Newspeak House

Newspeak House is an independent residential college founded in 2015 to study, nurture and inspire emerging communities of practice across civil society and the public sector in the UK. find out more

News

We have survived the pandemic. It’s amazing to see you all again. However, we are not out of the woods yet. The last few years have been disastrous for independent spaces. Many have closed their doors forever, and times are still tough. If there was ever a time to become a member, it is now. The pandemic has wiped out our reserves, restricting our core activities and putting us at risk of closing. If you want to make sure your community can continue to benefit from the facilities at Newspeak House, please consider joining as a member.

There has been a lot of chaos. Please bear with us while we find our feet again. We might be a bit slow at replying to emails. Our event programme may be a little sparse, while communities that have been dormant wake themselves up. In the meantime, we have been making ambitious plans:

Future Plans

To increase our resilience as an institution and grow our impact, we are planning to open additional campuses under the umbrella brand of “The London College of Political Technology”. They will form a federated network of spaces, each hosting their own residential programme and sharing a common curriculum. Nothing is certain in a pandemic, but if all goes well, we intend to launch our first new campus in 2024.

As part of this initiative, we are delighted to welcome two new members of our faculty, both leading experts on founding experimental spaces:

Dr Zarinah Agnew

[email protected] • zarinahagnew.com • @zarinahagnew

Zarinah is a neuroscientist by training. After spending over a decade in academia, they left to study the science of groups of brains - that is, humans in collectivity.

Alongside their work with the college, Zarinah runs three nonprofits aimed at experimental aspects of society, collective transformation and para-institutions. The Social Science Observatory is dedicated to the study of social science in the wild, Alternative Justices works towards abolitionist community-based harm prevention and response, and District Commons engineers experimental spaces where humans can ‘be otherwise’. Together, these strands allow both the prefiguration of new social configurations, as well as the study of their transformational potential.

Stephanie Sherman

[email protected] • stephaniesherman.info • @detectiveyes

Stephanie is a design director, strategist, writer, and producer working across urbanism, technology, and culture.

She is director of the MA Narrative Environments program at Central Saint Martin’s, collaborates with The UC San Diego Center for Design and Geopolitics and Design Lab Automation Team, and the future of work thinktank Autonomy

She is co-founder of Elsewhere and Common Field , and has taught at Strelka Institute Moscow, Neon Foundation Athens, Sandberg Institute Amsterdam, Cambridge University, Bauhaus University Weimar, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Institut Hyperwerk Switzerland, and CCA San Francisco.

Re-Opening Party on 9th July!

Newspeak House’s residents are inviting all members and fellows to come back to reconnect with the community, discuss the future of Newspeak House, and engage in the interesting conversations we all come here for.

Retrospective

As we emerge from the pandemic, Newspeak House is looking to the future and how it can survive and thrive for many more years to come. A part of this is seeking constructive criticism from the communities it serves.

We understand that it can feel hard to give direct feedback, even anonymously, but we really hope that you will, as we genuinely wish to learn and improve, as well as adapt to a world that has changed significantly. We will do our best to take heed from any criticisms, wishes and visions that are shared with us.

Give us your feedback

2022 Residential Programme: Apply Now!

We are seeking candidates for the next cohort of our residential programme, starting in October. Please share this with your communities and encourage others to apply. Expressions of interest are now open, and applying is quick and easy. The deadline is end of July.

The course is designed to support mid-career technologists gain a deep understanding of the landscape of political, civic, non-profit and public sector organisations in the UK, in order to found groundbreaking new projects or seek strategic positions in key institutions. find out more

Scholarships

Students are now faced with higher living costs than ever before, and our bursary fund was obliterated by the pandemic. This prevents deserving candidates from applying to the course, or being able to focus on their studies. We’re absolutely awed that some community members have generously stepped forwards to offer scholarships, the first we’ve ever had.

Newspeak House is still a young, scrappy institution, and it’s a great honour for our work to be recognised in this way. We know that these scholarships will be life-changing to the recipients, and that they will go on to have great impact in their future work. Read on to find out who pledged these scholarships, and also for information on how you can join them. find out more

Events

As part of our research we offer our spaces for civic communities of practice to convene. Since opening in 2015 we have hosted over a thousand events, including lectures, meetups, hackathons, conferences, unconferences, workshops, roundtables, screenings, fundraisers, launches, and exhibitions.

To keep up with the event programme you can subscribe to our event calendar. If you’d like to host an event in our space, you can hire it outright, or if you’re convening a civic community of practice do get in touch ([email protected]) to see if it could fit into our programme.

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