Making 2030 // building futures with our hands still dirty

Hey solarpunks,

For four days in April we gathered inside The Tabernacle and asked a question that felt both impossibly huge and urgently practical: what kinds of worlds are we actually trying to build by 2030? Not in theory. Not in white papers. In rooms with other people. Through workshops, sound, conversation, cardboard, cables, bodies and collective imagination.

We built a temporary future in Notting Hill

Making 2030 wasn’t an “arts festival” in the normal institutional sense. It was a prototype. A pop-up living room, strategy lab and anti-capitalist social club where artists, organisers, scientists, poets, musicians and local residents could actually touch the future together.

Community art. Media technologies. Local economies. Sound & celebration. Each day became its own little microclimate of possibility. Bass frequencies vibrating through gallery walls. Human bodies sat in circles trying to imagine a liveable decade ahead.

Serious play as infrastructure.

The research wall and the collective brain

One of the most chaotic-beautiful parts of the festival was the collective brainstorming wall where we started imagining entirely new roles for the culture sector and beyond.

Not “content strategist.” Not “brand consultant.” We wanted roles designed for a more cooperative, emotionally intelligent and ecologically grounded society. So people invented things like:

Head of Atmospherics

Chief Encouragement Officer

Venue Change Animator

Hope Instiller

Trespass Facilitator

Gatekeeper Flexibility Consultant

Solarpunk Visual World Builder

And then things got even weirder in the best possible way:

Repair Café Workers. Human Alarm Clocks. Tech Exodus Herders. Pop-up Music Jam Starters. Street Board Gamers. Charity Shop Innovators. Zine Makers. Cop Watchers. Makerspace Sip and Sorters.

Somewhere between speculative design exercise and communal hallucination, we started asking what kinds of labour actually make life meaningful. What kinds of roles increase dignity, conviviality, beauty and connection instead of just optimising extraction.

Turns out the future job market might need more Social Life Conductors and fewer LinkedIn gurus.

What we’re building next

Making 2030 confirmed something we’ve suspected for a while:

People are hungry for spaces where creativity, ecology, technology and collective care are allowed to collide where they can imagine a greener, more just future.

So we’re building further. More workshops. More events. More solarpunk infrastructures for everyday life. More experiments in art-as-organising and pleasure-as-political-methodology.

And we’re already cooking up the next cycle.

This includes our head of storytelling, Alastair Ball, delivering a mystery talk at the All Good Bookshop on the evening of the 15th of May. The talk will certainly touch on solarpunk, but he’s not saying more than that. Come on down.

Meanwhile Bel is hosting I’ll Hold This For You: An exhibition of ongoing research at the boundaries and interstices of art education, culture, and practice. Featuring London School of Solarpunk’s pop-up zine library and making space!

Please note last day is May 21st (not 22nd)

Bel has been doing a research placement with the school. They’re now bringing the solarpunk to the not-very-solarpunk realm of higher education with a DIY, chilled out, cosy set-up for relaxing and low-pressure zine-making, with materials, prompts, activities, and zines of all kinds to inspire anyone and everyone to get a bit creative amidst the displays of research practice.

Come along any time the exhibition is open: An exhibition of ongoing research at the boundaries and interstices of art education, culture, and practice. Featuring London School of Solarpunk’s pop-up zine library and making space!

Please note last day is May 21st (not 22nd) [include that if you use the image]

Bel has been doing a research placement with the school. They’re now bringing the solarpunk to the not-very-solarpunk realm of higher education with a DIY, chilled out, cosy set-up for relaxing and low-pressure zine-making, with materials, prompts, activities, and zines of all kinds to inspire anyone and everyone to get a bit creative amidst the displays of research practice.

Come along any time the exhibition is open.

We’re also planning on hosting a series of lectures in London parks, bringing guerilla education to the masses. Watch this space for more on that.

The future is not arriving fully formed from Silicon Valley. We are making it ourselves.

See you in the greener future.

🌲

The London School of Solarpunk