Futures in Motion: May Roundup

Who is a creative you are inspired by in 2026? 
I’m incredibly inspired by the Filton 24, who took action to disarm Israeli weapons being built in the Elbit arms factory in Bristol. Elbit is one of the key suppliers to the Israeli Occupying Force (IOF), and they make the majority of the drones that are used by Israel to mete out massacre and genocide on the Palestinian people. Some of the drones built by Elbit are designed to imitate the sound of injured people in distress, in order to lure more people into trying to come to their aid, so that the drones can then attack them.

Six people (now part of the Filton 24) used a modified prison van to breach the perimeter fence of the Elbit factory, and once inside, they disarmed a number of weapons and drones, causing over £2m of damage. The activists were arrested by armed counter-terror police, and a further four people were also detained without charge and interrogated. A few months later, eight more people were remanded in custody, and half a year later six more people were remanded in custody in relation to the action; many of the Filton 24 spent more than eighteen months in prison without trial.

These sweeping arrests by counter-terror police were carried out under ‘Operation Recomply’. The naming of this operation is wishful thinking on the part of the government: the Filton 24 are an unequivocally bold and unwavering example of radical noncompliance in the face of genocide which is sanctioned and supported by the UK government, including through the provision of weapons, training, surveillance assistance and ‘intelligence’ from spy flights that enable Israeli military operations.

What is one of your favourite places to recommend to people in your city? 

Some of my favourite bookshops in London are: The Common Press (a queer bookshop at the top of Brick Lane in East London), Gay’s the Word (the UK’s oldest LGBTQ+ bookshop, in Bloomsbury), Housmans Bookshop (a radical bookshop near King’s Cross), and New Beacon Books (an historic Black bookshop and publishing house in Finsbury Park). There are also lots of brilliant archives in London that hold records on radical histories and organising groups: the Mayday Rooms, the Bishopsgate Institute, the Black Cultural Archives and the George Padmore Institute are just some of these.

What is an Internet hot take/discourse you loved recently?

I’m (just about) not chronically online enough to catch the threads of hot internet gossip, but I listen to podcasts like the Life of the Party and Over the Top Under the Radar, which both give really clear and useful progressive left analysis of political currents in the UK and its slither to the far-right.

What is your perfect way to spend a Saturday?

I would begin at Abney Books (a great second-hand bookshop in Stoke Newington), pick up a paperback and then take a walk through Abney Park cemetery. One notable resident (?) of the cemetery is Joanna Vassa, the daughter of anti-slavery campaigner and writer Olaudah Equiano, who lived out her final years in Hackney. I used to live over the road from Abney Cemetery and I’ve walked its overgrown trails in all seasons; through dappled sun in summer and through magical carpets of snow in winter.

So much of our connection, relationships and relationship building happens over food. If you’re having a group of people over, what are you cooking?

I would usually cook ackee (the vegetarian half of Jamaica’s national dish), and rice and peas; this is a celebration dish for my family. The sweet, earthy smell of thyme and coconut fills the house as the rice cooks–a truly grounding and centring vapour. I usually head down to Ridley Road market to buy a can of ackee; at the moment the market is facing police harassment and attempts to kick traders out of this historic space, so the ongoing occupation and fightback is incredibly important for sustaining the livelihoods of traders that work and socialise there, and protecting this vital community asset.

Unfortunately, ackee is scarce and very expensive at the moment. Jamaica was hit by Hurricane Melissa at the end of last year, destroying trees that were growing mango, banana, breadfruit and ackee among others. This disaster has had a huge impact both on exports, but more importantly on food production for local consumption, where as Dora Taylor explained last month in Vittles, prices for produce are skyrocketing and reliance on imported food has shot up. This dynamic has its roots in colonial exploitation and extraction; the other half of Jamaica’s national dish is saltfish, brought to the island from Northern Europe and Eastern Canada as a cheap and non-perishable protein used to (just about) maintain a population of enslaved African people.

Could you give a recommendation of something you love to do offline?

I find walking among trees incredibly calming – I love strolling in Epping Forest, which is a short Overground or bike ride from where I live. The forest is over 10,000 years old, which is a slightly overwhelming thought to meditate on, but there is something reassuring about wandering through a space that has persisted over so much time. 

The forest has also been a contested space throughout history. For centuries it was visited by people who lived in the surrounding areas who came to the forest to collect wood and water, and to forage for fruits and nuts, until it was commandeered by the monarchy as a hunting ground, pushing local people out of a space that was essential for their survival. The 13th Century ‘Charter of the Forest’ gave access to forests back to the general public, but protected the monarchy’s sole right to hunt in them. The forest was then designated part of Henry VIII’s hunting ground (along with thousands of acres of other green spaces and parks across London), and in the 17th Century trees were felled for ship-building, so that the British government and its corporate partners could traverse the seas, colonising and enslaving people and enlarging its empire.

After many centuries of extraction, enclosure, expropriation as well as resistance to those forces, what remains in the forest are over 25,000 ancient hornbeam trees. Hornbeams live for hundreds of years, and their leaves have a beautiful amazing pleated texture, like someone has taken an iron to their creases. It’s a wonderful place to meander, listen to birdsong, and dream.

What makes you most inspired or excited about the future?

I find hope for the future in organising groups like Trans Kids Deserve Better (TKDB) who are demonstrating and fighting for equal access to gender-affirming healthcare; for basic respect, and to be representatives of the issues that affect trans kids rather than being spoken for or ignored.

TKDB take direct action to consistently lob spanners into the churning cogs of state-sanctioned transphobia through scaling and occupying buildings, holding die-ins and read-ins, and dropping paper coffins outside the office of Health Secretary Wes Streeting who has spearheaded the dangerous ban on puberty blockers. TKDB pose a thoughtful and critical intervention in a context where trans kids’ lives are being used as bargaining chips by members of the political and media elite who are seeking to gain power and court right-wing and reactionary electorates by any means necessary.

 If you could live in any world from a book, film, series, or album - what would it be?

I read and watch a lot of stories set in the past, and the past is not a place I often dream of visiting in its totality–although fragments from history often provide important questions and ideas. However, in terms of thinking about world-building and community-building, I often think about the book Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis. The story plays out across 30 years in Uruguay, beginning during the 1970s dictatorship, and unfolding through the lives of five queer women who form a radical commune by the sea as a respite and salve from the violence and oppression they are facing at home. It isn’t a perfect story about harmony and communal living, but when I read the passages describing moments of togetherness and mutual support that the women engineer, it feels like these scenes enlarge the cavities in my heart with both hope and sea air.