Social Movement Appreciation Project
In our rapidly destabilising world, it's clear that nothing will get better without large numbers of people working together. But social movements remain mysterious and under-studied creatures: the Social Movement Appreciation Project aims to shine a warm and loving light on today's many efforts at collective agency and system transformation.
Social Movement Appreciation Project
Care and critique in Kollapscamp
Kollapscamp may well turn out to be a significant moment in movement history, with the climate scene evolving into new forms to meet the new realities of ‘long emergency’. At the same time – and very much relatedly – the camp was a physical and social space with real people bringing varied and sometimes rivalrous motivations, identities and needs.
As the camp packed up, I caught up with Scully to discuss both parts of that work. Internal tension is pretty much a certainty in any gathering of this scale and ambition, but it’s rare to find such a lucid example of those tensions being raised and processed – and even rarer to debrief it all with one of the core organisers! If you want an understanding of what holding a serious movement space looks like in 2025, and/or a snapshot of the complicated collapse-politics constituency, stay tuned.
Editor’s note: we talk a bit about Tadzio Mueller, one of the Camp’s foremost organisers alongside Scully, and a pre-eminent voice communicator on collapse politics. He’s been a significant social movement presence in Germany since the early noughties, involved in alter-globalisation activism, LGBT struggles, and the climate movement – notably helping to set up Ende Gelande.
To get a direct sense of his inimitable style , check out his collapse pitch here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XODlnqPvpv8
How we’re feeling at the end of camp
What the camp’s aims were and if it met them
Minor tensions in the camp
The critique session
The contested place of Tadzio Mueller
Accessibility questions
How racial diversity can come down to money
How racial diversity can have deeper roots
Comparing Just Collapse to Deep Adaptation
The wider marketplace of collapse politics projects
The importance of cultures of care in collapse
Some further reflections on the camp from its organising team:
https://steady.page/en/friedlichesabotage/posts/7323dbfe-5ce4-421f-b9f1-3a7922201ef7
End music: people at Les Résistantes singing Le Pieu, a Basque song of collective resistance
https://www.lesglottesrebelles.com/le-pieu/
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