A discussion about how to navigate and push against predefined words and worlds — and how to make our own spaces on our own terms. With Lighthouse Curator in Residence Eva Rowson, artists Aliyah Hussain, Anna Bunting Branch and Jordi Ferreiro, Marlborough Theatre Co-Artistic Director Tarik Elmoutawakil and Devils’ Dyke Network artists and organisers Claudia Treacher and Violeta Marchenkova.

As useable space for experimenting, sharing work or meeting disappears, and funders and organisations increasingly require our movements and work be documented and described, how do we create the spaces we need to keep our practices, networks and each other going? On the edge of huge political change, how do we protect these spaces? And, who gets to define them? The invited speakers share their thoughts and strategies — from using science fiction to identifying possibilities in the gaps — on how to make spaces on their own terms, from which to make their own rules, futures and politics.

Potential Wor(l)ds is a collaborative workshop-based project between Aliyah Hussain and Anna Bunting-Branch using sound, mark-making and science fiction to explore experimental modes of communicating and different ways of world-building.

The event is part of Lighthouse Curator in Residence Eva Rowson’s six month programme ‘Who’s doing the washing up – where’s the sink?’ exploring the role of hospitality in organisations. The project is a response to Lighthouse’s aim to create spaces to host new ideas, practices and communities and a shared understanding amongst local groups and independent organisations that these spaces are disappearing elsewhere in the city. Drawing on ideas of world-building and feminist science-fiction, modes of communication and organisational practices, the programme takes different forms including workshops and interventions as well as re-imaginings of the uses and workings of the Lighthouse building itself.

The programme title ‘Who’s doing the washing up – where’s the sink?’ is used to address questions that so often go unasked by institutions and grant-makers when imagining ’radical’ new models of organising and hosting: How are different types of work – from the artists to the cleaning – valued in these futures? Who gets to have a voice in these imaginings? And how do we actually change the infrastructures we’re working in so we don’t just reproduce the same models, narratives and values?