Imagining New Worlds

After abolition: what next? Abolition is not just about tearing everything down, it’s about imagining and building revolutionary futures.

Racial capitalism prevents us from the vital work of imagining different futures. But when we can find ways to create, speculate, envisage, together, the possibilities are endless. Art is one path of abolition and rebuilding, for our movements, our politics, our environments, our histories and ourselves. To imagine new worlds is to start creating them.

Our final panel brings together artists and writers who work with alternate realities and revolutionary futures to ask: what sets us free?

Hosted by Layla-Roxanne Hill, writer/curator-artist/organiser, will be: with Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, artist whose work seeks to archive Black trans experience, using technology to imagine black trans lives in environments that centre our bodies; Francesca Sobande, lecturer, researcher and writer with a particular focus on digital culture, Black diaspore, feminism, creative work and popular culture; Morgan M Page, Canadian writer, performance and video artist, and activist currently based in London, she writes and hosts the trans history podcast One From the Vaults; Cory Cocktail, power exchange architect and escort, and a post disciplinary artist with an interest in the intersections of the body and technology; and Khaleb Brooks, multi-disciplinary artist and researcher exploring blackness, transness, the body and collective memory.

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We can build a different world is a weekly panel series throughout September 2020 exploring abolition and mutual aid in the UK. This series is programmed by Elio Beale and organised as a collaboration between Decriminalised Futures, Abolitionist Futures and Verso, with support from Arika.

“Abolition is building the future from the present, in all of the ways we can” writes Ruthie Wilson Gilmore. The worlds we wish to live in already exist: we can see them in our minds, we can taste them on our tongues. Through mutual aid, solidarity, care and imagination we translate these dreams into vivid realities. Whether it be flamboyant acts of resistance or small, daily gestures of affection, our collective struggle builds our collective power. We can realise our hopes and visions and plans. We can remember where we’ve come from. We can build a different world.

This panel series brings together activists, organisers, academics, artists, thinkers, and speakers for a weekly discussion event exploring abolition and mutual aid in the UK. Our intention is to approach these sometimes difficult conversations with joy and warmth. We wish to celebrate our collective knowledge, indulge our curiosity, and to come together in a spirit of sharing and collaboration.