Sunday December 1st, 12pm-5pm

We’re experimenting with Sunday opening hours for the newly launched library. Come and browse our books or bring your own, but please no laptops, kindles, smartphones or other electronic devices.

For Sunday Reading Room to become a permanent fixture it will rely on volunteers to supervise the space. If you’d like to get involved you can join the WhatsApp group here or email us at events@kairos.london.

Tuesday December 3rd, 6.30 for 7pm

Join us for our regular Open Projects Night, where we’ll learn about each others projects, build connections and offer each other support.

This is for: Anyone with a radical idea they’d like to share and workshop. Anyone setting up or running a small Kairos-aligned project who needs support. Anyone with skills and experience they’d like to share. Anyone who would like to help grow our interconnectedness.

The evening will include a series of short interactive presentations, a chance to workshop a few of the projects presented, and a one-pot vegan supper that we’ll eat together.

Wednesday December 4th, 6.15 for 6.45pm

Double Bill Screening: “Puffling” (20 mins, 2023) followed by “The Nightingale’s Song” (40 mins, 2023).

“The Nightingale’s Song” (by filmmakers Adam Loften and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee for Emergence Magazine) profiles folk singer Sam Lee and his campaign to save a bird on the edge of extinction.

Every year in late Spring, Sam leads groups of visitors through the Sussex woods to discover this elusive songbird and experience a magical late night duet as he joins the nightingale in song. Through Sam’s devotion to the nightingale, the film explores how deepening our relationship with the living world can inspire care, stewardship, and love.

Short documentary “Puffling”, directed by Jessica Bishopp, follows teenagers on a remote Icelandic island as they rescue pufflings (young puffins) from imminent danger. As pufflings leave their nests for the first time, they often get lost in town, mistaking the harbour lights for the moon.

Over the course of one night, Birta and Selma exchange night-time parties for puffin rescues. A coming-of-age documentary about growing up and making choices, “Puffling” explores the delicate interplay between wildlife, the environment, and human life.

The screenings will be followed by supper and discussion with Sam and Jessica (and maybe a song or two).

Friday December 6th, 6.30 for 7pm

“In this slender novel, Harvey seems to have encompassed all of humanity… It is an extraordinary achievement” – The Observer

A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.

The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

This event was originally scheduled for November.

Tuesday December 10th, 6.30 for 7pm

The anthropologist and film-maker Hugh Brody has spent a lifetime immersed in communities of indigenous peoples of the Arctic and sub-Arctic.

In this talk followed by discussion, Hugh will share some stories of, and insights from, the people whose lives he’s been lucky enough to learn from. Those like the Inuit who have lived by keeping the world intact.

In Inuit culture, when a child receives a name, it isn’t just a name, but more a form of reincarnation. This speaks to the web of connections the Inuit experience, through time and across the land. Their recognition of these connections leads to knowledge, and ultimately to respect. This is but one example of a system of belief and social life that builds social equality and a sustainable environment.

Imperialism has shaped – and continues to shape – our world. Disastrous climate change is its environmental corollary. Indigenous peoples around the world know this all too deeply; they experience the most direct impacts. And they have led the way in resistance.

Perhaps the most difficult thing about our moment in history is the force of invasive pessimism. It has become a clouding darkness, a sense of inherent defeat. Understanding very different ways of being in the world – different systems of relating to one another and to all the life we depend on as part of a larger pattern – can provide some seeds of optimism.

Sunday December 15th, 3 for 3.30pm

Games are among humanity’s most ancient technologies. They are not only a tool for having fun, they facilitate learning and transformation, from our earliest childhood and throughout our lives. How can games help us think, feel and act again in the face of the climate emergency? And how can thinking and practicing game design help activists, artists and advocates for climate justice reimagine and renew our approach?

With a focus on board games and convivial games (like those played at protests or in small groups), this workshop will offer participants the opportunity to learn about the power of games and design their own.

It will be led by Matteo Menapace, co-designer of the award-winning climate board game Daybreak and by Max Haiven, Canada Research Chair in the Radical Imagination and designer of the forthcoming Billionaires and Guillotines. No special experience is necessary.

The workshop will be followed by a board games evening and social from 6pm. All are welcome to come and play.

Tuesday December 17th, 6.30 for 7pm

How can we start to build a new, sustainable, democratic, community-owned economy?

In this immersive workshop – a combination of games and short talks – we’ll discover how debt, money and the capitalist economy really works, and explore the alternatives that are right under our noses. Led by Rob Callender, activist and co-founder of Kin Cooperative – a platform designed to allow communities to bypass the banks and save money together – we’ll see how open-source financial systems, and federations of cooperatives working together, could dramatically reconfigure the economy.

As Trump returns to the White House propelled by voters’ lived experience of the economy, how can we build structures that will change that experience, help people to help themselves, and halt the ever-more destructive, anti-democratic path of late-stage capitalism? We know those in power won’t do it for us.

Friday December 20th, 6.30pm – 11pm

A party to mark the passing of the longest night, with the usual appearance from Kairos’ own Sibyl of Cumae and other diversions.