In partnership with Kairos, Sense & Solidarity is pleased to announce a 3.5-day workshop for community organizers, radical artists, activists, educators and other practitioners of the radical imagination to learn techniques and theories for changing hearts and minds.
Deadline for applications extended to October 11!
We’re back after a sold-out successful run of our May-Day Movement Academy in Berlin!
As always, we’re looking to grapple with some of the toughest challenges in organizing and activism using our signature mix of psychological insight, radical imagination, and strategy. Including:
- Why are so many people apathetic and defeated?
- How can we bring more people into our movements?
- Why do we burn out, fall apart and split? (And can we not?)
We will be accepting applications on a rolling basis until October 7, 2024. We’re still open to applications after that date, but cannot guarantee there will be space
Register now! https://forms.gle/uWNEGT2dPkALMbKh6
What we’ll do
We’re providing a space for new and established educators, activists, artists, thinkers and organizers to assemble, share resources, and inquire into topics including (but not limited to):
- How can we use psychological insights to help people actively care and organize around issues like the climate and ecological breakdown, mobilize others, keep up momentum, and build solidarity?
- How can we see (the good kind of) emancipatory social change within our lifetimes?
- How can we create arguments and infrastructures to change hearts and minds and overcome fatalism, fear and factionalism?
- How can we strategize to make the best use of our very limited resources and energies?
- How can we cultivate the radical imagination in ourselves and those around us?
- How can we avoid burning out?
To do so, we at Sense & Solidarity draw on and combine:
- The intergenerational wisdom and best-practices of social movements
- Critical theories of ideology that analyze the way power shapes our feelings and imaginations
- Recent insights from the cognitive sciences into things like unconscious patterns, cognitive dissonance, the impact of social bonds, social media and more
Together, we’ll learn how to:
- Understand what does and does not change people’s minds (hint: actions over words)
- Be strategic and selective about whose hearts and minds we want to change (it can’t be everyone)
- Recognize and work with common fears, anxieties, hesitations and antagonism we might meet in our campaigns
- Think through if, how and when activism can provide a warm, empowering, welcoming community (and when not to!)
- Be tactical about disrupting and dividing our opponents, and learn to recognize when they’re doing the same.
- And much more…
When we’ll do it
Our event is a mix of by-registration workshops and public talks. Anyone is free to attend the public events. If you plan to register for the workshop, please be advised that we will be prioritizing the participation of people who intend to attend ALL of the 3.5-day workshop elements, so please plan accordingly!
Thursday, November 14 – Public event
- Evening meet-and-greet
- 📆 Evening public talk: Max Haiven “What Can We Learn from the Radical Imagination?” (register here)
- Dinner and discussion
Friday, November 15 – Workshop day
- Cognitive dissonance and why it matters for organizers
- How to convince an asshole (and when not to)
- Taking care and (not) giving up
Saturday, November 16 – Workshop day and public event
- Actions, not words (and also sometimes words)
- Cultivating the radical imagination
- 📆 Afternoon public event: Podcast launch and live recording of “What Do We Want? A podcast about the all-too-human side of organizing for collective liberation” (register here)
- Socializing with comrades
Sunday, November 17 – Workshop day
- Staying in the fight for the long haul
- Making spaces for critical learning and reflection
- Creative activism (and its discontents)
Register now! https://forms.gle/uWNEGT2dPkALMbKh6
Who’s organizing it?
Led by Sarah Stein Lubrano and Max Haiven, Sense and Solidarity is a platform where people who want to radically change the world can learn together and build individual and collective capacity. Building on Sarah’s focus on cognitive dissonance and ideology and Max’s focus on social movements and the radical imagination, Sense & Solidarity aims to create bridges between critical theory and activism and organizing. We produce media (podcasts, toolkits, etc.), hosts in-person workshops and online courses, organize writing retreats, and otherwise seek to build community and grassroots power.
Kairos is a central London events and conversation space focused on radical ideas for social and cultural change in response to the climate and nature crises. We are a platform for imaginative thinkers, a catalyst for fresh ideas, and a place to build community around a newly emerging world-view. At Kairos all discussion begins with the assumption that humanity is entering an unprecedented period of social and cultural transformation, whether we’re shaping it or merely responding.
What does it cost?
- For our 3.5 day event, which includes lunch each day, we are asking…
- £120 standard fee
- £220 for supporters and those with institutional support
- £90 for low income and Kairos members
- We also modest subsidies to help cover part of the costs for those who otherwise cannot afford to participate, or who need assistance (eg. childcare) – please let us know in the application form.
- Fees can be paid in November
- Public events (Thursday evening, Saturday afternoon) include a small fee for those not registered for the whole workshop.
