An event to explore the future of public ownership, looking at the trends, imagining public ownership in 2030 and beyond, and discussing how we can expand the public realm.
The project aims to bring together a diverse array of progressive groups to look at the future of public ownership, examine the key trends and begin to elaborate a vision for public ownership in 2030 and a strategy for how we can get there. This event will enable us and key partners to think about how our day to day work, spent defending public services and promoting public ownership, ties into a long term vision, capitalising on trends rather than fighting against them. The event will be a chance to explore new trends such as robots, artificial intelligence, big data, additive manufacturing and corporatisation of public spaces, both digital and physical. It will enable us to think about what these trends mean for the nature of our demands in the long term.
This type of space has been demonstrated to be essential to further the cause of movements for social change in the past – both on the right and the left. With a resurgence in left politics this year in the UK, now is the time to move the conversation forward on public ownership and create a shared vision of the future. This will enable us to begin to counter the dominant narrative that public ownership is ‘going back to the 70s’ by presenting it as, on the contrary, the most viable option for the future.