Can we survive this? Sharing tactics of everyday anti-imperialism

Day one Gather, 9th July 1pm to 5.30pm:

Is collecting part of the journey to becoming free? Or are we collecting to soothe our spirits until liberation becomes conceivable?

We will discuss some approaches to collecting stuff and consider what stuff might or should be collected. What can we learn from experiments in community archive-building? And what should we try to preserve and to what end?

The day will include an opportunity to create or contribute to online archival records. At the same time, we will consider the risks and drawbacks of handing our collective memories to platforms which we do not control. What forms of collecting might we undertake to withstand the risks of digital deletion or non-access?

Talks and activities will be led by: Harm to Healing; Clive Gabay; Adam Elliott-Cooper; Kristen Kreider; Gargi Bhattacharyya; Protest Props.

Please do bring an object or image and be ready to make something.

Day two Improvise, 10th July 1pm to 5.30pm:

The forces against us can feel so enormous. Even though we understand that instilling a sense of helplessness is part of the technique of domination, it is hard not to be disheartened. We have to rediscover the ability to try things out with others and to improvise in contexts where there is no suitable and accessible tool, script or knowledge if we are to survive this.

We will discuss possible ways to revive our habits of improvising, including considering some instances of intriguing and unexpected improvisation against empire. Some of the day will be taken up considering and sharing skills of everyday survival and tactics to socialise knowledge and practice that we inherit as professional or institutional expertise (everyone should go away feeling able to do one new thing). Improvisation is about working out what we need to know and how to do it, too often in the worst of circumstances. Better get practising.

Talks and activities will be led by: Alex Kelbert; Sita Balani; James Eastwood; Amar Singh Dhillon; Protest First Aid.

Day three Play 11th July 11am to 5.30pm:

We all know already that humans like and need to play. What we talk about less is how play can be part of ducking and diving in dangerous terrain. Part of how we learn to survive and occasionally thrive, even when our lives are circumscribed by deadly powers and dehumanising structures.

Sithe Ncube, producer of the game ‘Relooted’ and member of Nyamakop, will be speaking on this day, with an opportunity to play the game and other anticolonial or liberatory games throughout the day.

There will be an opportunity to think about how games can be a vehicle to think about pathways to liberation and together we will share some practices of game-making. This is a chance to think about how political organising can learn from games, and how games might be a mode of political organising.

Talks and activities will be led by: Sithe Ncube; Max Haiven; Rok K. and others.

There will be opportunities to try games and to make public art.