Mobile Utopia 1851-2051 is a research co-creation project that seeks to develop a deeper understanding of mobile utopias (and dystopias), and to creatively analyse and explore these. Critically, ‘mobile utopias’ are not transport utopias. Communicative, imaginative, embodied and disembodied, utopian and dystopian mobilities of information, people, goods, ideas as well as practices of immobilising, obstructions, borders, stasis, slowness intersect in the making of pasts, presents, futures.
The project is developed through collaboration with different communities in Lancaster and Birmingham. It will take part in celebrations around the 500th Anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. The interdisciplinary group of researchers led by Nick Dunn, Professor of Urban Design, includes Monika Büscher, Lynne Pearce, Nicola Spurling, and Carlos López Galviz. We will carry out a range of activities, including two workshops and a final exhibition.