Structures of Community: Talk with David Roberts with Q&A facilitated by Dr Rebecca Searle.

Co-hosted by Brighton CCA and Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics.

Event Booking: Brighton CCA — Structures of Community

20th April 2023, 6.00 – 8.30pm
Brighton CCA, University of Brighton, 58 – 67 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY

“I am driven by an aspiration to defend welfare state architecture and revive the principles at its foundation.” – David Roberts

David Roberts is an Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture. Alongside teaching and research, he is part of collaborative art practice Fugitive Images and of architecture collectives Involve and BREAK//LINE.

Roberts’ research, art and cultural activist practice engages community groups whose homes and livelihoods are under threat from urban policy, empowers ethical reasoning in built environment practice, and extends architectural education to primary and secondary school children.

For this event, Roberts will discuss his collaborative work with residents of two east London housing estates: for Balfron Tower in Poplar to remain a beacon for social housing; and to trace the demolition of the Haggerston Estate in Hackney.

Roberts works with filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman as part of Fugitive Images, a not-for-profit cultural collective which emerged from grass roots community organising in particular around social and spatial justice and equitable co-existence. They work across media and platforms and in 2015 made the film Estate: A Reverie which reveals and celebrates the extraordinary everyday humanity on the Haggerston Estate and the resilience of residents profoundly overlooked by media representations and wider social responses.

The event will begin with a presentation followed by a facilitated Q&A with University of Brighton’s Dr Rebecca Searle (Principal Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Science) and an opportunity for audience discussion of themes. There will then be an informal bar to continue the conversation.

Image: cite-specific workshops, collaborative workshops held in samuel house and balfron tower. A collaboration as Fugitive Images and with Felicity Davies, Polly Rogers and Katharine Yates. Image credit: Elam Forrester, David Roberts and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.