Life-Affirming Infrastructures 2
A conversation between:
Akil Scafe-Smith (chair)
Immy Kaur
Gabriella Gomez-Mont
Yvonne Field
07/11/2023
19:00 – 21:00
ICF @ Block 336
336 Brixton Road
London SW9 7AA
Description
Following on from Healing Justice Ldn and Kin Structures’ public conversation on life-affirming infrastructures earlier this year, this discussion, chaired by Akil Scafe-Smith (Resolve Collective) with Immy Kaur (Civic Square), Gabriella Gomez-Mont (Experimentalista) and Yvonne Field (The Ubele Initative), will hear from individuals and organisations currently visioning and building radical infrastructures across the UK and globally to support the collective life of people and planet. The panel will demonstrate that alternative models, methodologies and practices are not abstract dreams, but material realities already being practised in pockets across the UK and internationally. These present-day experiments give us a glimpse into practical possibilities: they are “rehearsals” for the liberated and flourishing futures that we would like to see.
This event will be BSL interpreted.
Biographies
Yvonne Field is a social justice advocate and entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience working with individuals, groups, and organisations in the UK and around the world. She is the Founder and CEO of the Ubele Initiative, an organisation that empowers Black and Minority Ethnic communities in the UK to act as catalysts for social and economic change. Yvonne has a long and distinguished career in the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector. She has advised governments on Black and Minority Ethnic and women’s enterprise and has been included in the NatWest Top 100 Women in Social Enterprise group. She is also a fellow of the Institute for Learning, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Churchill Fellow.
Throughout the last decade, Immy Kaur has focused on convening and building community, the role of people and communities in radical systemic change, and how we together create more democratic, distributed, open source social and civic infrastructure. Through this work she has discovered much about economic justice and broader injustices, the pivotal role of land and social/civic infrastructure in neighbourhoods, and the value extracted from communities through our broken investment models and understanding of value and relationship with the planet we call home. It’s an ongoing journey of discovery, emergence and learning together. Immy is a co-founder and Director of CIVIC SQUARE. CIVIC SQUARE is demonstrating neighbourhood-scale civic infrastructure for social and ecological transition, together with many people and partners in Ladywood, Birmingham.
Akil Scafe-Smith is one sixth of RESOLVE, an interdisciplinary design collective that aims to address multi-scalar social challenges by combining architecture, art, technology and engineering. RESOLVE has delivered numerous projects, workshops and talks in the UK and across Europe, as well as working with a variety of initiatives to introduce young people from under-represented backgrounds to concepts in interdisciplinary design.
Gabriella Gomez-Mont’s work helps to explore and reimagine the environments and cities that we live in. She is the former Chief Creative Officer of Mexico City, and the founder of Laboratorio para la Ciudad, an award-winning experimental arm and creative think-tank of Mexico City. The Lab was created to tackle urban challenges. Through her transdisciplinary creative studio, Experimentalista, she practically enables cities, spaces, and geographies for us to thrive in. She is also the founder of The Institute for Everything In-Between (a transdisciplinary and exploratory platform) and a Visiting Professor of Practice at UCL.
