope to see you on Friday 13th at St Vincents Centre in Brixton. Come a little before 7pm, bring your kith and kin, and stick around till the end and come out for a drink with us. Let’s celebrate late summer together!

Big thanks to the reggae crew

Our party at Lucy 1st was amazing.

We had a table of people making a clay eco-village of the future whilst roots reggae bass vibrated out from the Streetlight sound system. I can’t imagine that has happened before…

Remember to follow streetlight on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/streetlightldn/

Join us for Streetlight's FIRST REGGAE DANCE at our favourite South London eat-and-dance venue, the 'Lucy 1st' Ethiopian Restaurant in Stockwell THIS SATURDAY 7th September.

Come around 8:30 for dinner downstairs (tasty, authentic, Ethiopian food for a tenner) before joining the dance upstairs. We’ll be providing entertainment in S61 style (clay village making) and you will be in the safe hands of our resident selectors Earl Gateshead and Skanking Star.

It is opposite Stockwell station, so nice and easy to get the night tube home afterwards.

This is going to be a chance for us to come together as we celebrate late summer. So invite your kith and kin, and let's come together for some wholesome Saturday night fun!

So far we have been playing in pubs, flea markets, studios and street parties - next up is cinema… Across Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd August we are partnering with the independent Arthouse Cinema in Crouch End for a film screening of iconic British films and an after party powered by Streetlight.

It is super cheap - tickets are a fiver for a film - and we’ll be decking out the venue for chilling and chatting. On Thursday, Earl Gateshead will be playing some vinyl roots all evening and night, and then on Friday we’ll be bashing out some Jungle with our latest collaborators Danny Niceone and Noli.

Here is a quick rundown of each film that you can book

22nd August

• 6pm: Burning an Illusion - followed by Tega Okiti and Ola Jones in discussion. (The short ‘Cab Ride’ will be shown before the main feature) BOOK HERE

• 9pm: London to Brighton - followed by a Q&A with director Paul Andrew Williams BOOK HERE

23rd August

• 6pm: Made in Britain - followed by Q&A with actor Tim Roth BOOK HERE

• 8.15: Babylon - followed by a dj’s and drinks in the bar til late. (A short film by Edem Kelman will be shown before the main feature) BOOK HERE

And, of course, there will be a curated selection of reads courtesy of our Bookno0k crew. Hopefully see you there!

It’s been a busy couple of weeks at S61 - here’s a little run-down of what we have been up to and what we are looking forward to over the coming month or so.

The Anti-Book Club

We had an intimate and insightful anti-book club at our favourite co-op Space4 this week. We chatted about everything from desire and pornography to art and ecology whilst munching on a delicious chaana chaat and creamy hummus thanks to a rare culinary colab between our in-house librarian Nida and creative director Oli. Don’t forget to join us next time for some books and grub! You can reserve a spot here.

Stop the Far Right

S61 will be heading down to the anti-racist unity rally in Hackney on Saturday 10th August at noon. Come along or find your local action here. Wear a mask and dress in all-black if you can.

Announcing…THE LAB

Calling all aspiring DJs, vinyl collectors and sound enthusiasts! We are planning a Streetlight sound system rehearsal session at Gun Factory Studios soon - exact date TBC but keep your eyes peeled/get in touch with Oli for more info and brace yourself for some serious sonic dominance.

Idea Factory Market

After a brief hiatus, the idea factory market is back by popular demand - pop down on Friday 16th August daytime to help us pilot a playful and post-capitalist marketplace. Bring something to share or exchange - an idea, a skill, a dish, a poem - to contribute to the non-monetary madness!

Rocksteady-a-go-go

Post-market, join us at the Prince of Wales in Leyton where Streetlight will be providing the sound for legendary DJ Marcus Upbeat. Come for a beverage, a boogie or both… we might even launch our own night at the pub going forward so if you are sonically inclined, definitely get involved!

Biodesign Exhibition

Check out comrade Nicole and the Biodesign Collective’s latest exhibition at Hypha Stratford entitled Living with the Living, a space blurring boundaries between human and non-human, technology and nature, design and the world. Grab your free ticket for the private viewing on Thursday 22nd August here or pop down to the Hypha anytime before Sunday 22nd September to catch the exhibit.

Creative Energy Exhibition

Last but not least, we have a cracking collaboration coming up between Repowering London and Studio61 - a creative energy exhibition exploring our current relationship with energy, the multifaceted nature of community energy, and the power of art and creativity in transforming our energy systems. This will be multi-disciplinary AF so trust me, you don’t want to miss it. Get in touch with our agent of energy Eva (07549 874906) if you would like to get involved with the organising.

Much love until next time xoxo

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Thanks to everyone that got involved - there was so much activity. It was a joy to connect with the Studio61 neighbours - and there is a buzz on the street (with stirrings that the Mildenhall residents will come together to close the road more often).

Here is a wicked zine made by our creative communication maestro Eva…

Stay tuned for the next S61 activation coming soon (it will involve lots of bass)

It is time to bloc party.

We are closing part of Mildenhall Road in Clapton for a Street Market Party on Saturday June 15th.

This newsletter will give you some creative prompts for inspiration if you want to get involved in our non-monetary market.

But first, our flyer…

The Job Centre

Our non-bleak job centre will be the first port of call. You can come and find volunteering opportunities, receive credit tokens, and find helpers for any activity or stall you set up.

The Communal Kitchen

The easiest way to get involved is to bring some food to add to the communal kitchen. Add your special dish to the table and help feed the people.

Clothes Swap and Catwalk

Bring some fashion to the market and swap with others whilst parading down our special catwalk.

The Anti-Book Club

Join the Studio61 Anti-Book club by swapping the book you just finished with someone else.

Deliver a PPT at the Street University

Come and share a PowerPoint presentation on the street. You can discuss anything from gentrification, candy and posthumanism to Pokémon, collectivisation and foam footwear.

Develop a Workshop

Use the street as a workshop to share some knowledge. The Goblin Collective will be running a subvertising workshop and Dragonfly Productions will be doing body painting.

Exhibit your Work

Whether you paint, create spreadsheets, or groom dogs, use the street as your personal public gallery.

Games

And of course, games. Currently we have the famous ‘Hit the nail in the wood with the hammer’ game. But I’m sure we can come up with some more…

So get involved! ✨ Get in touch if you have ideas, questions, or want to come by the studio anytime so that we can prepare this together.

Now that spring has sprung, it’s time to slap on some SPF and spruce up your diaries with some events.

S61 x Space4: The Anti-Book Club

Join us at our favourite co-op in Finsbury Park on Weds 15th May for a fun and informal alternative book club. There is no book to read, just bring yourself and a book you like. The event will be run by our in-house librarian Nida and cyberspace resident John with drool-worthy homemade biryani from Praj. Register here.

Atlas Cinema Film Screenings

Check out Nina and Julian’s bad-ass screenings at an experimental community cinema in Brixton - a disused railway arch in Loughborough Junction. They have a double bill East End special coming up. Register here.

Watermelon Seeds: Gaza Fundraiser

Inspired by S61’s Party with Purpose, comrade Nicole is organising a plant-based and non-human friendly fundraiser for Gaza with Autonomous Animal Action. Pop by Pelican House on Sun 19th May for food, workshops, talks, and a liberation-themed book nook. RSVP here.

The Book Nook

This month’s selection is an ode to all the introverted activists out there…I see you! Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert by Hamja Ahsan is an utter joy to read. Raucous, rousing and under 200 pages, this is everything a book should be. Grab your copy here.