Tuesday May 20th, 6.30 for 7pm

Britain’s common land has been systematically depleted through encroachment, enclosure, privatisation, commodification and financialisation. The result has been chronic mis-management of our land, including over grazing, the depletion of peatlands, soil degradation and widespread habitat and species loss. How can we revive the Commons and restore our land?

In this participatory event – part of our year-long series on the Commons – we’ll explore a vision for the land commons, and draw up a set of demands for inclusion in a new Charter of the Commons being developed at Kairos over the course of the year.

We’ll hear a series of short presentations from land, river and commons experts: Economist Guy Standing, Carol Wilcox of the Labour Land Campaign, Anthony Hurbert from DEFRA, writer and ecologist Helen Baczkowska, Tom Chance of the Community Land Trust Network and Carey Doyle from Scotland’s Rural College. 

We’ll then break into groups to discuss their ideas before coming back together to collectively agree on a set of principles and demands to include in the Charter.

No previous knowledge is required – either of the Commons generally or land issues specifically. All are welcome to contribute or just come to listen.

Wednesday May 21st, 6.30 for 7pm

Or “Globalisation and Balshazzar’s Feast”

What does the ‘invisible hand’ portend for the US dollar and financial markets? Is the writing on the wall? How can we transform the system?

There is widespread recognition that the increasingly lawless global financial system is unstable, and like the ecosystem, prone to failure. Yet economists and investors remain bullish.

In this talk, international political economist Ann Pettifor will explore the deep flaws of a global system that marketises and deregulates the social technology we call money; denationalises finance and thereby threatens financial crisis, while declaring ‘there is no money’ to address climate breakdown.

The system and its flaws are well understood. We have been here before. We know how to fix the system, and we know how to mobilise the finance needed for transformation. We face constraints but they are not financial or monetary constraints. The only real constraints are ecological, and the other real resources – public understanding, labour, the earth’s resources and infrastructure – needed to meet humanity’s collective needs.

Wednesday May 28th, 6.30 for 7pm

This event was originally scheduled for Wednesday May 7th. Apologies if you had planned to come on the original date. 

For May’s Book Club we’re discussing The North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich in which Canadian journalist David Cayley compiles and reflects upon the thoughts of Ivan Illich, one of the 20th century’s most visionary cultural critics.

Illich believed that the West could only be understood as a corruption of the Christian New Testament. Cayley presents Illich’s exploration of this idea, illuminating Illich’s thoughts on the criminalisation of sin, on how the Church has become a template for the modern nation-state, and how contemporary society has become a congealed and corrupted Christianity.

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was a brilliant polymath, an iconoclastic thinker, and a prolific writer. He was a priest, vice-rector of a university, founder of the Centre for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and author of numerous books, including Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality, Energy and Equity, and Medical Nemesis.

Thursday May 29th, 6.30 for 7pm

The urgent question of the moment is not just how to constrain a surging authoritarianism, but to figure out what compelling new vision for governance, provisioning, and social order we should pursue.

The “old normal” cannot be restored, and in any case, it has failed to deal with climate change, savage inequalities, predatory markets, democratic decline and social alienation. New types of social relations and institutional forms are desperately needed; the confusion and disarray in current politics provides the opportunity to create them.

Drawing on his just-published book “Think Like a Commoner, Second Edition”, David Bollier, a long-time activist/scholar at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics (US), will describe the wide variety of commons now flourishing outside the control of the corporate market/state. A globe-spanning Commonsverse – encompassing land, water, agriculture, food systems, energy, digital networks, mutual aid, alternative currencies, and much more – is opening up new vectors of democratic and economic possibility. It represents an unacknowledged “parallel polis,” as Czech visionary Vaclav Havel might have put it.

Since capitalist modernity remains a major impediment to change, David will also focus on several key challenges for expanding the Commonsverse: the re-configuration of state power to support commoning; the development of (noncapitalist) “relationalized finance”; creative legal hacks on Western jurisprudence; the mainstreaming of social cooperation as an institutional form; bioregionalism as an integrated ecological/economic vision; and new modes of collaboration between commoners in the Global South and North.

