In summer 2020, The Apocalypse Reading Room: Room2Room goes digital and you can listen to readings online each week on a newly curated Apocalypse Reading Room webpage. Selected guests are invited to read a section of their apocalypse survival guide from their favourite reading rooms: nooks, living rooms, bedrooms, attics, garages, closets, stairwells and basements.

Artists Selina Thompson and Ama Josephine Budge discuss the possibilities for new futures of artistic practice amidst the climate crisis. Part of Season for Ex-Change, a three-week programme of free online events for artists, arts organisations and cultural practitioners.

What Shall We Build Here is a festival of art, climate and community at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios in Aldgate East, across east London and in your local supermarket.
From mini-golf for dogs to outdoor drag performance, coffee mornings to a sober party for healing, Artsadmin invites you to events that imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and the planet.

Featuring artists Selina Thompson, Aisha Mirza & Aaks B, Kaajal Modi, Ama Josephine Budge, Oozing Gloop, Alicja Rogalska, the dream(ing) field lab, and Nigel Barrett & Louise Mari.

What Shall We Build Here is part of Season for Change, which is spotlighting artists’ climate leadership in the run up to COP26. 

Built from a chorus of breath collected in parks and spaces across the borough, the sound is a moment of cleansing and defiance, taking a sound we are surrounded by and tuning into its beauty at a time when breathing has never felt so loaded. Immersion culminates in choral performances across Tower Hamlets and at Artsadmin’s Toynbee Studios, amplifying and strengthening the sound, and tuning in to the defiance of borough’s history. It is a moment to remember the sacredness of air, of living in a constant cycle of inhalation, transformation and exhalation with the planet and each other.

Immersion is one of the commissions for Season for Change, a UK-wide programme of arts activity focused on a step-change in climate awareness, activism and justice, delivered in partnership by Julie’s Bicycle and ArtsAdmin.

The Apocalypse Reading Room is an on-site library curated by Ama Josephine Budge: a world of talking stories in the face of environmental and social collapse, a gathering of all the books we might need to change the end of the world… The Apocalypse Reading Room transforms a public arts space into a post-apocalyptic library installation filled with books for all ages, exploring ways to build, transform, rethink, rewrite and reimagine our futures.

Networking as part of the ACT project is an important segment, in which partners are sharing and discussing the activities’ state of the art. This meeting was organised and hosted by Culturgest, Lisbon with participation of other project partners and representatives from: Arts Admin/London, Bunker/Ljubljana, Kaaitheater/Brussels, COAL/Paris, Domino/Zagreb, Kampnagel/Hamburg, NTIL/Riga, Theater Rotterdam/Rotterdam, and Lokomotiva /Skopje.

Parade of Horribles is a roaming devised work, combining performance, spoken word and projection to celebrate differences with empathetic humour and amplify consciousness around the psychological effects of Climate Crisis. Going from City to Town, spending time with community groups in each area to better understand their lived experience, their fears and desires to translate into imagery for the street. Audiences will happen upon, share, and remember images designed to start conversations. Parade finds ways to create empathy between people and rejoice in the vibrancy that difference brings to our lives.

A true tale of love and transition told through the story of Pinocchio. Set in a fictional film studio, you are invited to go behind the scenes of Cade & MacAskill’s creative process and their relationship, and question what it takes to tell your truth. Artists and lovers Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill have been creating The Making of Pinocchio since 2018, alongside and in response to Ivor’s gender transition. In this ‘funny, clever and thoughtful two-hander, rich in playful imagery’ (The Guardian) their tender and complex autobiographical experience meets the magical story of the lying puppet who wants to be a ‘real boy’.

Call-out for ACT Symposium

On the 28^th/29^th June 2023 Artsadmin and Art, Climate, Transition (ACT) will be co-hosting an international symposium exploring the intersections between contemporary performance, democratic participation, & environmental justice. This two-day symposium will be based at Toynbee Studios in London and sits alongside What Shall We Build Here festival.

This symposium takes an expanded understanding of political discourse and knowledge dissemination. To get to grips with the big themes we are looking at, and to move the conversation forwards, we need many modes of communication. We are delighted to include an eclectic mix of panel discussions, workshops, walks, performances, talks, keynote lectures, meals & meditations.

We are looking for artists, arts workers, theorists & activists to be a part of this programme. Read more…

Taking place in Artsadmin’s home at Toynbee Studios and across Aldgate East and the City of London, What Shall We Build Here will stage an eclectic programme of talks, walks, feasts, workshops, performances and meditations which imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and planet.

Join us in conversation, in play, in reflection and in rest, as we imagine ways of living together that are just and sustainable for people and planet!

As part of Art, Climate, Transition (ACT), Artsadmin is co-hosting an international symposium over two days, from Wednesday 28 – Thursday 29 June.

The ACT Symposium will feature lectures, panel discussions, performances, audio walks, and feasts. This programme includes: a practical exploration of resilience within environmental movements with Zamzam Ibrahim, a movement workshop with Brussels-based artists Daniel Linehan & Michael Helland, a masterclass in Legislative Theatre with Katy Rubin, weaving with Sheila Ghelani, and a keynote performance lecture from Mathieu Charles, whose innovative performance art reflects his Mauritian Creole heritage, his stance on anti-colonialism, and his embrace of diasporic futurisms.