What Can We Learn from the Radical Imagination? with Max Haiven

Thursday November 14th
Doors & drinks 6.30pm; Talk starts 7pm

This event is now fully booked. To join the waiting list email events@kairos.london

The radical imagination is the force that allows us to envision and fight for different worlds. It is an essential part of successful struggles. While we often assume it's what inspires struggle, the opposite is also true: it is when people struggle, together, to refuse intolerable conditions that the radical imagination sparks and reshapes the world.

The radical imagination can seem like a wooly, romantic concept until we recognise how deep a role the imagination plays in everyday life, not only as something that animates the creative spirit but a fundamental quality of our social minds as members of a cooperative species. 

In this talk, Max Haiven will explore what's happened to the radical imagination in recent years, as seen in the uprising against the ongoing climate emergency, the resurgence of the far right, the cursed gift of social media and the rise of a global anti-colonial movement focused on the liberation of Palestine.

Drawing on a wide range of examples from activism and art, he'll explore how the radical imagination can be “convoked” or called into being through acts of solidarity and collective creativity.  

Max Haiven is a social theorist and organiser specialising in the power of the imagination in an age of crisis. He is an associate professor at Lakehead University in Canada, co-author of The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity and author of Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire. With Sarah Stein Lubrano he runs Sense & Solidarity, a platform where organisers come together to learn about what really works to change hearts and minds.

Max's talk will be followed by a break for a one-pot vegan supper and discussion.

Those attending the Changing Hearts and Minds workshop can attend this event for free but booking is essential.

Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TG

Doors open at 6.30pm for drinks. Talk starts at 7pm.

£8 Kairos Club Member, £15 Non-member, £10 Struggling financially, £20 Supporter. Free for those attending the Changing Hearts and Minds workshop. Food complimentary.

Before requesting a discounted ticket, please consider sincerely: Are you struggling to meet your basic needs? Would you have to make a genuine sacrifice to buy a full priced ticket? Do you have reduced earnings through a lifestyle choice or because you’re dedicating your time to unpaid work relating to the climate and nature crises?