Thursday May 21st, 6.30 for 7pm

Life is not just another physical process. When life appeared on Earth it introduced something radically new into the universe: purposeful bodies that actively work to keep themselves alive.

Unlike non-living matter, life-forms continually maintain themselves, repair damage, avoid danger and reproduce. Evolution refines these forms over time, but their purposiveness begins in the living body itself.

With life, the world stops being only a chain of physical events. It becomes a place where plants, animals and even microbes constantly sense, evaluate and act in ways that protect and sustain their lives. This makes life inherently intelligent, agentive and meaningful – not a biological machine run by genes but living forms pursuing what matters to them.

Melanie Challenger, author of “Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World” and “How to Be Animal”, will discuss how understanding life in this way changes how we see the world. She will explain how The Earth becomes a realm of purposeful beings and how this reshapes how we see life, nature, and ourselves.

Friday May 22nd, 6 for 6.30pm

Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell’s 2021 feature documentary Bank Job (1hr 27 mins) explored the truth about money and debt and instigated a community heist on an unjust financial system – setting up a rebel bank on a high street and printing money to cancel £1.2 million of predatory debt.

For most of May, Dan and Hilary will be taking over our ground floor space with their installation Everything Must Go, which features “Big Bang 2” and other artefacts from Bank Job as well as from their other multi-layered 2025 work Power Station.

This screening of Bank Job, which takes place the night before we hold a live auction of the contents of Everything Must Go, will be followed by a discussion with Dan and Hilary.

Opening hours to view Everything Must Go are 12pm to 6pm, Wednesday to Sunday. We will also be screening Power Station on Saturday May 9th and running a money-making workshop on Sunday May 24th. All the tie-in events for Everything Must Go are listed here.

Watch the trailer for Bank Job.

Saturday May 23rd, 6.30 for 7.30pm

“Ten years of artwork. One night. The van from Bank Job — still carrying the physical remains of £1.2 million of debt we abolished — going under the hammer.”

For most of May, artist-activists Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell will be taking over the ground floor of Kairos with their installation Everything Must Go, featuring “Big Bang 2: The Artefact of a Debt Explosion.” Everything Must Go tells the story of the couple’s decade of economic and energy interventions — the multi-layered works that became the feature documentary films Power Station (2025) and Bank Job (2021).

Before the show closes, we’ll be auctioning selected works at this Live Auction on Saturday May 23rd at Kairos, as well as via a digital auction now open that will run until May 31st.

The Live Auction will be conducted by our special auctioneer and friend Gavin Turk. It will be followed by Dan’s first ever cabaret performance, with a chance to sing along. It promises to be historic.

Dan and Hilary work in what they call Method Art — dreaming up an idea and then living it. Bank Job didn’t depict debt destruction; it was an actual debt-abolition action, documented on film. Power Station didn’t depict a community energy project; it was one, with their own Walthamstow street as the material.

Everything Must Go continues that lineage. The auction is not how they are funding the art. The auction is the art — a live, one-night performance work in which two artists put their archive on a rostrum and let the room decide what happens next. The ending is not written in advance. The target for the auction is £250,000 with all proceeds used to repay community bondholders who helped fund Power Station, clear the debts Dan accrued making the project, and development of the next stage.

The title cuts two ways. Everything in the room must go — prints, paintings, the van, the lot. And so must everything that made the work necessary: the fossil-fuel economy, the extractive banks, the debt machine. Clearing the studio is the easy part. Clearing the system is the work.

Everything Must Go!

Sunday May 24th, 1 for 2pm

Many artists have been tempted to experiment with money as a way to critique capitalism and experiment with alternatives. Some integrate coins, bills and promises into their paintings and sculptures. Others invent thought-provoking new currencies and thriving alternative economies.

Perhaps they do so because money represents the cutting edge of economic power, and most artists are made poor by this system. Or maybe it’s because both art and money are ways we represent and imagine the world.

In this talk, Max Haiven will contextualise Dan and Hilary’s work as part of a legacy of interventionist art that plays with money for the radical imagination. Drawing on his 2018 book “Art after Money, Money after Art: Creative Strategies Against Financialization”, he’ll ask: What can activists and organisers learn from these daring experiments?

After Max’s talk we’ll have a short break for tea and coffee followed by discussion. Our free Money Making Workshop will then start at 4.30pm.

Tickets include lunch before the talk at 1pm and tea or coffee during the break. Please pay what you can.

This is one of the supporting events for Everything Must Go, artist/activist couple HIlary Powell and Dan Edelystyn’s take-over of our ground floor space.

Sunday May 24th, 4 for 4.30pm

Come and make your own money at the closing event for our series Everything Must Go, a celebration of the work of artist/activists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn.

We’re issuing a limited edition of 100 notes in our new Kairos currency – designed and produced by Paul Nelson, Charlie Waterhouse (of the Brixton Pound) and Michael Collins from Paris 68 Redux –  which we’re inviting you to customise and complete.

The workshop is free to enter. Kairos notes will cost £20 to buy and customise. They can then be used at the bar or in exchange for tickets for future events. Warning: Their value may decline over time.

The workshop will be followed by drinks to mark the closing of Hilary and Dan’s show and the opening of our new Roulette table. Supper will be served from the bar at around 8pm. The bar will stay open until 10pm.

