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. Our weeklong program will begin promptly on the morning of Saturday, August 2, and run until mid-afternoon on Friday, August 8. Reduced-cost weekend tickets are also available for those unable to attend for the full week – much of the core/foundational programming will take place on Saturday and Sunday.

Participants are responsible for arranging their own housing and transportation to the venue. We recommend you camp at the Kentucky Horse Park (limited availability, book ASAP), or reserve a room at a nearby hotel. There are a cluster of hotels near the intersection of Winchester Rd and Elkhorn Rd near I-75, the most affordable of which is the Motel 6 at 2260 Elkhorn Road.

Lexington has a Greyhound station and an airport (LEX), although the airport is fairly small and may be more expensive to fly into than Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky (CVG) or Louisville (SDF), each about eighty minutes away.

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 Student visas have been revoked and houseless neighbors are criminalized for daring to survive in public.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 to see you in August.

Program Schedule (subject to change)

Friday, August 1

Recommended arrival for out-of-town participants. Until 6pm, check-in and set-up help at artfarm. 6pm onward, pool party and cookout!

Saturday, August 2

9am-10:15am: Arrival and check-in

10:30am-12pm: Opening circle

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-3pm: "What Is Social Ecology?" - with the Institute for Social Ecology

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

5:30pm-6:30pm: Dinner

6:30pm-8:30pm: Public panel and performance: How do creative practices and community organizing intertwine to cultivate regenerative futures?

Sunday, August 3

8:30am-10am: Breakfast and morning assembly

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

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-3pm: "Dual Power and the State" - with the Institute for Social Ecology

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

5:30pm-7pm: Dinner

7pm onward: Post-dinner hangout, zine exchange, and Riso demo

Monday, August 4

8:30am-10am: Breakfast and morning assembly

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

12pm-1pm: Lunch

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

3:30pm-5:30pm: "Reproductive Freedom and Art as Defense" - with the breadbox project

5:30pm-7pm: Dinner

7pm onward: Musical performance and dance night, post-dinner hangout

Tuesday, August 5

8:30am-10am: Breakfast and morning assembly

10am-12pm: "Fight Toxic Prisons: Abolition Campaign Strategy" - with Fight Toxic Prisons

12pm-12:30pm: Pack lunches

12:30pm-3:30pm: Afrocentric radical history tour at Ashland plantation (Henry Clay estate)

3:30pm-5:30pm: Art build breakouts

5:30pm-7pm: Dinner

7pm onward: Documentary screening

Wednesday, August 6

8:30am-10am: Breakfast and morning assembly

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

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-3pm: "Putting Liberated Zone Theory into Practice" - with Community Movement Builders

3:30pm-5:30pm: Art build cont. and unconference block

5:30pm-7pm: Dinner

7pm onward: Post-dinner hangout

Thursday, August 7

8:30am-10am: Breakfast and morning assembly

10am-12pm: "Medicine for Our Times" - with local Lexington herbalists

12pm-1pm: Lunch

1pm-3pm: "Cooperatives and Popular Power" - with Cooperation Dayton and Cooperation Jackson

3:30pm-5:30pm: Art Build Breakouts continued

5:30pm-6:30pm: Dinner

6:30pm onward: Open mic, art sharing, and party

Friday, August 8

8:30am-10am: Breakfast

10am-11:30pm: "This Is Not the End: Surviving and Thriving in the Neo-fascist Onslaught" feat. Kali Akuno

11:30am-12:30pm: Lunch

12:30pm-2:30pm: Closing Circle

The Art of Organizing: 2025 Summer Intensive Course

By Institute for Social Ecology

The Art of Organizing: 2025 Summer Intensive Course