

Talks and Events
Ken Worpole & Melissa Benn: Brightening from the East
Date /Time: Wednesday, 26 March 2025, 7pm
Ken Worpole, ‘a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition’ (New Statesman), has written on many subjects during his long career, from cemeteries to hospices to the novels of Alexander Baron, but has often returned to the subject of his beloved Essex. His latest essay collection Brightening from the East (Little Toller) focuses on the natural and built landscapes of the ‘region of the mind’ that is the estuarine marshlands of the Thames and the East Anglian coast, bringing us stories of radical communities and arcadian dreams of new ways of living. Worpole will be in conversation about his work with writer and journalist Melissa Benn.
Information & booking: www.eventbrite.co.uk
Venue: London Review Bookshop, 14 Bury Place, London WC1A 2JL
When We Build Again: The life and work of Colin Ward, Wanstead's famous 'gentle anarchist'
Date /Time: Saturday 11th January 2025, 7.30pm Entry, 8pm Talk.
2024 marked the centenary of the birth of Britain’s most famous anarchist, Colin Ward, author of over 30 books, whose ideas and writings remain influential across the world. Born in Wanstead, he left school early and worked as a draughtsman, before turning to writing. His books include The Child in the City, Arcadia for All, Reflected in Water and When We Build Again. He wrote regularly for New Society and The New Statesman. His centenary is celebrated in a collection of essays by 18 admirers, Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchy: Essays on Colin Ward, (Five Leaves Press) whose many insights into Colin's work are the subject of this talk. Ken, a friend of Colin for 40 years, once published a festschrift in honour of him, Richer Futures. ‘Worpole is a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition.’ New Statesman, 2021
Information & booking: No need to book, just turn up. Veggie buffet - bring something if you can. Free - donations towards room hire welcomed. Raffle. Collection of money for Palestinians. Box for unused spectacles for poor countries. Enquiries: roskane@btinternet.com
Venue: NEWS FROM NOWHERE CLUB St John’s Church Hall, next to Aldi, Leytonstone High Road E11 1HH
How We Live and How We Might Live
From communities of interest to communities of care
Date /Time: Thursday, 3 April 2025. Drinks 6.30/ Talk 7pm
In his 1964 essay, ‘Urban Place and the Non-Place Public Realm’, American urban designer Melvin Webber coined a phrase which anticipated the changing nature of social life in the modern world: community without propinquity. This suggested that the communities of the future would be based more on shared interests and identities than physical proximity and face-to-face encounters. Webber predicted this long before the Internet made the creation of online ‘communities’ – whose reach now extends across the globe - even more commanding.
Social media now generates millions of such self-described ‘communities’, none of whose members have ever met in person. In such conditions social change becomes ever more difficult to achieve, for as John Stuart Mill argued in Principles of Political Economy (1848), society needs ‘experiments in living’ – new forms of working and living together - to guard against ‘the weight of Custom bearing down upon human capacity for improvement.’
Ken’s talk, based on his new book, Brightening from the East, explores the post-war history of such experiments in living and working together, now commonly called elective or ‘intentional’ communities, highlighting four remarkable case studies– one environmental, one pacifist, one religious in origin but open to all, and one a newly opened experiment in social care - and discusses what we might learn from them as we face the environmental and social upheavals of tomorrow.
Information & booking: This paying event is organised by Kairos, a central London space exploring radical ideas for social and cultural change in response to the climate and nature crises. Booking is essential at: www.kairos.london/event/how-we-live-and-how-we-might-live-with-ken-worpole/
Venue: Kairos, 84 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4TG