From August 2 to August 8, 2025 the Institute for Social Ecology is hosting its annual summer intensive course at artfarm in Lexington, KY. Participants will spend a week together studying and learning the core ideas of social ecology and practices for building transformative community movements for climate justice, resilience, and radical democracy. While gathering in person is an important aspect of the summer intensive experience, we know that that is simply not possible for everyone who would like to participate, and so we have assembled the necessary tech to allow participants to join most of the program virtually. Please register on this page if you would like to attend these sessions but can't join us in the flesh!

The program schedule will be made available below as it is finalized. It will begin promptly on the morning of Saturday, August 2, and run until mid-afternoon on Friday, August 8. You are welcome to drop in and out as you are available throughout the week!

The Art of Organizing – Lexington, KY August 2025

We gather in a land of contradictions—where flooded hollers tell stories of extraction and abandonment, where prisons stand where mountains once did, and where the scourge of right-wing fascism has never left. Appalachia has been called many things: an internal colony, a sacrifice zone, “a place for trash." But we know it as a place of radical hope and stubborn resistance. Subterranean labor organizing, militant opposition to bosses and “the feds,” guerrilla-friendly hills and cavernous depths treacherous to those who ain’t from around here; in yonder horizon shines a light, nurturing seeds of insurgent possibility in the Bluegrass and beyond.

Here, in Lexington, on the western edge of central Appalachia, we find ourselves mired in the muck of swamps undrained. ICE storms the streets, surveilling every migratory Flock. Student visas have been revoked and houseless neighbors are criminalized for daring to survive in public. Yet even now, in the shadow of rising authoritarianism, new potentialities take root. A land rematriation project has successfully blocked a federal prison. A local tenants union has won a ban on source of income discrimination so people cannot be denied housing because they pay rent with vouchers or child support. As the State tries to quash the desires of trans youth, women, menstruators, and all who love us, grassroots models for collective care germinate underground. A new commons—artfarm—is rising, where art and organizing intertwine to prefigure the worlds we want to live in and with.

In a time of crisis and reaction, we choose courage and refuse despair. We ask: How do we build power in the wreckage? How do we grow freedom in the cracks of a broken system? What is the art of organizing in a time of collapse and possibility? How do creative practices and community organizing intertwine to cultivate regenerative futures? This year’s summer intensive course will be hosted at artfarm, itself an embodiment of these questions: part artist-run cooperative, part free school, part living experiment in building the future in the present. More than a physical space—with studios, offices, a gallery, a stage, a library, a mutual aid pantry, and a risograph infoshop—it is a movement commons where we practice the relationships and strategies necessary to build and fight for more free, caring, and ecological futures.

Over this week, we’ll explore how cultural work fuels political imagination and how organizing thrives when it embeds creativity. Through collective study, workshops, discussion, and hands-on making, we’ll explore:

Social Ecology—as a politics and philosophy of radical social and ecological transformation that offers today’s organizers the tools to uproot systems of domination in this time of planetary crisis.
Art as organizing; organizing as art—how cultural forms like theater, visual art, and performance can be embodied strategies for rehearsing revolution and prefiguring desirable futures
Appalachia and the Bluegrass: a terrain of struggle—from land defense to labor uprisings to abolitionist organizing, learn this region’s frontline lessons in resisting extraction and seeding alternatives
Prepping for beautiful trouble—together we can supplant disaster capitalism with disaster communalism by weaving art into community defense and mutual aid relief efforts
Autonomous infrastructure—the role of cultural organizing spaces like artfarm in social movement ecosystems

Co-organizing this event is expected, whether you bring wisdom, art, labor, or whatever you can offer. Come ready to think, make, plot, and build—because the most powerful organizing doesn’t just demand a better world, it practices it. Bring your questions, your stories, and your readiness to dig in. The land remembers. The fight continues. The future is ours to create.

Register soon! We hope you can join us from afar.

The following session will be made available virtually:

Saturday, August 2, 1pm-3pm: "What Is Social Ecology?" - with Mason Herson-Horvath

An introduction to the core ideas of social ecology to ground our discussions throughout the week.

Saturday, August 2, 3:30pm-5:30pm: "Solarpunk, Art, and Social Transformation" - with the Solarpunk Surf Club

A primer on social ecological aesthetics in action, with the artist collective Solarpunk Surf Club. This session equips artists and organizers alike to harness art’s transformative potential, then immediately apply these insights to a real-world challenge using the artists’ game, Solarpunk Futures.

Sunday, August 3, 10am-12pm: "Indigenous Resistance to Prisons, Pipelines, & Police" - with Mama Julz, Mar Mendoza and Tiffany Pyette

A panel conversation among three Indigenous activists about their resistance struggles against fossil fuel infrastructure and the police state in Appalachia.

Sunday, August 3, 1pm-3pm: "Dual Power and the State" - with Mason Herson-Horvath

A theoretical overview of the state and why social ecology seeks to abolish it. We will discuss its political alternative in federated direct democracy, and the pathway for its revolutionary overthrow: dual power.

Sunday, August 3, 3:30pm-5:30pm: "Building Power in Place, Part 1: Fundamentals of Organizing" - with Kentucky Tenants and the Institute for Social Ecology

An organizing workshop led by Kentucky Tenants and the Institute for Social Ecology. The focus will be learning and practicing concrete relationship-building tools to connect with neighbors and build community power.

Monday, August 4, 10am-12pm: "Building Decolonial, Decarceral Futures" - with the Appalachian Rekindling Project

An interactive workshop focusing on decolonization and Indigenization; on what needs to be dismantled and what must grow in the aftermath of dismantling. The Appalachian Rekindling Project will share the story of Rematriation and abolition being linked in their work. Participants are invited to collectively imagine restorative futures throughout.

Monday, August 4, 1pm-3pm: "Building Power in Place, Part 2: Embedding in Community" - with Survival Bloc and the Institute for Social Ecology

An organizing workshop led by Survival Bloc and the Institute for Social Ecology, focused on community outreach methods and building an organizing strategy rooted in the particular conditions of our neighborhoods.

Tuesday, August 5, 10am-12pm: "Fight Toxic Prisons: Abolition Campaign Strategy" - with Fight Toxic Prisons

An abolitionist campaign strategy workshop led by Fight Toxic Prisons.

Wednesday, August 6, 10am-12pm: "Food as Medicine, Food as Infrastructure: Plant Relations, Seed Cultures and Solidarity" - with Chris Keeves and Idris Isaiah

1pm-3pm: "Putting Liberated Zone Theory into Practice" - with Geechee Yaw

An overview of the work of Community Movement Builders' work in Atlanta, where they have begun implementing a long-term program of liberated zone construction.

Thursday, August 7, 10am-12pm: "Medicine for Our Times" - with local Lexington herbalists

Thursday, August 7, 1pm-3pm: "Cooperatives and Popular Power" - with Amaha Sellassie and Cherrelle Gardner

A presentation by Amaha Sellassie of Cooperation Dayton on the role of cooperatives in creating a democratic society.

The Art of Organizing: 2025 Summer Intensive Course (Virtual Participation)