Common Ecologies Summer Gathering
On August 26 and 27, Common Ecologies will be hosting a summer gathering at New Yorck im Bethanien in Berlin, Germany. Through this gathering, we want to stir the collective imagination around the potential of a movement school dedicated to cross-movement learning and research around the shared problem of ecological catastrophe. What’s more, we hope that some of the movements and organizations we want to work with help us better understand their needs in order to help us best to structure the school according to local realities. We want this to be a moment of collective joy as we celebrate together the possibility of a school that can help us articulate new potentials and capacities. The entire two days will be both live at New Yorck im Bethanien and online.
We will have a supervised kiddy space on all days, please indicate if you need childcare (when/ages/how many kids). The space is wheelchair accessible. We’ll hold sessions outdoors if weather permits, and mask up indoors (except speakers).
Program:
Friday August 26
17.00 Getting to know each other, join us for a coffee if you want to chat
New Yorck im Bethanien
18.00 Opening Plenary: “A School from Which to Sow a Future”
Speakers: Camille Barbagallo, Janna Graham, Bue Rübner Hansen and Manuela Zechner, and Lasse Thiele
Live at New Yorck im Bethanien and online.
Collective learning is critical to the development of effective, resilient, and rewarding social movements. Without structures that facilitate the development of organizational and analytical capacities, however, such learning remains trapped in the minds of discrete individuals. Confronting the catastrophe of our planetary ecology requires that today’s frontline emancipatory movements build infrastructures to facilitate learning within and between movements. Speaking with organizers and activists from across, we uncover what knowledges need to be developed and be put into circulation in order to achieve the power we need to change the world and the challenges that such an endeavor entails.
20.15 “You’ve Got to Move: Stories to Change the South” Film Screening
New Yorck im Bethanien
In Person – with popcorn, Nachos, other snacks 🙂
Activists and Film Makers Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver 1985 documentary You Got to Move showcases the significant role a movement-school played in the development of working-class and anti-racist power in the US American South: Highlander Research and Education Center.
Saturday August 27
14.00 – 16.30 Movement School Roundtable “The Symbiosis of Movement Learning: What Do Movement Schools Do and How Can They Work Together”
Live at New Yorck im Bethanien and online.
Speakers: Nociones Comunes (Kike España), Ulex Project (G), European Community Organizing Network (Tashy Endres), Bewegungsschule (Alice Hamdi), Institute for Commoning (Nic Beuret) and Casa dels Futurs (Dan).
Common Ecologies isn’t the only school dedicated to movement-learning. Over the past decades, we’ve witnessed a bloom of different schools blossoming across different contexts and political terrains in Europe. Some newer, others older, each school helps satisfy the ecological niche of providing infrastructures through which the actors that compose our movements can develop together the capacities to build powerful and transformative social movements.
At Common Ecologies, we think that the existence of multiple schools across Europe, or even in the same country or city, is an incredible development. In this discussion, we want to draw inspiration from both current and historical examples such schools have and are playing in today’s political ecosystems. At the same time, we want to highlight the differences in niches today’s schools have, in order to better understand how to synergize between each other and work in complementary, rather than competitive ways.
16.30 – 17.30 Coffee, Cake & Care Break @ New Yorck im Bethanien
17.30 – 19.30 Knowledge Needs Mapping Session
Live at New Yorck im Bethanien and online.
In this session we invite movement actors and organizations to help us identify blockages and potentials for movement learning, particularly around aligning their demands to ecological objectives, as well as identifying articulations or gaps within political ecosystems that bring movements together to share visions and strategies around ecological crisis. This helps us understand needs as we move into our schools’ second term.
19.30–23.00 Soirée with amazing dinner
Live at New Yorck im Bethanien
To close our summer gathering, we invite all allies and comrades to an evening of delicious food (vegan/veg), drinks and music at New Yorck im Bethanien.