Tuesday June 3rd, 6.30 for 7pm

Join us for our regular open mike 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.

Thursday June 5th, 6.30 for 7pm

For the past two years, Cooperation Hull has been taking inspiration from democratic and economic experiments around the world like Cooperation Jackson, Mondragon, the Zapatistas and Rojava, and applying them here at home. Their model brings these learnings together with their own experiences of civil disobedience to plot a course towards real system change, founded on a new culture of self-organising.

Gully Bujak was arrested ten times with Extinction Rebellion, coordinated the shut down of Murdoch’s printworks in 2020 and was acquitted by a jury for criminal damage before co-founding Cooperation Hull. She will present Cooperation Hull’s work so far, which includes holding over a dozen people’s assemblies in the city with the lowest voter turnout in the country, starting radical ‘solidarity economy’ projects in deprived neighbourhoods, confronting Reform and supporting other northern initiatives like Cooperation Sheffield to get off the ground.

Fresh from attending the historic People’s Platform in Vienna as a Cooperation Hull delegate – a gathering of 800 revolutionaries from around Europe – Gully will give a frank analysis of what has and hasn’t been working in Hull and discuss what it means to translate international examples to an English context.

Thursday June 12th, 6.30 for 7pm

Alastair McIntosh – quaker, land reformer, spiritual ecologist and honorary professor at the University of Glasgow – played a leading role in the campaigns that brought the Isle of Eigg into community land ownership and stopped the Isle of Harris superquarry.

In this talk, Alastair will share learnings from his activist work over nearly half a century. He will briefly outline his work with land reform, urban poverty and nonviolence with the military, in order to draw out what it means to sustain engagement while acting inside the systems we’re trying to replace.

He will talk about the spirituality that underpins his work, the Naming, Unmasking and Engaging of the Powers that can sustain challenging work and power it up from a place of inner necessity. Collectively, we’ll then discuss what we all can do, despite living inside “the belly of the beast”.

Saturday July 12th, 6.30pm to 11pm

We’re going to be holding our first Summer Party at 84 Tottenham Court Road.

More details to follow shortly.

Saturday October 25th, 9.30 to 4pm

“Town Anywhere ‘is an extraordinary exercise. It invites us to step into the future, to reimagine and rebuild the world, and to then inhabit it. One of the most magical things I’ve ever been part of. Give your imagination a treat!”  Rob Hopkins, Transition Network

Kairos is hosting Town Anywhere, a day-long, immersive and participatory experience, facilitated by artist Ruth Ben-Tovim and Lucy Neal, during which we’ll collectively imagine, build and inhabit a positive vision of the future.

Using future scenarios, large-scale model-making, group work and timed challenges, we’ll imagine and create a flourishing, resilient town ten years in the future, in which both humans and more-than-humans thrive. We’ll play and practice community visioning, ideation and storytelling in an imaginary, but tangible, environment, before returning to the present to harvest the learning.

In this new iteration of Town Anywhere, the concept of multi-species justice – a recognition that humans must work with and alongside the more-than-human in empathetic relationship – will be core.

Every Friday, 6.30-11pm
Friday Drinks
Our weekly open bar night. Free entry with a pay bar serving drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and vegan food. There may be some entertainment.

Sundays, 12-5pm (dependent on volunteers, check main listings for confirmation)
Sunday Reading Room
A chance to 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 weekly fixture it will rely on volunteers to supervise the space. If you’d like to get involved join the WhatsApp group here or email events@kairos.london.

Fridays, 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.

The Second Wednesday of Every Month
Book Club
Look out for listings on this page, or email events@kairos.london if you’d like to join the Book Club WhatsApp group.

The First Tuesday of Every Other Month
Open Projects Night
Our regular open mike night, where we’ll learn about each others 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.