The Cross Encounters Symposium is curated as part of the postgraduate research project Radical Spatial Futures conducted by Lara Scharf, supervised by Prof Doina Petrescu and Dr Tanzil Shafique, and funded by the ESRC. By attending the symposium you are automatically taking part in the research processes of the Radical Spatial Futures Project.

The symposium will follow a roundtable discussion format, centred around a series of exhibited materials developed during earlier phases of the project. As an attendee, you will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and to directly write/ sketch on the exhibited material to share your reflections, comments, or ideas. This means that if you participate in the discussion or leave your written reflections on the exhibited material, this might be used as data in this or future research.

Moreover, the symposium will be recorded (video) and photographed. The recordings and photographs will be used for data analysis processes, and dissemination. They might, in their entirety or in excerpts, be published online (on the project website, social media, etc), and may be presented in publications, reports, web pages, and other research outputs. By attending the symposium you automatically agree to be part of these recordings.

If you wish to attend but to not be included in recordings, or you wish for your contributions to not be included in the research, this is of course possible, please contact Lara Scharf on <lascharf1@sheffield.ac.uk>. The established system to ensure different levels of confidentiality, as well as further information on the project, on data management, and more, are outlined in the Participant Information Sheet. 

The symposium primarily aims to facilitate cross encounters and cross pollination between the case studies/ spatial practices that participated in the first phase of the Radical Spatial Futures research project. This first phase, titled Confronting Radical Imagination, consisted of a series of in-depth conversations with spatial practitioners from across the globe. The conversations followed a reflective approach, revisiting the work of the spatial practices through a series of visual material, and confronting them with the notion of radical imagination. What does it mean to them? Is it valuable? Is it an inherent part of design and spatial practice? What is the role of imagination in wider processes of change? The conversations are also published as a conversation series/ podcast and are available here.

The symposium becomes a space to in-practice evaluate the gained knowledge from the previous phase and investigate the importance and meaning of radical imagination across case studies and with everyone around the table. Through a process of preliminary analysis of the conversations and by intertwining the empirical insights with theory, a new framework that operationalises radical imagination across three transtemporal arenas is proposed (see more in next section). This framework is only in an exploratory and in-progress stage and within the symposium it is ‘given back’ to the study’s participants, for them to respond, reflect, and dissect it. This process is part of a series of co-productive loops within the research - where opportunities for scrutiny, feedback, reflection, and collective production of knowledge, are built in the study’s methodological strategy. 

The symposium is therefore formatted in three main sections or chapters, corresponding to each of the three arenas of radical imagination. Within these chapters, the project participants are asked to respond to the provocations of each arena with one image and a short verbal reflection. This is followed by a discussion linking across practices, facilitated by a ‘responder’. The responders are individuals connected to the School of Architecture and Landscape, but also themselves part of a related spatial practice.

Moreover, the symposium has an exhibition element. Visual material produced in the previous phases of the study will be exhibited in the (physical and virtual) room, on walls and on tables, to further facilitate conversations. Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in the conversation, and leave their reflections, feedback, comments, ideas on the exhibited material. This follows a methodological approach of a ‘productive exhibition’ (Kossak, 2012) that acts as a testing ground for the ideas and outputs established through the preliminary analysis of previous phases and is formed as an integrated part of data collection rather than a final dissemination event. the event, rather than extracting information from each participant, relies on everyone's participation in collectively exploring and ‘making sense’ of the importance (or not) of radical imagination within spatial practice.

In essence, the symposium and research generally, are seen as spaces in which encounters which otherwise wouldn’t be are made possible. Within these spaces of encounter the aim is to facilitate dialogues; to generate hypotheses and to then shatter them; to think across localities and within them; to entangle theories and practices; to foster radical imaginations and to understand them by doing that.

Radical imagination is widely understood as essential for addressing the ongoing contestations of sovereignty, pluralism and the prevailing climate emergency that deeply mark contemporary urban contexts. Radical imagination in essence is the ability to recognise that things need to change, but also the ability to re-imagine “the world, life, and social institutions not as they are but as they might otherwise be” (Haiven and Khasnabish, 2014, p. 9) whilst acting prefiguratively within present structures. Without radical imagination, it is impossible to move forward and for any meaningful and bottom-up change to occur; as without it “we are left only with the residual dreams of the powerful” (Haiven and Khasnabish, 2014, p. 10). While extensively discussed in social movement research, its use within the fields of urban studies and spatial practice remains largely conceptual. 

By gathering narratives in which radical imagination is actively convoked through spatial practice in urban contexts worldwide, and by intertwining these empirical insights with theory, a new framework tha operationalises radical imagination is proposed. Throughout the preliminary analysis process, it became clear that the processes of 'imagining' and 'futuring' within spatial practice are not only related with the future, but equally with the present and past. The framework, therefore focuses on operationalising radical imagination across three transtemporal arenas (arenas that cross between the past, present, and future). These arenas will act as a starting point to facilitate a discussion on how radical imagination is convoked, not only in theory, but in (spatial) practice.

The arena of situating involves framing and reframing past and present practices, understanding contestations, identifying systems to disrupt, and acknowledging everyday and counter-narratives as seeds of otherwise futures. The arena of speculating focuses on processes of collectively imagining otherwise futures, on the conditions and methods that ‘allow’ and foster collective imagination in the present, on what those futures look like, and the pathways that become visible by imagining them. The arena of enacting examines the actions taken in the present to move towards these pathways, the pockets of the imagined future that are enacted in the present, and the spaces and collaborations necessary to do that.

The three transtemporal arenas are themselves an encounter between theoretical and empirical knowledges, between theorising and practising, and between pasts, presents and futures. Importantly, they don’t exist in vacuums, and the frontiers between them are not set in stone. Perhaps, the strings and movements between arenas are more important than what they contain.