Part Five
Decolonising The Future
Freeing the future from the grip of colonialism.
Whose imagination are we living in, and how does that feel?
The last few years have highlighted the raw urgency of the struggle to ensure the future is not dominated by white-supremecy. But what do visions of an alternative future look like?
This episode explores how historically, inequalities in the present have been projected into the future, both in terms of how the future has been portrayed, and how it comes to be realised.
We look at the impacts of colonialism in the past, present and future, meeting the people changing this on the ground - from activists, to artists, to sci-fi fans.
Whatever the future holds, it is in our hands. Paying attention to the patterns of our time reveals the importance of embracing and cultivating diversity now, and for the long time.
Special thanks to the contributors to this episode, Alisha B Wormsley, adrienne maree brown, Safiya Noble, Jay Griffiths, Joshua Virasami, Annauk Olin, Lonny Avi Brooks & Ahmed Best
Long Time Practice:
Decolonising Your Imagination with Afro-rithms
This imaginative and interactive meditation exercise gives you a unique opportunity to experience elements of the Afro-rithms from the Future game with its co-creator, Ahmed Best. Feel the right hemisphere of your brain awaken with new ideas as he guides and inspires you to build and create a beautiful, decolonised world of your very own...
Written and read by Ahmed Best, with thanks to Lonny Avi Brooks.
Find out more about Afro-rithms from the Future here.
We’ve designed a set of tools to put the ideas explored in this episode into practice.
SHOW NOTES
Find out more about Alisha B Wormsley’s work here
Find adrienne maree brown’s most recent book, Grievers here, and listen to her Octavia’s Parables podcast here
Get Joshua Virasami’s book, How to Change it: Make a Difference, here and in all good local bookshops.
Find Safiya Noble’s book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism here and in all good local bookshops
Jay Griffiths’s latest book How To Rebel, her book Pip Pip: A Sideways Look At Time and all her other brilliant works are available here and in all good local bookshops
Here more about Annauk Olin’s work here
Listen to Lonny Brooks’ & Ahmed Best’s The Afrofuturist Podcast here and find out more about the Afro-rithms from the Future game here
CREDITS
The series was created and produced by Lina Prestwood and Ella Saltmarshe.
Produced by Ivor Manley and Madeleine Finlay with research by Momoe Ikeda-Chelminska.
Executive producers at Headspace Studios are Ash Jones, Leah Sutherland & Morgan Selzer.
Original artwork by Mavi Morais. Design by Loz Ives & Lewis Kay-Thatcher.
Original music, sound design and mixing by Tristan Cassel-Delavois, Scott Sorenson & Chris Murguia.
East Liberty news report clip courtesy of KDKA-TV CBS Pittsburgh.
The Long Time Academy comes to you from Headspace Studios and The Long Time Project, and is produced by Scenery Studios.
Meet our guests
adrienne maree brown
adrienne is the author of Grievers (the first in her novella series with the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Meditation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is the co-host of the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia’s Parables podcasts.
Safiya Noble
Safiya is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where she serves as the Co-Founder and Director of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2). Her academic research focuses on the design of digital media platforms on the internet and their impact on society. She is the co-editor of two edited volumes: The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture and Class Online and Emotions, Technology & Design. She is the author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, entitled Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
Joshua Virasami
Joshua is an artist, writer, and political organiser, he is a member of climate justice collective Wretched of the Earth and anti-racist organisation Black Lives Matter UK. As an activist and organiser he has been involved in a number of movements and campaigns, including the Occupy movement. In 2020 he released his first book 'How to Change it: Make a Difference', with #Merky Books.
Annauk Olin
Annauk is a graduate student in linguistics in the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative (MITILI), a special master’s program in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy for members of communities whose languages are threatened. She is an enrolled Tribal member of the Native Village of Shishmaref in Alaska, and is developing a curriculum for teaching the Iñupiaq language through MITILI. Olin is raising her two-year-old son to be bilingual in the Iñupiaq language and in English. As the former research director of the climate change research and policy center at the Alaska Institute for Justice, she supported community-based monitoring of severe climate impacts to protect the health and well-being of 15 Alaska Native communities.
Lonny Avi Brooks
Lonny is Professor in the Department of Communication, California State University, piloting the integration of futures thinking into the communication curriculum for the last 18 years. A leading voice of Afrofuturism 2.0, Brooks contributes to journals, conferences & anthologies, is co-executive producer, with Ahmed Best, of The Afrofuturist Podcast; lead editor, “When is Wakanda? Afrofuturism & Dark Speculative Futurity”; lead co-organizer for the Black Speculative Arts Movement; Creative Director, Afrorithm Futures Group/ Brooks envisions social justice futures for Black, Indigenous & Queer liberation with the game Afro-Rithms From The Future.
Ahmed Best
Ahmed is the co-Founder of The Afrorithm Futures Group. He's the host of The Afrofuturism Podcast. He's also the producer and host of Star Wars JEDI TEMPLE CHALLENGE and Executive producer, writer and director of THE NEBULA. He's the Executive producer, writer and director of THIS CANT BE MY LIFE and writer of SHERLOCK AND HOLMES Writer of CAPTAIN E.O. (Disney Animation.) He's also star of the Star Wars prequels as Jar Jar Binks the first CGI lead charcter in a motion picture.
Alisha B. Wormsley
Alisha is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work is about collective memory and the synchronicity of time, specifically through the stories of women of color. Her projects and works have been exhibited widely. Alisha's currently working on: a public park design around community and sustainable water, a temporary installation in Pittsburgh's Market square, and creating a public program to put her text "There Are Black People In the Future" in residence to open up discourse around displacement and gentrification.
Jay Griffiths
Jay is the author of many books including Wild: An Elemental Journey; Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape; Tristimania and Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time. She won the Discover award for the best first-time author in the USA; the inaugural Orion award and the Hay International Fellowship. She has broadcast and written widely, including for Radiohead and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her work has received widespread accolades including from Gary Snyder, Barry Lopez, Don Paterson, John Berger, Philip Pullman, KT Tunstall and Nikolai Fraiture. Her latest book is Why Rebel.