Journey To Nutopia

Journey to Nutopia is back after a two-year hiatus!

A lot’s happened since Richard Norris and Michelle Olley launched Journey to Nutopia back in 2018. Our founding motto - 'refuting the inevitability of global dystopia' isn't getting any easier, but that's all the more reason to look for the places in our doom-flooded news environment where The Work is happening - so we're going back to basics.

The first Journey to Nutopia was a three-day programme of talks, spoken word and acid house music as part of Birmingham’s Lunar Festival in 2018. Authors, activists, artists, academics, psychedelic researchers, poets and acid house DJs came together to boost ‘positive future narratives that refute the inevitability of a global dystopia’. It was pure joy.

We are delighted to kick off our 2025 calendar with the return of some of our original guests from that 2018 line-up. Two of our speakers were Dr Ros Watts and Michelle Baker Jones - who, as part of a series of trials with Prof. David Nutt,  were investigating the value of integrating psilocybin into mental health treatments. Psychological therapist Michelle joins us again to delve deeper into where that research has brought us to in 2025, as part of a panel that also includes PsyAware co-founder Anya Oleksiuk and psychotherapist and Psychedelic CPD Events founder, Greg Donaldson.

Jamie Kelsey is always where it's at. Longtime civil rights and climate activist and founding Nutopian Jamie Kelsey will be talking about his latest initiative One World or None, which combines his work as one of the people behind the scenes in XR/Just Stop Oil/A22 with being the co-founder of the world’s only Global Citizens’ Assembly. To honour our acid house beginnings, our own Richard Norris will be reading a passage from his beats-infused memoir: Strange Things Are Happening (White Rabbit). Plus Chocolate Love Medicine’s Anita Brulee shares her wisdom on the healing properties of Mama Cacao.

Join us for an evening of talks and conversation around new models for democracy, fresh approaches to integrating psychedelic experiences for mental health - and the magic of chocolate…

Michelle Baker Jones
Integrative psychotherapeutic counsellor
Michelle has been a member of Imperial College's Psychedelic Research Group since 2015. She was part of Imperial College’s psychedelic research team's randomised controlled trial (Psilodep 2) comparing psilocybin to escitalopram in the treatment of depression and is now collaborating with Kings Psychedelic trials group. She has recently been working as a lead therapist for Small Pharma’s clinical trials with DMT-assisted therapy for depression. This was originally a collaboration between Small Pharma and Imperial College London. She co-designed the Beckley Academy Foundations to Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy training course. Michelle has contributed to the development of a therapist training programme for the DMT trials, having co-produced a psychedelic therapy framework for working with DMT. 
Michelle offers individual psychedelic integration for people who are struggling to process psychedelic experiences. She co-facilitates the psychedelic integration specialist interest group for The Institute of Psychedelic Therapy, drawing on her experience of facilitating integration groups over the past five years. She is also an advisor for PsyAware and organisation dedicated to harm reduction and psychoeducation.
www.mbjcounselling.co.uk
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/psychedelic-research-centre/about-the-centre-...

Anya Oleksiuk
Co-Founder of PsyAware
Anya Oleksiuk is a documentary filmmaker, event organiser, and educator. She co-founded PsyAware, shaping organisational strategy and support systems with a strong emphasis on ethics and community involvement. PsyAware are a not-for-profit organisation providing essential education and support systems in the psychedelic space. Their goal is to empower individuals and communities to enhance our collective wellbeing through better understanding and responsible psychedelic practices.
From June 2018 to June 2024, she served as co-director of the Psychedelic Society UK, spearheading psychedelic education, harm reduction initiatives, and overseeing strategic planning, administration, and finances. As a safeguarding officer, she played a crucial role in handling reports and establishing safe practice guidelines. Anya has frequently hosted renowned figures like Gabor Maté, Dave Nichols, Amanda Feilding, Camille Barton, Dr Rosalind Watts or Leonard Pickard, curated talks on psychedelic research, therapy, drug policy, and ethics, and organised numerous large-scale events such as the Ayahuasca Symposium (2018) and Psilocybin Symposium (2021) and Drug Policy Symposium (2022).
From 2019 to 2022, she curated the educational programme for Anthropos Festival, and she also serves as a consultant for the Polish Psychedelic Society and an advisor to Global Psychedelic Society.
In her filmmaking, Anya explores themes of psychedelics, mental health, drug advocacy, social justice, and regenerative living. She has collaborated with organisations such as ACER Integration, Beckley Foundation, Small Pharma, King's College Psychedelic Trial Team, The Hemp Trading Company and BDS Movement. Her latest project, The Psychedelic Chronicles, captures the resurgence of the psychedelic movement in the West, highlighting the intersection of indigenous practices, the mental health crisis, and Western capitalism.
https://www.psyaware.org

