“Utopia gives us a direction, it orients our compasses. No matter where we are or what we are doing, it gives us a point to look to on a horizon, enabling us to see the different paths available, and to reorient ourselves”
—Steve Duncombe and Steve Lambert, The Art of Activism
The Department of Utopian Arts and Letters (DUAL) is a CSPA project of public dreaming born out of our deepest desires for decolonization, climate justice, and collective liberation.
Taking inspiration from the US Department of Arts and Culture, and traditions of Afrofuturism, Indigenous resurgence, queer worldmaking, and speculative fiction, we operate within, across, and beyond official governmental and academic departments to create educational resources for the kinds of joyful futures we want to work toward. Without investing in naïve hope or magical thinking, we fundamentally understand that to prepare for and survive the unfolding, intersecting crises of the present, we need to expand our imagination beyond the “monocultures of the mind” that limit our creativity and thus our capacity to adapt.
Our faculty of artist-educators have designed courses for self-guided study using widely accessible resources that help us to imagine collective visions of green and just futures, and nurture the imaginative and relational skills to dismantle the systems that stand in our way.
- Courses begin with an orienting video from the faculty member.
- Lessons include: reading, listening and viewing recommendations; prompts for reflection, conversation, and practice; exercises that help us develop different ways of knowing, sensing, and being and relating; and creative activities that inspire experimentation, emergent practice, and social activism.
- Courses are free and available on the CSPA Mighty Networks, specifically in the Department of Utopian Arts & Letters’ space.
Contact Kimberly Skye Richards, librarian for the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, at kim@sustainablepractice.org
