We’re very happy to announce that we’ve secured funding for Utopian Acts from the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities – we are very grateful for their support! With a confirmed date, a location, and funding, we’re overjoyed to start properly working towards making Utopian Acts the best festival of hope it can possibly be.
We’re also now able to announce our keynote speakers: we’re so excited for Professors Lynne Segal and Davina Cooper to be presenting at Utopian Acts. Professor Segal is a socialist feminist activist and academic, the author of influential books including Straight Sex: Rethinking the Politics of Pleasure and last year’s avowedly utopian Radical Happiness: Moments of Collective Joy. Professor Davina Cooper is an academic working on questions of transformative politics, social justice, and radical law, and the author of a number of books including Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces, which clearly and elegantly details the ways real-world utopias are being formed around the globe.
We know that these brilliant speakers would make Utopian Acts an exceptional day just by themselves, but why stop there? We’ve now responded to all who sent in expressions of interest – thank you for your early commitment to this venture! – and have published our Call for Papers on this website and other locations. Applications for presenting a workshop, paper, media work, artwork, performance, or anything else at Utopian Acts are now open until the 29th of June 2018.
