Playground for Remaking Worlds: A carnival celebrating the life, work and ideas of David Graeber

About the Open Call

An event by the LEAP Lab. If you are someone who dreams of imagining and remaking worlds differently, join us for a day of workshops, a re-imagined fashion show procession and street level celebration in memory of the life, work and ideas of anthropologist and Radical Optimist David Graeber (1961-2020). On the 5th anniversary of his passing, the David Graeber Institute and LEAP Lab (University of Cambridge) are organising a day of celebration and workshops to bring David’s ideas to more people and to promote the spirit of imagination, playfulness and collective power of communities that were so close to him. We are currently inviting contributors for three main aspects of the event: street performances, participatory workshops, and the fashion show procession. We particularly invite contributors to think about different approaches to futuring in their contributions. This includes sci-fi, a topic that was always close to Graeber’s heart and features in some of his works, as well as other related genres of speculative futures. The event will take place at the iconic Rowley Way Estate near South Hampstead. Street performers: We’re seeking Earth-rooted, speculative performers whose work aligns with Graeber’s themes: freedom, community, imagination, absurdity, and rebellion. Support is available for those who need help with covering the costs of travel and transporting materials. Calling musicians, storytellers, artists, speculative folklorists, and movement practitioners who channel the spirit of alternative futures. Think: Climate prophets with analogue synths, Bureaucrats of the absurd in lo-fi jumpsuits, Anarchist puppet theatre for post-capitalist kids, Dancers of degrowth dreams, DIY rituals from parallel Earths. Participatory workshops: Workshops can take any format — making, moving, building, unlearning — and may take place indoors or out. They should engage participants in some form of collective imagination or world-remaking. Some speculative themes inspired by Graeber’s writings include: Reimagining value systems, Bureaucratic absurdity and joyful disobedience, Meaningful (vs. bullshit) work, Mutual aid and everyday communism, Debt, reciprocity and radical freedom, Utopias-in-the-now, Art as a tool of planetary repair. Workshops could involve map-making of vanished futures, rituals from climate-ravaged near-Earths, costume building, speculative currency design, or archive excavations from invented pasts. Fashion show procession: ‘Costumes from possible futures’: This is not a catwalk — it’s a living world in motion. We’re inviting models, artists, thinkers, and shapeshifters to co-create and wear speculative outfits that speak to other timelines. You could come as: A Debt Abolitionist in Sequins, The Librarian of Lost Commons, A Solar Scribe from a Degrowth Commune, The Joyful Administrator of Post-Collapse Rituals, Yourself, midway through metamorphosis. Outfits can be symbolic, outrageous, handmade, minimal, found, collaborative, or dreamed up on the day. Think of costume not as spectacle, but as walking philosophy, a statement of “what else might be”.

What is Offered

Support is available for those who need help with covering the costs of travel and transporting materials.

Requirements

Applicants should be Earth-rooted, speculative performers, musicians, storytellers, artists, speculative folklorists, movement practitioners, models, thinkers, and shapeshifters whose work aligns with Graeber’s themes: freedom, community, imagination, absurdity, and rebellion. Workshops should engage participants in some form of collective imagination or world-remaking. Fashion show participants are invited to co-create and wear speculative outfits that speak to other timelines.

How to Apply

For street performers, email ideas to leaplab@crassh.cam.ac.uk by 18 August 2025. For participatory workshops, submit your idea by 18 August using the form available at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2UU-ifuj62jCy5uBGn__Uk25VRgaO3I1nvt1gQHyIvBHadQ/viewform. For the fashion show procession, express interest by 10 September using the form available at https://forms.gle/jqJbvEPkitgF3wdg6