The Sense & Solidarity Initiative presents
Our initial round of applications is now closed. But please see below if you’d still like to participate. There may still be room!
May Day Movement (anti-)Academy – in Berlin
Sharper organizing for an upside-down world
April 29 – May 3, 2024
A four-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.
Sense & Solidarity is pleased to host a week-long set of workshops: The May Day Movement (anti-)Academy. We’re looking to grapple with some of the toughest challenges in left organizing and activism using our signature mix of psychological insight, radical imagination, and strategy.
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 use psychological insights to 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…
For more information, contact Max (mhaiven at lakeheadu dot ca) or Sarah (sarahsteinlubrano at gmail dot com)
Tentative schedule
- Monday, April 29, 1-7pm – Changing hearts and minds in bonkers-stage capitalism
- How does ideology work today?
- What actually works to break through cognitive dissonance?
- When to walk away?
- Tuesday, April 30, 1-7pm – Developing strategy and building capacities and relations
- Mapping our resources, assessing our capacities
- Recognizing and specifying our goals
- Summoning a transformative vision
- Wednesday, May 1 – No session:
Instead, loosely coordinated fun, dancing, riots, etc. - Thursday, May 2, 1-7pm – Mobilizing and maintaining allies and supporters
- Having better fights and arguments
- Taking care seriously
- Non-hierarchical leadership?
- Friday, May 3, 1-7pm – Disrupting an demoralizing opponents
- Sharper tactics with better aim
- Doing a lot with a little
- Getting strategic
What to expect
Sessions run from 1pm until 7pm each of the four days of the (anti-)academy (we break for May Day, when Berlin plays host to many excellent parties and protests!)
We intend to enrol 12-20 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:
- Conversations with guest speakers
- 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, outings, socializing and more.
Who should participate and what will it be like?
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:
- 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 social movements
- Anarchists running social centers that provide resources for activists and refugees
- International solidarity campaigners building popular power against imperialism
Facilitators
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 organizes with the Common Ecologies social movement education project and Berlin Versus Amazon. He also makes board games and podcasts.
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 Head of Research at the Future Narratives Lab, where she strategises about how to talk about social problems. She’s just finishing 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.
Registration, costs and logistics
Registration
The first round of applications are now closed.
However, spots may remain on a case-by-case basis.
If you’d still like to participate, please email maxhaiven at riseup dot net with responses to the following questions:
- Your name or pseudonym
- Please tell us about a challenge you are currently facing in the activism or organising that you do. What questions and dilemmas are you currently grappling with?
- Please tell us about how you would take the insights and resources gained from the week and apply them in the broader world. What movements or organisations could you bring the insights/our toolkit to? What kinds of people could you share ideas with? What are your plans after this week?
- Please tell us what you would like to about the diverse perspectives and broader diversity that you would bring to the course. This could include being part of marginalised groups (related to e.g. race, gender, sexuality etc) or simply having a unique background or experience(are you a medical professional? Have you helped lead a protest occupation? Etc).
- We would like to make this accessible for anyone who is a good fit. Can you tell us about things that would make it work for you? For example, would you need a lower fee, money for accommodation, are you a parent who has scheduling needs, do you have a disability that requires accommodation?
Costs and subsidies
We are working to keep costs as low as possible without exploiting people.
Registration costs are as follows:
- People without institutional support: €90
- People with institutional support: €220
We offer modest subsidies to help cover part of the costs for those who otherwise cannot afford to participate, or who need assistance (eg. childcare).
We can take payment via PayPal, credit card and cash. We can also invoice your organization.
To apply for a subsidy, please use the registration form.
Participants are responsible for meals, accommodation, transportation and other costs in Berlin. Snacks will be provided.
Venue and logistics
Our beautiful meeting venue is in Berlin’s Neukolln neighbourhood, conveniently near many transit routes (S+U Neukölln, U7 U8) – the postal code is 12053 for navigation. Although the venue is on the ground floor and can be accessed from the street, we cannot guarantee the venue is accessible to all people at this time. We will share more information as soon as we have it.
Unfortunately, given that we have very few resources, we can’t help participants plan accommodation or advise about or help with visas or other travel questions.
In the coming weeks, we’ll share more information here, including suggestions of accommodation.
Testimonials
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