Friday 12th September 2014

3pm - 4.30pm: What are we doing and how are we going to do it?
Plan C Fast Forward Festival Group

Welcome to Fast Forward! We want to use this space to introduce ourselves and why we have organised the festival. We’re happy to answer questions about childcare, food, sleeping spaces and general house rules. We will also present how we want to approach the theme of "Demanding the Future?" and explain, what are the six inquiries into the present? It will be a chance to get orientated, ask questions, raise concerns, tell us we’ve got it all wrong, and so on. We also want to know why people have come, what you want to get out of this, and what we can do - as your comrades and hosts - to help achieve that.

4.30pm: There are also several workshops happening at this time.

7.30pm: Work & Anxiety

Aaron James (Radical mental health blogger); A member of Institute for Precarious Consciousness (author: ‘We are all very anxious’); Anne-Marie O’Reilly (Boycott Workfare); and Sophie Lewis (Plan C Manchester)

We're seeing a potential resurgence of militancy around well-being and mental health amid ATOS-induced suicides and the rise of workfare. The resonance of the six theses in “We are all very anxious”, a text written by the Institute for Precarious Consciousness, platformed by Plan C, seems to have been remarkable and we think it's time for it to feed into discussions on a larger scale. So we're bringing together Boycott Workfare and two people developing anti-work perspectives that are also arguably grounded in demands focused on our minds and our bodies.

In a context where Bill Gates has been predicting the "end of work" while we, meanwhile, keep wishing for it, this plenary will explore: what would a struggle against anxiety look like, and what could it achieve? What kind of attack on work can we envisage, and is this substantially the same thing? What does making demands (or refusing to) mean in relation to anxiety and the psycho-social sphere, and how are the actors that matter here (the state, the NHS, the workplace, our selves, our comrades, families, friends, and peers, our movements) configured? The popular 'Six Theses' text discusses the prevalence of anxiety in today’s society, and proposes that each phase of capitalism has a particular affect (emotion, bodily disposition, way of relating) which holds it together. It is suggested that in contemporary capitalism, the dominant reactive affect is no longer primarily misery, nor boredom, but anxiety.

Saturday 13th September 2014

10.30am - 12.00, noon:  Demanding the Future? Why “demand”

Critisticuffs, Feminist Fightback, Plan C

“Demand the impossible” said the Situationists. “Demand nothing, take everything” said the Anarchists. “Demand moderate reforms” said the Social Democrats. “Demand something everyday but only if you’re never going to get it” said the Trotskyists.

Demands, whether reformist or revolutionary, are part of our social histories. Demands form the basis of mass coming together and shaping what it is we want. From "Stop the War" to "Pay no poll tax!", demands configure the language of social struggles and have been central to how social movements have fought for themselves and fought for change. But the way in which demands have been understood, devised and implemented varies. Transitional, directional, performative or utopian: demands come in different forms and produce different compositional effects on those making them. But do demands mask rather than liberate our aspirations? How do demands open up new lines of strategy to exit the present? Can demands raise class consciousness by exposing the limits or unwillingness of the capitalist order to accommodate them? Who makes demands and of whom? And when the concrete material problems confronting us are as epochal as climate change, how do you level demands against the end of the world?

Three viewpoints on the politics of demands will be presented followed by an open discussion. This plenary helps to frame some of the ideas around demands that can help inform the debates later in the six inquiries to follow.

2.00pm - 4.30pm:   Demanding the Future? Six inquiries into the present.

Plan C presents Six Inquiries into the present:

Territory, Place & Power
Migration & Borders
Income & Work
Reaction & Populism
Social Reproduction
Movement & Organisation

Each inquiry will have a facilitator and invited contributors to help lead off the discussions. We want your ideas and participation to do the rest.

5.00pm: There are also several workshops happening at this time.

7.30pm: In, Against and Beyond Europe: Crisis, Resistance & Exodus

Hamid (...ums Ganze!, Cologne), Ana Mendez (Observatorio Metropolitano, Madrid), Keir Milburn (Plan C) and others.

Puerta del Sol, Syntagma Square, Taksim, Tahrir, Zuccotti Park, Exarchia, Ferguson, St Pauls, Millbank, Tottenham…explosions in the streets, squares occupied, insurgent declarations are proclaimed, digitized and circulated. 2008 was the year the crisis broke, 2011 a sovereign debt crisis, 2013 a respite and stabilisation...or so it was hoped. As we pass midway through 2014 - the eurozone heads into crisis yet again as economies tank and triple dip recessions come knocking at the doors of central banks.

Whilst the threat of military conflict between NATO and Russia heightens, the Europe of peace, post-nationalism and stability is replaced by a Europe of austerity, crisis management, xenophobia and militarisation. From the days of anti-summit protests and much before then, movements had established international contacts and co-ordinations - not only because our struggles are “as global as capital” but also because they gave our movements a capacity to be mobile and able to locate themselves as part of something bigger and wider. Recently, alliances like ..ums Ganze! have participated in the European Blockupy process and helped initiate the Europe-wide Anti-Authoritarian platform against capitalism - Beyond Europe.

This plenary will feature presentations from our invited international speakers on the situation in their locality, their response to crisis, and the spaces of resistance. They will evoke their political imaginaries of a future without social domination, without the limitations of capital and the state that are placed on our existence.

Sunday 14th September 2014

10.30am: What Next? Plenary

A final plenary to announce and bring together the next steps from the inquiries on the Saturday and proposals for continuing discussions further into the afternoon. We would also welcome any feedback on what you thought of the festival and what ideas we can take forward for the next one.

2pm: What Next? Sessions

Open spaces to be filled by proposals/initiatives announced at the What Next? Plenary.

There are also several workshops happening at this time