Abolitionist Futures Digest: May 26
Resources: Latest blogs from Abolitionist Futures
Living Beyond Carceral Logics in Cymru Part One - Abolitionist Principles
by Emma Gant, Holly Mogford and John Moore
'We live in the devastating grip of carceral logics which operate globally to preserve racialised capitalism. Despite encompassing a sense of uncertainty, what remains clear is the necessity of imagining, and building ways of living beyond carceral logics.'
Community Music in Contested Spaces: Towards Abolition
by Erika Severyn
'I first encountered the community arts movement in Britain as a political movement, one that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s out of artists’ conviction that everyone should have access to meaningful participation in culture, and from a belief in the ideal of cultural democracy. The movement was, of course, never singular or unified – it was an assemblage of diverse practices, ideas, and people, and the history of community arts in the UK is therefore a complicated, non-linear, and sometimes contradictory one.'
The International Criminal Court should be abolished
by Charlotte Carney
'The International Criminal Court (ICC or ‘the Court’) is an international court that tries and imprisons individuals charged with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.'
EVENT:
Connecting Abolition(s): 2-day workshop at Aston University
12 and 13 May 2026
The workshop centres abolition as transformative practice in our daily lives within and outside of academia, drawing on longstanding histories and forms of resistance. To us, the term “abolition” encompasses struggles against genocide, borders, prisons, the police, racial capitalism and the intersecting systems of oppression that structure life and administer death. But abolition is also making (physical) space for people to build, care, rest, and “make according to how they wish to live” (Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Abolition Geography).
EVENT:
Change Everything: 'World Building' in Science Fiction & Abolitionist Practices
Join us on Wednesday 27th May for a Pasts and Futures Imagined research cluster seminar, with Phil Crockett Thomas:
All welcome, 2.30-3.30pm Newcastle Armstrong Building 2.49 No booking needed
EVENT:
Book Launch: Revolutionary Forgiveness
Housmans
D. K. Renton in conversation with Barnaby Raine
Friday May 8 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Call for participants
Theatre workshop with Onyeka Igwe and Klara Kofen
Theatre workshop investigating resistance, liberation and repair - 17th May 2026
11 - 16.30 Hackney Showroom
Call for participants
email: work@onyikeigwe.com
EVENT:
Abolitionism and Contemporary Literary Studies
Date: Friday 29th May, 10.30-5.30pm
Location: Alumni Room, House 10, Cavendish Road, University of Leeds School of English
All welcome to a one-day symposium at the University of Leeds bringing contemporary abolitionist struggle and creative practice into dialogue with research in Literary Studies.
Questions we’ll be asking include: how can fiction and performance work to expand the political horizon? What insights can abolitionist scholarship in Sociology and Theatre Studies offer Literary Studies? How can abolitionist perspectives contribute to existing postcolonial, queer, Marxist and feminist approaches in Literary Studies?
The symposium will have three panels:
Abolition and cultural production: an interdisciplinary dialogue from sci-fi to theatre
Family abolitionism and literary studies
Border abolitionism: postcolonial, comparative and global perspectives
Panellists: ally walsh, Phil Crocket Thomas, Sophie Marie Niang, Gracie Mae Bradley, Sita Balani, Alva Gotby, Daniel O'Gorman, Martina Tazzioli, Luke Williams and Shalini Sengupta.
Register for free here: https://abolitionBACLS.eventbrite.co.uk (registering helps us plan refreshments and lunch)
Travel Bursaries: if you are PGR or precariously employed academic, you can apply for a travel bursary up to £50. Please send a short application (250 words) to g.lazzari@surrey.ac.uk.
This event is supported by the Critical Life research group at the University of Leeds School of English and the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS).
If you have any additional access needs, let Yara know rwjp8104@leeds.ac.uk.
(The room is on the first floor, with wheelchair access via a lift and an entrance at the back of the building. Get in touch for more access information.)
EVENT
Coming up: Migrant Justice and the Far Right Summit 2026
13-14 JUNE. Venue Central London (TBC)
A two‑day gathering for everyone building power against the far-right
'Fascism is here, but so is the resistance.
Join us for two days building collective power to combat the rise of the far-right in our communities. We will be uniting minds from across migrant and racial justice movements, as well as community defence networks and organisers from across the housing, trade union and climate movements to build unified strategy and collective action to stop hatred in its tracks'.
Register on eventbrite
Resource:
Collective Punishment Campaign
In response to the request from an AF supporter, there is a group called ‘Collective punishment campaign’ which supports children of parents who have been incarcerated.
Course:
Capitalism and Fascism
Left Book Club
This course looks at fascism as a mode of capitalism, and asks what it looks like in our own moment: the rise of far-right parties and street movements across borders, the cruelty of harsh border regimes and austerity, and the online worlds where young people are drawn in through memes, masculinity and culture wars. Drawing on thinkers from Clara Zetkin to Aimé Césaire, it asks what fascism feels like today — and how we might build an antifascism of the everyday, rooted not just in reacting to the far right but in the daily work of building freer lives together.
Resource:
"Keeping Us Safe: Rethinking policing, harm and justice"
A new report by the Runnymede Trust.
'Keeping Us Safe reckons with the origins, development and maintenance of infrastructures of harm that are disguised as infrastructures of help. Often we turn to institutions like the police - despite decades of evidence of racism, discrimination and failing of the public - because we have been conditioned, both materially and culturally, to see policing as the only inevitable response to harm.'
News
Recently, Texas executed James Broadnax
James was a poet, an artist, and a person whose creative work reflected resilience, vulnerability, and hope. His death is a profound tragedy.
During his trial, prosecutors used James's poetry and rap lyrics as evidence to justify the use of the death penalty. As many mark Fall of Freedom Day, we are reminded how artists of color have their artistic expression criminalized in the U.S. This practice threatens fundamental principles of artistic freedom and pluralistic democracy
We mourn James, honor his life and work, and stand with all those fighting for justice.
Artists at Risk Connection remains committed to defending artistic freedom and ensuring that no artist's words are ever used to justify their punishment.
find out more and support Artists at Risk
Pre-order Lamble's book Unsafe
Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash - Pre-order via The Common Press and Haymarket will donate a book to a prisoner.
Reminder:
Abolitionist Futures Online Reading Group
For those who missed the announcement in the earlier bulletin the reading group is back starting on the 5th May. Registration still open for subsquent sessions