Tuesday May 26th, 6.30 for 7pm

The last five years have seen a remarkable clampdown on climate and anti-war protests in Britain. An unprecedented number of people have been held on remand in prison or given custodial sentences, often for very long periods.

To coincide with the launch of a comprehensive report by Queen Mary University and Defend Our Juries that reveals the devastating scale of this imprisonment, we’re gathering to ask where we go from here:

How can we can galvanise our movements and resist this state repression?

We’ll hear short presentations in response to this question from David Whyte of Queen Mary University; Tim Crosland of Defend Our Juries; Huda Ammori, lead applicant in the judicial review against the government’s proscription of Palestinian solidarity (via video link); Amy Pritchard, previously jailed climate protestor; Athene Dilke, from the Public and Commercial Services Union; and Guy Zilberman, author of the report.

We’ll then have an open mic session, in which all participants will be invited to share their perspective, followed by a group discussion. The evening will include a break for a one-pot vegan supper.

This is a free event. Space is limited, however, and we will be providing a meal, so please only book a ticket if you are committed to coming. Thank you.

Wednesday May 27th, 6.30 for 7pm

While the Green Party won 400 seats in the recent local elections, Reform won more than 2000. Clearly there is a massive problem – and the implications of Reform gaining state power, as we head towards 2C, are beyond appalling.

In this talk, Roger Hallam will speak about how the party needs develop integrated ecological relationships both to other emergent radical parties, and to the communities it seeks to serve. This is fundamentally a question of “who decides” – who has power.

Roger has just spent eight months designing local mobilisations which concretise what this needs to look like in practice. He will draw on years of social movement organising and various case studies – including his and others’ work in Lambeth – to provide a radical new model for how we can overcome the far right.

Thursday May 28th, 6.30 for 7pm

When we’re trying to do good – whether in politics, activism, charity or community work – it’s easy to become attached to the idea of being good. Does that matter?

Anthea Lawson, a campaigner and author, has been investigating and documenting the saviour complex – that suite of unconscious motivations which can hide in the shadow of being ‘good’, and which lead to behaviours that can cut across our avowed purposes:

Moralising in lieu of strategy; Provision of information in lieu of building relationships; Purity politics and saviour heroics that bolster the shaky self, but impede connection; Internalisation of old Christian stories – albeit with God taken out – about saving and burdens.

None of this is inevitable if we are willing to look within at the stories that run us. But there are perennial obstacles to doing so as part of politics, not least the old binary between our inner lives and the outer world, an opposition that runs deep in western culture, in modernity, and in patriarchy.

In this talk, Anthea will shine a light on progressive baggage and suggest some antidotes to its less helpful instructions, while thinking through, and countering, the obstacles to turning within as a necessary political project.

Saturday May 30th, 7pm to 1am

Join us in saying goodbye and thanks to our current home with cocktails, supper, Roulette, live music from the Daywalkers, DJs Iko Cherié and Afroasis, and a late licence until 1am.

Places are limited and we expect to reach capacity so booking ahead is essential. We are limiting booking to one ticket per person.

Tuesday June 16th, 6.30 for 7pm
St Ethelburga’s Center for Reconciliation and Peace

We live in an age characterised by what might be called omnicide — the systematic destruction of the conditions for life on Earth. But how did we get here and is another path truly possible?

Drawing on twenty-five years of inquiry into the deep patterns of human culture and meaning-making, Jeremy Lent will explore what it would take to move from our current trajectory toward an ecocivilisation: a world organised around human flourishing and ecological regeneration rather than endless extraction.

This talk, and follow-on conversation, will be an invitation to think together about the most consequential question of our time: what kind of world do we want to build and do we have the courage and imagination to build it?

Every Wednesday afternoon, 2-6pm
Wednesday Reading Room
Our weekly library opening hours are between 2 and 6pm. Drop in and browse our growing collection or bring your own book to read, but please no laptops, kindles, smartphones or other electronic devices. If you’d like access at another time, email events@kairos.london and we’ll do our best to accommodate you.

Every other Friday evening, 6.30 for 7.30pm
Friday Music Nights
Friday Music Nights is our fortnightly series of relaxed drinks evenings featuring a short musical set followed by food and socialising. Come before 7.30pm to hear the music, or after 8.15pm if you just want to join us for supper and/or drinks. Entry is half-price for Community Members and free for everyone after 8.15pm. The bar stays open for drinks until 11pm.

The Last Wednesday evening of Every Month, 6.30 for 7pm
Book Club
Look out for listings here, or email events@kairos.london if you’d like to join the Book Club WhatsApp group.

The First Wednesday evening of Every Month, 6.30-10.30pm
Wednesday Drinks
Our new monthly mid-week bar night, with free entry and a pay bar serving alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks as well as vegan food. Whether you’re a regular Kairos attendee or have yet to come to one of our events, if you’re on your own or with a group, or if you just want a quiet catch up with a friend, all are welcome.

The First Tuesday evening of Every Other Month, 6.30 for 7pm
Open Projects Night
Our regular open mike night, where we learn about each other’s projects, build connections and offer each other support. Look out for listings on this page or email events@kairos.london with details of the project you’d like to share.

Friday day-time, 10am-5pm
Community Day
We’re now opening our doors on Fridays for aligned groups needing a place to meet. This is non-exclusive, daytime use of our space for brainstorms and strategy meetings, book group discussions and other creative get-togethers. Only by arrangement. Email events@kairos.london.