Friends, Supporters and Comrades, we need your help!
The last years since the pandemic have hit us hard: we are currently running at a deficit that poses a significant threat to the safeguarding and preservation of our archive and building on Fleet Street.
A part of our finances comes from a yearly grant, for which we are hugely grateful for. But it by no means covers all our costs. For the rest we rely on donations and small grants. While we have just about been able to sustain our archive as a fantastic resource for movements today, programme a wide selection of events around our collections, and provide meeting spaces all free of cost , it is becoming impossible to do so with inflation and rising energy prices. We are so grateful to all of you that have supported us over the years, however we feel that together we can achieve more!
That is why we are launching our first major funding drive, aptly titled May Day! May Day! The phrase is both a distress call AND a call to action. During this period we want to sign-up 150 new regular subscribers to our Friends Scheme.
To ensure more sustained long-term financial support we recommend setting up a monthly direct debit of at least £5 . Of course, we know that not everyone is in a position to give regularly so any one-off donation of any amount is hugely appreciated too.
We are offering some great donor gifts for the duration of our funding drive, so grab yourselves some; MDR posters, a selection of our in-house publications, a Hackney Flashers Poster and many, many copies of Strike Magazine!
So you can get an idea of the scale of our operation and what we would do with your donation, last year at MDR, we have:
• Programmed 43 MayDay Rooms events;
• Hosted 200 outside events and meetings;
• Grown our collection by over 5000+ items;
• Made 18,000 digitisation of left and social movement document available open access online;
• Welcomed nearly 1000 people to view our physical archive;
• Put on 3 online and public exhibitions;
• Start a youth program to engages young people (16-25) from marginalised communities to explore the archive;
• Launch four big archiving projects; Stuart Christie Memorial Archive, The New Architectural Movement, The Troops Out Movement archive and Indymedia archive on Activist Media Project;
• Hosted over 35 student groups and contributed to teach-out in solidarity with UCU strikes;
• Welcomed 4 new groups into the building collective, whose work covers radical perspective on mental health, trans legal rights, migrant-led LGBTQI+ solidarity;
• Continued old and start new collaborations with: TWT, Stuart Hall Library, Tower Hamlets Archive & Library, 56a Infoshop, Feminist Library, Trademark Belfast, and more;
• We have presented our work internationally in Dublin, Florence, Milan, Athens, Liverpool, Vienna, Berlin and more;
• All with a small part-time team of passionate and committed staff and our wonderful building collective <3
If you aren’t already, follow us on Instagram and Twitter for highlights from our archive and free events: @maydayrooms
All our thanks and solidarity,
MayDay Rooms