The Peoples' Palace of Possibility (For Utopian Scheming and Rageful Dreaming) 

The nomadic ‘People’s Palace of Possibility – For Utopian Scheming and Rageful Dreaming’ is an outdoor installation co-developed by Dr Malaika Cunningham, a researcher with the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). 

The installation provides a dramatic space for citizens to investigate ‘how we find energy for change – despite our fear and anger about the future’. The project is rooted in utopias, the mystery of utopias which have gone before, become misplaced, or gone wrong. It is also rooted in the impulse for escape, for doing something radically different from life as we have come to know it. 

Cunningham has developed a monthly blog series, ‘Collecting Real Utopias’, inspired by the writings of the sociologist Erik Olin Wright. Wright argued that optimism is necessary for the world to be transformed – people must believe that other worlds are possible in order to change it. They cannot face the oppressive forces of capitalism with an agenda limited to destruction. They also need desirable, viable and achievable alternative visions of society. 

Wright acknowledges the contradiction in his concept of ‘real utopias’ and embraces this tension between ‘dreams and practice’, positing that rather than using utopias as the wholesale re-imagining of society at large, we can seek out and learn from smaller, more specific utopian endeavours that are already out there in the world. 

These projects, according to Wright, represent fissures within consumer capitalism and by understanding, expanding, and supporting them, citizens can collectively oppose and rebuild harmful social structures. In an introductory blog, Cunningham cites the example of the ‘Soul Fire Farm’, an afro-indigenous centred community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system in New York State. 

Contact: Dr Malaika Cunningham, CUSP Research Fellow Website: ‘Collecting Real Utopias’ blog series: https://cusp.ac.uk/themes/a/blog-collecting-real-utopias-no1/ 

Website: Real Utopias with Erik Olin Wright: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8tEfo7rFSQ Keywords: Utopia, ‘energy for change’, Wellbeing economy links: Capitalism, practice, ‘fissures within consumer capitalism’.