In the past few weeks we’ve run a couple of our Sci Fi, Storytelling and Revolution workshops. The first was a day long version at DIY Space for London and the second was an hour long taster at Noisly Fesitival.
In both cases, we look at the relevance Sci Fi can have in brining about social change, or revolution, which among other things is about increasing our collective abilities to imagine futures we want , which is a necessary step in working towards them.
A new adition to these workshops has been about turning Sci Fi into a verb – doing Science Fiction – or Science Fiction-ing. Writer adrienne marie brown, in her book Emergent Strategy, talks about how after imagining the futures we want we need to start practicing them, now.
So this is what we’ve been asking people to do, using a role plays and theatre. In the couple of times we’ve done this so far we’ve had amazingly creative performances and super interesting questions raised such as:
- What do we do when we no longer need to work?
- If healthcare extends life indefinitely, when do you decide to die?
- How should we live in communal and sustainable ways?
- What forms of justice do we want instead of police and prisons?
At no point do we provide concrete answers, but perhaps that’s not the point, rather we want to open the spaces for discussions and to practice solving these questions as we walk towards the futures we want.
Keep an eye out on our Facebook page for more of these events, as we keep coming up with new ways to imagine futures!