How do we register?
Use the form below, or visit: https://forms.gle/uWNEGT2dPkALMbKh6
What can we expect?
We intend to enrol 18-25 participants.
While applicants are welcome to propose coming to only a few of the sessions, preference will be given to those who wish to attend all.
Our sessions combine:
- Succinct lectures focused on grasping useful ideas and tools
- Focused seminar-style discussions in large and small groups
- Sharing experiences and stories
- Creative workshop exercises and role-plays
Max and Sarah are both experienced teachers, workshop leaders and educational designers. Our goal is to create a space where the experiences, wisdom and insights of our participants can become mutually enriching. As facilitators, we’re not here to “teach” but, rather, foster cross-pollination, conviviality and growth.
Participants will be asked to prepare for about 60-90 minutes before each session by reading texts, journaling or listening to a podcast episode.
We’re building in lots of time for rest, socializing and fun.
Outside of sessions, we will loosely coordinate meals, socializing and more.
Where will it be?
Kairos currently occupies an empty furniture shop at 84 Tottenham Court Road, W1T 4TG, on the west side of the street between Tottenham Street and Howland Street (nearest tube stations are Warren Street, Goodge Street and Euston Square). The space is divided between ground floor and basement and unfortunately there is no lift which means the venue isn’t fully accessible.
Who should participate?
Having a diversity of participants coming from a wide range of backgrounds and causes helps enrich the experience. In the past, we’ve worked with artists, activists, organizers, educators and others concerned people at various stages of their development: from grizzled veterans with decades of campaigning under their belt to passionate, newly awakened radicals.
We prioritize anti-oppressive facilitation and the creation of a generative, welcoming, stimulating space for all participants.
In general, it is best to come if you are already passionately working on a project or campaign and can already imagine a way that these workshops can help you upgrade it. But you are also welcome if you are looking for inspiration and new comrades.
In our past workshops, we’ve been pleased to welcome:
- Grassroots organisers working on climate and biodiversity
- LGBTQ+ campaigners working against rising fascism in their neighbourhoods
- Union organizers trying to mobilize a weary and cynical membership
- Health professionals trying to build solidarity between staff and patients
- Artists and writers trying to connect with climate movements
- Anarchists running social centers that provide resources for activists and refugees
- International solidarity campaigners building popular power against imperialism
Who’s running this thing?
Max Haiven has been organizing grassroots movements since he was 12 in anti-capitalist and anti-colonial initiatives. Today works as the Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination at Lakehead University and directs RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, a platform to bring together social movements and radical ideas. He is the author or editor of 9 books which all focus on the relationship between capitalism and the imagination. Along with Alex Khasnabish, he is the author of The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (2014) and is currently working on a book titled The Player and the Played: How Financialization Fosters Fascism. He also makes board games and podcasts.
Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano has been organizing since she was 18, when her college feminist group ran Female Orgasm Day. In the pandemic, she coordinated mutual aid for her ward in London. She is also the Strategy Director at the Future Narratives Lab, where she strategises about how to talk about social problems. She’s just finished a PhD at Oxford in Political Theory, and her research focuses on cognitive dissonance and how it can help explain the gaps in people’s political consciousness. She has a book coming out about why talking about politics is often so ineffective, which will be released by a major publishing house in 2025. She’s been on a lot of other people’s podcasts, including Derren Brown’s audible series, The BBC’s Moral Maze, and Women’s Hour. She frequently speaks to the public.
What do other people think?
Here’s what some of our past participants have said about our workshops:
My course with Sarah and Max helped me to become more targeted and effective in my work… I’d recommend it to any activist or visionary; it is the perfect space for imagining alternative futures and considering practical strategies to bring about tangible change in the world.
Amelia, doctor and activist, UK
This course has honestly changed my life. Not only has it… given me a sense of how I can mobilise hearts and minds more effectively, given me permission to be pragmatic rather than idealistic or rigid, given me a set of concrete strategies… but it’s also transformed my instinctive relationship to other people… it’s given me so much more hope and optimism.
Dr Noreen Masud, Lecturer in Twentieth Century Literature at the University of Bristol, and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker, UK
Max and Sarah’s entertaining style made it much easier to address very complex topics, and the diversity of participants made the exchange very enriching. I would definitely take it again without a doubt.
Daniela, activist in culture and feminism, Mexico
To be honest, this course taught me more about how to achieve positive social change than any I’ve had in school. The creative exercises, the entertaining and enlightening course material, the wonderful activists of all kinds that I met through the course, it all replenished my faltering hope and gave me back my enthusiasm for the work that has to be done to build better worlds!
Melike, economic sociologist, Berlin