Utopian Workshops

Skip Garden Cycle: Growing in the Spaces In-between
Sat 21 & Sun 22, All day
River Rooms
Workshops at 13.00 & 15.00 
Global Generation encourage people to gather together, get their hands in the soil and take time for reflection, to create community among people and with the natural world. Their city home at the King’s Cross Skip Garden is an unexpected oasis – a fragment of utopia in the heart of London. Visit the Skip Garden Cycle throughout the weekend to find out how to grow food and community in surprising spaces; wonder at the wormery and find out where and when to forage in London. Learn how to spread utopia by making your own seed bombs, get acquainted with fruit and veg, and make your own oasis in the smallest of spaces in free drop-in workshops.

SAT 21 Jan

Charting New Narratives: A Collectively Created Utopia
Lucy Neal & Charlotte Du Cann
14.00 - 17.00 
Utopians of all writing ages welcome
Join this collaborative writing workshop to create a shared giant vision of Utopia. Be bold in imagining how the world could be. When so much of our present world needs changing, the creativity and perspectives of everyone are needed to create the future we want to live in. Drop in or stay 3 hours, to create a beautiful, collectively imagined, collaborative picture of Utopia - in words. 

Theatre maker, community activist and co-founder of the LIFT Festival, Lucy Neal is an active player in the grassroots Transition movement. Her recent book Playing for Time: Making Art As If the World Mattered is co-written with 60 artists and activists, to map collaborative arts practices emerging in response to planetary challenges.

Writer and editor Charlotte Du Cann has collaborated with Lucy Neal on Playing for Time and other projects. She is part of the editorial team behind The Dark Mountain Project, a network of writers, artists and thinkers who have recently published their 10th anthology Uncivilised Poetics. Author of 52 Flowers That Shook My World - A Radical Return to Earth

SUN 22 JAN

Beyond The Horizon: Creating New Maps
Stephen Walter
14.00 - 17.00
All ages welcome
Join Artist Stephen Walter, who created his own map Nova Utopia, to imagine and draw your own ideal places and institutions, as you think about and discuss those that already exist today and throughout history. The maps you draw could be your own invention, or ideas or places from the past, that you believe should be brought back to life. Together, over the course of the afternoon, we’ll create a collective map of Utopia, that also includes the places or situations that clash with the ideal - to form a middle-ground between the two, and give us a sense of direction.

Utopian Thought Waves
14.00 - 17.00
Utopia Treasury, all ages welcome
Create a collective utopian thought wave installation. Be inspired by the books in our Utopian library (for both children and adults) and write down the quotes and ideas you like onto paper. Then together create waves with the paper and let the Utopian thoughts fill the room.