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Programme

 We run a public programme including archival projects, publications, film screenings, “scan-a-thons” for digitising archival material, workshops, talks and discussion, reading groups, and social nights, all of which encourage active and collective engagement with history of social movements.

Publications

For Peace!

UNCHARTED: Histories of Migrant Health and (In) Access in the 1970s

AGITPROP NOTES

Camera Forward!

The Antihistory Tabloid

Squatting Is Part of The Housing Movement

Pandemic Notes Workbook

Little Red Blue Book

Upcoming & Recent Events

More
October 3 @ 3:00 pm

Workers’ Theatre Workshop: Laughter in the Midst of Fire

“Laughter, cheerfulness in the midst of fire and blood! Does it seem immoral to you? Think about tomorrow, and you will understand!” Matej Bor, 1943 The revolutionary theatre movements of […]

October 4 @ 3:00 pm

Infrastructures of Community Self-Defence: Bender Defenders

From demos and protests, to anti-immigration raids, eviction prevention, to navigating nightlife and workplaces, self- and community defence have been important techniques for the empowerment of communities facing daily violences […]

October 8 @ 6:00 pm

FREE TRIALS #2: MayDay Rooms radical poetry archiving and readings

FREE TRIALS #2 is the second in a new monthly series of events engaging with the MayDay Rooms radical poetry archival collection. Each event will begin with us collectively pulling […]

October 10 @ 6:30 pm

Book Launch: Take Over The City w/ Neil Gray

​Join us for a book launch and discussion on contemporary urban politics with Neil Gray, author of the newly released Take Over The City: Spatial Composition in Italian Autonomy! Hosted […]

October 16 @ 6:00 pm

MDR x Crab Museum: TREES ARE GOOD: archives of environmental direct action and eco-defence

Join MayDay Rooms at the Crab Museum in Margate for the opening of a collection of materials from our environmental direct action archives. Trees are Good frames tactics of tree […]

MayDay Rooms Projects

All Projects

Eco-Action: Global Ecology not Global Economy

MayDay Rooms holds one of the largest and most significant archival collections of Britain’s ecological movement. Eco-Action: Global Ecology not Global Economy is a two year project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, established to preserve, digitise and activate this material. The project will catalogue the collection; build an open-access online repository of the material under a Creative Commons license; conduct in-depth research into the collection; create guides and mapping connections between our collection and other archives; and incorporate oral histories and community-sourced content into an online resource. As part of the project, we are running a year-long youth engagement programme centred on histories of the ecological movement, research techniques and archival and digitisation methods.

The project will culminate in a multi-sited exhibition and published research which will situate ecological direct-action within the movement from the 1960s to present.

Archiving from Below

Since its inception, MayDay Rooms has been built on the principle of archiving from below, challenging the conventional institutional methods of gathering, shaping, and disseminating the history of struggles.

After over a decade of archiving, we are launching a reading and discussion group to address the practices of archiving from below and strategies of activating the histories of resistance. 

The group is open to archivists, researchers, historians involved in both past and present organising, and anyone interested in radical archives. Our aim is to share our own approach, learn from each other, and collaboratively develop counter-archival practices that extend beyond mere critique.

For Peace!

Britain is currently entering a new cycle of rearmament, expanding the reach of its nuclear capability, increasing military spending for NATO, and continuing to support Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Those opposing this escalation have been met with increasing repression, through the use of counter-terror legislation, draconian sentencing of protesters and the proscription of groups engaged in direct action.

In this context, this project revisit the peace movement’s material history, trying to better understand the diversity of tactics and intersecting movements which have shaped it. We hope that this projects acts as a resource and inspiration for those struggling for a demilitarised world today. For Peace! interweaves historical strands from the workers’ movement, Women’s Liberation, anti-colonial, socialist, and anarchist movements to address questions of non-violence, class, international solidarity, and the role of liberation struggles. There were four different component parts: a digital multimedia collection which is part of the Activist Media Project, two exhibitions at Glasgow Women’s Library and Four Corners Gallery, an online version of the exhibition and a publication.

Uncovering the Archive

The programme offers a free series of workshops & screenings with an aim to engage young people (18-25) from marginalised backgrounds and/or those who have not engaged with archives before or are not currently in higher education. The intention is to introduce the archive as a resource and archiving as a mode of storytelling available to, and representative of, those who are normally excluded from history- making practices.

The programme offers a free series of workshops & screenings with an aim to engage young people (18-25) from marginalised backgrounds and/or those who have not engaged with archives before or are not currently in higher education. The intention is to introduce the archive as a resource and archiving as a mode of storytelling available to, and representative of, those who are normally excluded from history- making practices.


Earth First Action Update Digital Archive

The Action Update was the newsletter of the UK Earth First! network, produced mostly monthly over its duration. Production of the Action Update regularly rotated between Earth First! collectives all around the country, to share both the workload and the skills involved in producing a print publication. For ecological and other related direct action in Britain during this time, the articles and coverage in these issues are about as close to the source as you’ll find, given that they were written by activists who themselves were often directly involved in the protests and events covered.

Explore 80 issues of Earth First Action Update here

The Cost-of-Living Crisis and Histories of Direct Action

The current cost-of-living crisis has incentivised a number of strikes in workplaces and sectors all across the country. However, the sphere of production isn’t the only place where a revitalisation of struggle is emerging. Struggles in the sphere of circulation, from energy bill refusal to mass shoplifting, have re-emerged as proletarian responses to our ongoing crises. From Marius Jacob’s ‘night workers’ to the ‘proletarian shopping’ of 1970s Italy, from the Poll Tax federations to student rent strikes, there is a historical precedent for this activity that must be explored and analysed if we wish to push these contemporary struggles further.


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