Saturday School 2024
Saturday School 2024 is a creative learning lab to embody, imagine and design for border abolition.
This year, from Spring 2024 - Spring 2025, we engage with an invited cohort of 20 organisers, infrastructure builders and creative practitioners with lived experience of migration, diaspora and/or racialisation, to:
Collectively analyse histories/futures of abolition, conflict and climate change adaption, ancestral practice/strategy and infrastructure building.
Design and develop individual experiments, set intentions, and be supported to staying accountable
Explore creative and visual ways of reflecting, documenting and framing experiments to a wider public.
Resource resilience and imagination with practice spaces in embodied leadership and science fiction writing.
Share and disseminate our learnings with a wider movement ecosystem and public
As part of our programme, we are hosting public Spring and Autumn conversations that frame the context in which we will explore practical experiments.
Spring:
Guest speakers share their reflections and practices around border abolition, conflict and climate change adaptation and sacred strategy.
Autumn:
Saturday School continues in conversation with strategists, organisers and builders on the tension of holding longer-term visions whilst delivering in the present. We explore Refounding Institutions, Remaking Economics and Rehearsing Abolition.
Refounding Institutions
In conversation with Daniel Blyden: Civic Square
Daniel Blyden is Co-founder and Director of Design at Civic Square, which is demonstrating neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social and ecological transition, together with many people and partners in Ladywood, Birmingham UK.
Remaking Economies
In conversation with Guppi Bola & Nonhlanhla Makuyana: Decolonising Economics
Guppi Bola and Nonhlanhla Makuyana are the double-trouble duo running Decolonising Economics. They are working to divest from whiteness in economic and financial systems, facilitate a solidarity economy and invest in the leadership of marginalised communities of colour who are organising towards community ownership of assets.
Rehearsing Abolition
In conversation with Shana Agid: Member of Critical Resistance
Shana Agid (she/he/they) is an artist/designer, teacher, and organiser whose work focuses on relationships of power and difference in visual, social, and political cultures. His design work focuses on exploring possibilities for making self-determined infrastructures and campaigns through teaching and design research. She is also a book artist and letterpress printer. Shana is an Associate Professor of Arts, Media, and Communication at Parsons School of Design, a long-time member of Critical Resistance, and the Transformative Justice Skill Up Fellow at Interrupting Criminalization for 2024-2026.
The right to stay / The right to move: Organising in a climate changing and securitised world
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?
With: Scott McAulay (Anthropocene Architecture School), Innah Gaspar (Global Communications Council (GSCC)), & Ghassan Ghaben (Gaza Families Reunited Campaign), chaired by Aliya Yule (Migrants Organise)
Sacred Civics: Shaping our systems as if peoples, lands and natures were sacred
How are we shaping our relationships, infrastructures and systems as if peoples, lands and natures were sacred? And how does the recognition of sacredness help us to envision and build for a world without borders?
With: Jayne Engle (Co-author of ‘Sacred Civics: Building Seven Generation Cities’), Manuwi C Tokai (Artist, Ancestrial Peace Work), Fang-Jui 'Fang-Raye' Chang (Dark Matter Labs), chaired by Joon-Lynn Goh (Migrants in Culture)
Abolition is Presence: Mapping the practices and possibilities of border abolition in the UK
What ways are we witnessing the presence of abolition in the UK today? How are migrant and abolitionist organisers building on histories of resistance and experimenting into the future?
With: Gracie Mae Bradley (Co-Author of Against Borders), Kelsey M (Cradle Community), Azfar Shafi (Nijjor Manush), chaired by Nishma Jethwa (The Rights Collective)
Saturday School aims to culminate in 2026 with a Border Abolition Summit, sharing 3 years of learning, alongside the publication and dissemination of a Workbook and Sci-Fi Anthology in Border Abolition.
Saturday School 2023 - Images by Sana Badri
Any questions?
Get in touch with Becca from Migrants in Culture: hello@migrantsinculture.com
Who is delivering Saturday School?
Saturday School is delivered by Migrants in Culture in partnership with Migrants Organise, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Healing Justice London and Align.