Greg Donaldson

UKCP psychosynthesis psychotherapist and supervisor  
Greg has a passion for psychosynthesis and working archetypally, helping clients to come into more acceptance of themselves and their relationships. He trained at the Psychosynthesis Trust where he gained his MA in psychosynthesis psychotherapy and went on to teach applied psychosynthesis at the trust from 2021-2024.
Greg has an interest in integrating peak experiences and has worked as a psychedelic guide for the phase 2 trials at Imperial College for patients with treatment resistant depression. He then went on to co-facilitate the first London psychedelic integration group, and tgoing on to co-found the Brighton psychedelics integration group. He also worked at the Synthesis institute throughout 2019/20 offering an online integration space that followed a nature-based programme designed by Rosalind Watts.
In 2023 Greg headed up a team to develop an integration protocol for Hammersmith Medicines Research Centre, where patients were being administered Ibogaine in clinical trials.
Greg has a private practice in Brighton & online and works with clients seeking to prepare & integrate their psychedelic experiences.

www.emergingpurpose.net
https://www.psychedeliccpdevents.com

Jamie Kelsey

Convener of assemblies and veteran of joyful insurrections.
Leading activist in new governance infrastructures. One of three people who founded and ran the world’s first and only global citizens’ assembly in 2020-2021. Now runs ‘one world or none’, the global movement to shift imagination of what’s possible with upgrading our operating systems around how we come together to make decisions.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-kelsey-fry-b113a798/?originalSubdomain=uk

Anita Brulee

Artist, Shaman, Chocolatier, Tantric Masseuse
Working with Cacao for over a decade, Chocolate Sex Witch Anita has cultivated a profound relationship with the plant spirit of ‘Theobroma Cacao’.
Training in Guatemala with Chocolate Shaman Keith Wilson, Anita attended his famous ‘Porch Ceremonies’ and also received direct teachings and transmissions.
Anita’s subsequent relationship with Cacao served to support her through her very darkest hours. Mama Cacao brought Anita back from the point of no return, and without Mama Cacao she would not be here.
Working with the heart and embodiment medicine of Cacao, one of Anita’s working intentions is to continually cultivate the senses as pathways to higher states of conscious awareness. She believes that this is achieved through coming into ‘right relationship’ with the Divine Sacred Tool of one’s body. It is her calling to empower women and men to re-member themselves: by embodying their divine magic, true joy, ancestral gifts, living aligned with their soul purpose and standing in their true sovereignty.
As Space Clearer and Geomancer, Tantric Bodyworker, Makeup Artist and Interior Designer, Anita applies her transformative magic to people, places, land and spaces. Last but not least, Anita is the creator of the most exquisite chocolates which are generally described as “orgasmic”.
www.instagram.com/chocolate_s3x_witch/

Richard Norris

Musician, producer DJ and Journey to Nutopia co-founder
Richard made his first record in the post-punk, DIY era, aged 14. At the dawn of acid house, he co-produced the legendary album Jack The Tab, before forming The Grid with Soft Cell's Dave Ball, whose tracks include the Balearic classic 'Floatation' and the million-selling 'Swamp Thing'. His innovative Beyond The Wizards Sleeve project with Erol Alkan, alongside his hundreds of psychedelic, dub, ambient and electronic mixes and collaborations, are testimony to a lifetime at the forefront of music and the counterculture.
https://richardnorris.bandcamp.com/
https://store.whiterabbitbooks.co.uk/products/strange-things-are-happening

Nutopia was a conceptual country founded by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York on April Fool’s Day 1973. Conceived as a welcoming place beyond borders, flag or national anthem (and a statement about their struggles with securing Lennon’s US citizenship at the time).

Journey to Nutopia Socials:
Bluesky: @journeytonutopia.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/journeytonutopia

Sunday 30 March - 7pm