In our lifetime, conflict and climate change will continue, as will the necessity of migration.

Yet, faced with this ongoing reality, Governments spend billions in an industry of militarisation, surveillance and bordering in the name of ‘national security’, rather than invest in the prevention of conflict and war, building of community health and wellbeing, and adaptation in the face of climate change. Migration may be framed as a ‘threat’ by a hostile media and political landscape, but migration is also a space where our struggles and solidarities meet.

We ask: How are we organising around 2 key principles; the right to stay - to defend communities from impacts of climate change and securitisation, and the right to move - safely and with dignity, when staying is not possible or desirable?

Our first conversation framing Saturday School shares the work of organisers expanding the right to stay and the right to move: Innah Gaspar from the Migration Project at Global Communications Council; Scott McAulay, co-ordinator of the Anthropocene Architecture School, Ghassan Ghaben, organiser from Gaza Families Reunited Campaign, and chaired by Aliya Yule, organiser from Migrants Organise.

We will explore transforming the narrative of securitisation towards climate change mitigation, adaption and reparations; retrofitting our buildings and built environment to weather a changing world, and community organising efforts to reunite Palestinian families and offer sanctuary until it is safe to return.

Saturday School is a 3-year creative learning lab for organisers to embody, imagine and design for border abolition. For more information, see the Saturday School page.

Speaker Bios:

Scott McAulay

With roots in grassroots climate justice activism, Scott’s practice with the Anthropocene Architecture School fuses architectural, community, and political education with Climate Literacy, Spatial Justice, and the Radical Imagination. Through temporary activations of space, writing, teaching and un/learning workshops, their work prefiguratively challenges education systems and the wider construction sector’s ongoing inertia as we live through planetary dysregulation and today’s cost of survival crisis.

Scott has taught widely across Scotland, the British Isles, mainland Europe and Turtle Island, and was one of a constellation of partners that co-created 2023's Retrofit Reimagined festival season. He is a founding member of ACAN Scotland, a Co-Producer of the Architecture Fringe, and an active member of Living Rent – Scotland’s tenants union. In architectural practice with Architype, Scott specialises in life cycle analysis, material strategies and sustainability coordination -working on projects across the U.K. from their Edinburgh studio.

Innah Gaspar

Innah Gaspar is the Campaigns Strategist for the Migration Project at the Global Communications Council (GSCC), where she coordinates partners to develop and implement strategic narratives, messaging, and campaigns on climate, migration and the border and surveillance industry. Innah has worked for global organizations such as CARE International, Amnesty International, and Oxfam coordinating campaigns, developing creative content, and leading in decolonializing communications. Innah holds a MSc in Media, Communication and Development at the London School of Economics, writing her dissertation on humanitarian communications and virtual reality. A Canadian-Métis-Filipina, Innah is currently based in Berlin where she helps lead ALPAS, a Filipinx Migrant Collective.

Ghassan Ghaben

Ghassan Ghaben (he/him) is a Manchester-based paralegal and Palestinian activist from Gaza. He is a member of the UK Gaza Community Group, a collective of 350 Palestinians from Gaza resident in the UK. He is a coordinator in the Gaza Families Reunited Campaign that is calling for a Gaza Family Scheme that would reunite Palestinian families and offer temporary sanctuary until it is safe to return.