8: Narwhal Network: This week from our network: Department of Dreams Re_ Festival, 17th - 22nd June
A couple of weeks ago, we heard from Immy Kaur about The Department of Dreams, a new project being organised by CIVIC SQUARE and kicking off with a 5-day festival on Re-imagining called “ Re_” showcasing some amazing speakers and sessions, including many from the Narwhal group.
Keep reading to read more about the festival, and register to attend for free at the bottom!
Description of Re_ Festival
As we navigate beyond the initial emergency phase of COVID-19, so many things are true.
It will be true that we will need to react, rescue and provide relief for one another, as well as make and take space for rest, recovery, and repair. There will be a desire for retreat, recuperation, opportunity for reflection, and a role for reorganising, repurposing and redesign. We will need to fight for a reframing, reimagination of bold futures, and a resistance against injustice and damaging practices of all kinds. We must fiercely remember those who are no longer with us, and rebuild our homes, our communities and our hearts. We must respect the wisdom of those who came before us, and take responsibility for our own role as ancestors to future generations.
For all of us, our responses, emotions and phases of being, processing and doing will come at different times, in different ways, and will shift, change, swell and shrink across months, weeks, days, even minutes, but all of these multiple dimensions in ourselves, and across all of shared paradigms, are true. There will be millions of nuanced yet connected realities. There will be patterns of experience, but no two will be precisely the same, so no one definition, story or kind of support will be more relevant, nor matter more, than another, even though we will continuously be manipulated and divided into believing that. Many will tell us that there is one ideology of solution, only one way or one route to the future, or that coronavirus didn’t discriminate, yet we know this to be falsely reductionist. Many will feel useless, as if their contribution perhaps no longer matters, when it matters more than ever.
We believe there is real hope for a brighter collective future, but it can’t be decided by a few people through a few frames. Through an online festival of activity, creative commissions, open call, working cohort, and site-specific projects, Department of Dreams will be opening up Re_ throughout June for many people to share, participate and put to use in their places. We’d love to invite you to explore this activity, to connect and design and participate, and interpret this plural framing in your own ways.
Sign up to the festival here
Across 5 days we will explore multiple realities and futures together through a many and varied collection of talks, conversations, workshops and creative interventions of all kinds.
Register here for access to Part One of the Festival, Wednesday 17th - Friday 19th June 2020.
Register here for access to Part Two of the Festival, Saturday 20th - Monday 22nd June 2020.
Register here for access to the Re_ session on Moral Imaginations on Sunday 21st June 2020.
Find speakers and sessions recommended from Narwhal & friends
Ella Saltmarshe
Hilary Cottam
Cassie Robinson
Rob Hopkins
Indra Adnan
Derek Bardowell
Panthea Lee
Indy Johar
Rachel Coldicutt
Farzana Khan
Anab Jain
Alastair Parvin
Pat Kane
Roman Kznaric
And many more!
Find the full list here: https://hopin.to/events/re_festival_part_one and here: https://hopin.to/events/re_festival_part_two
Let us know if you go along and which session you enjoy most!