Come and join us for our talk as we go into planning mode with Eric from the Night Cafe!
In this session we will be meeting and discussing how to plan, set up and run successful pop-up events/happenings/gatherings in urban spaces—whether these are renegade dinner parties, underpass film screenings, public transport tea parties, open sky science fiction open mics, or other shenanigans. From hardware to software to social dynamics and invitation writing, we will explore what makes creative adaptations of the city dazzle and wow attendees and onlookers.
With this toolkit in mind, we will then deploy our new skills to actually plan a series of events/happenings/gatherings (slated for this spring and summer) that make innovative use of urban space. We will also plan an Immanent Urbanism(s) x Critical Hedonism(s) x Post Bar party.
The Immanent Urbanism(s) series is an ongoing lecture and discussion series about how everyday people, experimental cultures, and other emerging and bottom-up forces can remake cities to make them more habitable and humane in the twenty-first century. The series seeks to explore how and why the formalized planning process often fails to serve the dynamic and diverse social and cultural needs of everyday people, and how bottom-up practices such as “tactical urbanism,” guerrilla gardening, DIY building, street art, street parties, and informal settlement are constantly adapting and reshaping the built environment according to interests that have little or no political representation. The series also explores how these “immanent” practices are increasingly recognized, adapted, and even co-opted by state and market forces seeking new cultural capital to fuel vitality and increase property values. Recognizing that the shifts and crises of the twenty-first century call for new ways of living, using and sharing resources, and co-existing between different cultures, the series also explores the role that immanent spatial practices can play in adapting existing cities to new social, economic, environmental and cultural realities. What forms do these counter-urbanisms take today? How do they evolve, resist, or merge with dominant structures? And what are the real possibilities today for living our own urban lives differently? Join us as we examine this ongoing struggle over the authorship and meaning of the contemporary city.