Talks and Events

History & Land in the Anthropocene

This Was Forever & In Our Hands

Date /Time: Friday, 19 January 2024, 6-9 pm

There will be a showing of two short films about allotments and urban farming, This Was Forever (Mark Aitken), 2007) and In Our Hands (Joanne Barker & Sylvie Planel, 2017), followed by a round-table discussion. The first film records the last days of the long-standing Manor Gardens Allotments, levelled to make way for the 2012 Olympics, and the second explores the new forms of co-operative, sustainable farming in the UK. The round-table discussion includes Mark Aitken, Rasheeqa Ahmad and Ken Worpole.

Information & booking (free, booking essential): www.bbk.ac.uk
Venue: Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD

Daring to Hope

A conversation between Sheila Rowbotham & Ken Worpole

Date /Time: Monday, 17 July 2023, 6.30pm

In her new memoir of the 1970s, Daring to Hope, writer Sheila Rowbotham describes the wave of radical social action that emerged in communities across Britain and beyond: imaginative, energetic and hopeful.

She will be in conversation with Ken Worpole, talking about the wider picture as well as the lively radical culture in Hackney in the 1970s, in which both themselves played an active part.

Information & booking: This is a free event, but booking is essential: www.eventbrite.co.uk
Venue: PEER Gallery, 97-99 Hoxton Street, London N1 6QL

Swedenborg's Lusthus

Book Launch & Exhibition

Date /Time: Saturday, 27 January 2024, 3-5pm

This special event marks the publication of a major new exhibition and book reflecting upon the lusthus (wooden cabin) to which the 18th century Swedish mystic and philosopher retreated in his Stockholm garden.

Contributors to the book - Chloe Aridjis, Daniel Birnbaum, Deborah Levy, Bridget Smith, Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole - will be in conversation with curator & editor, Stephen McNeilly.

Information & booking (free, booking essential): www.swedenborg.org.uk
Venue: Swedenborg House, 20 - 21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2CH

London Review Bookshop

In Conversation: 'The Allotment'

Date /Time: Thursday, 13 July, 2023, 19.00

The Allotment by Colin Ward and David Crouch is a 1988 classic of social and oral history, long out of print but finally reissued by the indefatigable Little Toller Books. As Olivia Laing writes in her introduction, it is ‘not just a history of guinea gardens, pigeon sheds and Dig for Victory, but of the social and historical conditions out of which the allotment arose and inside which it stubbornly persists.’
Join social historian Ken Worpole (No Matter How Many Skies Have Fallen, Little Toller Books), writer Olivia Laing (Everyday, Picador), and literary critic Jon Day (Homing, John Murray) to discuss this seminal book. Jon Day - who himself runs a community garden in London - will be chairing (and digging deep).

Information & booking: www.eventbrite.co.uk
Venue: London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL