Radical Imaginings Revisited: Creative Writing & Visioning with Ama Josephine Budge

Join Good Ancestor Movement for a creative workshop with speculative writer and artist Ama Josephine Budge.

A year on from Good Ancestor Movement’s Radical Imaginings conference, we'd love to invite you to join us in reconnecting with the imagination as a vital tool for informing our collective work. We’re incredibly excited to be joined by speculative writer and artist Ama Josephine Budge to journey into speculative futures through visioning and creative writing. 

To overcome the multiple intersecting crises we face and build something better, we must be able to envision the futures we’re working towards. What are we dreaming of, and who gets to be the “we” doing  the dreaming? What does the world look like in 50, 100 or 300 years if our liberatory movements succeed? What might it look like if we don’t? What messages do our future ancestors have for us? And us for them in turn? 

In our shared work on wealth stewardship and redistribution, we must listen to the voices of both the past and the future. What will the money that we’re moving build in the long-term? What does a world without wealth inequality look like? What does repair look like? What does money mean to us in the future, if anything? 

These speculative visions are not abstract: they can guide us, support us to step out of fear and into purpose, and inspire us to be bold. Reading and writing speculative fiction can be a powerful tool for bringing alternative futures to life. 

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Dr. Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone is a British-Ghanaian speculative writer, artist, scholar and pleasure activist. Her praxis navigates that which she has termed “Intimate Ecologies” to explore Blackness, erotics and the more-than-human in queer and speculative ways toward interspecies futures. Her sculptural, video, performance and installation work has been commissioned and installed internationally including in London, Berlin, Utrecht, Madrid and New York. Ama is a Course Tutor & Lecturer at University of the Arts London, an MFA tutor at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and a Research Associate at VIAD (University of Johannesburg). Her PhD project: Intimate Ecologies: Queer Speculations on Pleasure Blackness and Decolonial Aesthetics was awarded in 2025 without corrections.

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This will be an interactive workshop featuring visioning and creative writing exercises. No previous writing experience is needed and there is no expectation to share your writing unless you want to, although participation in the conversations will be strongly encouraged.

The session will be 2 hours long with a 10 minute break. Please share any specific access needs on the registration form. 

Ama has recommended two short stories for optional pre-reading - we really recommend them! 

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. Read here.

The Ones Who Stay and Fight by N. K Jemisin. Read and listen here.

Please contact nicki.carter@goodancestormovement.com with any questions.

We really hope you can join us!