Brain Trust is founded on a number of principles:

• The climate crisis is already here
• The government will not help us.
• We (the urban poor who lack resources to build a sanctuary in New Zealand or a floating island in the ocean) must create the technologies and communities that can survive the coming crisis.
• The technologies that can prevent social collapse already exist. Humanity has the theoretical and practical knowledge of how to grow food, isolate homes, get alternative energy, heal and educate each other in local communities without the involvement of giant conglomerates and international corporations.

It seems to us that the greatest need today is to bring all this knowledge together in one place and train enough people to use it.

This is what the Brain Trust is all about.

The Brain Trust project, which consists of 12 lectures, will be followed by a series of artistic and media initiatives.
We are working on a series of workshops, a script for a TV show (and so far, an illustrated novella), documentary series and other initiatives.
If you’d like to join us, please email us!

The David Graeber Institute’s Brain Trust project is based in Rowley Way, an icon of Western social architecture and realized utopia. Rowley Way, populated for the most part by the urban poor and migrants, is the best place to find an optimistic exit scenario from climatic and political crises.

Here’s a short video about Rowley Way (also known as Alexandra Road Estate) by Joris Lechene: