In the 1980s, teacher and artist, Marianne Brun, taught numerous classes during her time at the University of Illinois, including one experimental  unit called “Designing a Society”. Its intention was for students to reimagine a new social order, a world created on the basis of our desires - “something wanted with the momentary urgency of a need”.

In 2022, over the course of two days, we explored our ideas around an ideal society, over the course of two days. The workshop aimed to use  the same practices of imagination as the original class, of the 1980s but went further in inviting its participants to think about radical visions for the future and share those through their own unique mediums and disciplines. Asking how such an ideal society would come to pass and what are the tools that such a society would need to exist?

 

A collaboration with the House of Annetta, this project brought together a broad range of artists and practitioners to take part in a new School for Designing a Society over the course of two days in September of 2022. 

The school set out to approach creative practices of world and society making from a place of desire and optimism, whilst building on the original school’s deep roots in the Cybernetics movement of the 1980s. 



Core to this school’s approach was dialogue and interdisciplinary exchange, which enriched the work that was produced by the participants as a result. The work shared was incredibly diverse, touching on topics from language and semiotics, all the way to memory and gender. What made this two-day experiment so successful was the open nature with which participants took part but also their fearlessness in leading with their desires around how they wished for things to be different. 

The school culminated in a presentation evening and a short report which was published as part of the House of Annetta end of year write up in late 2022.