Hope Reading Group.

Seventh x Collingwood House presents: a Hope Reading Group.

This reading group was facilitated by Isabella Hone-Saunders and took place across four Sundays from 11-1pm in October-November in Collingwood.

Hope is the core concept of Isabella's PhD research, which proposes hope as a generative and disciplined curatorial methodology.

The group will explore the concept of hope as a type of recommitment that reorients despair and has the potential to cultivate new forms of solidarity.

Week 1: Introduction: Defining Hope. Sunday, October 19.

Week 2: Resonance; Hope as Methodology and the Pedagogy of Hope.

Guest: Lucreccia Quintanilla - Sunday, October 26.

Week 3: Otherwise; Problems of Hope and Reading Group as Hopeful Format.

Guest: Audrey Pfister - Sunday, November 2.

Week 4: Scaffolding; Activism and Imaginaries of Hope.

Guest: Archie Barry - Sunday, November 9.

This reading group was free to attend and was capped at 10 people to allow for depth of discussion. All readings were sent to registered participants, but no homework was necessary; we aimed to read a chapter together each session before breaking out into conversation.

If you are interested in accessing a copy of the reader, please email me belibomb@hotmail.com and I would be happy to share the resource.

Together we looked at the written work of key thinkers such as; Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Lauren Berlant, Adrienne Rich, Brian Massumi, José Esteban Muñoz, Mary Zournazi and Chelsea Watego.

Tea, coffee and refreshments provided.

For this iteration of the Hope Reading Group due to the small number of participants, participants were selected based on their ability to attend all four sessions and on the content of their motivation statement.

Participants were asked to send a 1-3 sentence motivation statement which was assessed by Isabella and Seventh Gallery. 

(Example motivation statements: describe your current relationship to hope, why this interests, troubles, or energises you, what you might like to get out of this group).

This project was supported by Seventh Gallery and was hosted at Collingwood House.