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

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

July 3 @ 6:30 pm

Touch A Book To Feel A World! with 56a Infoshop Archive

In this session, Chris from 56a Infoshop archive will talk about their 30+ years journey into ‘making it up as you go along’ archiving. Rather than focussing on the history […]

June 27 @ 6:00 pm

Archiving Vietnamese Revolutionary Visual Culture

Join Minh Nguyen from the Dogma Collection, for a presentation on the vibrant visual language of Vietnamese revolutionary culture. Through rare archival materials and comparative analysis, we will examine how […]

June 26 @ 7:00 pm

Aesthetics of Resistance with Joel Scott + Harun Farocki’s On Display: Peter Weiss

Peter Weiss’s three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance follows an unnamed narrator and his peers as they attempt to organise against the fascist regimes of Europe in the 1930s and […]

June 14 @ 3:00 pm

Everything for Everyone @ 1 in 12 Club in Bradford

We are excited to attend this event celebrating the 1 in 12 Club, Bradford’s long-standing anarchist social centre. Everything for Everyone! explores and celebrates anarchist values of self-management, co-operation and mutual aid […]

June 7 @ 10:00 am

Archival Imaginaries @ Materials Festival

Join us at Pelican House in London for a day focused on visual culture as a catalyst for transformative social change. Through discussions and workshops we’ll explore how cultural workers […]

MayDay Rooms Projects

All Projects

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!

Drawing on archives from Glasgow Women’s Library and MayDay Rooms, we revisit the peace movement’s material history, trying to better understand the diversity of tactics and intersecting movements which have shaped it. As European states enter a new cycle of rearmament, this exhibition speaks to those hoping for and struggling for peace.

We orient the history of the peace movement away from a few well-known campaigns to highlight little-known histories that are nonetheless integral to the struggles for a demilitarised world. For Peace! interweaves historical strands from Women’s Liberation, anti-colonial, socialist and anarchist movements, to address questions of non-violence, class, international solidarity and the role of liberation struggles.

A sister version of this exhibition will be on display at Four Corners (London) 8-24th May. There will also be an open-access online archive of the For Peace! Collection which will launch in the Autumn. We hope that the exhibition and archive will act as a resource for those struggling against the war-state everywhere.

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.

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.

Seize the Media

Indymedia was a global network of Independent Media Centres (IMC) which saw its heyday in the first two decades of the 21st Century. Self-organised networks of local activists covered international resistance to capitalism, ecocide, neocolonialism and many other local and international struggles. Indymedia became synonymous with the issues taken up by the Global Justice Movement. Powered by the internet and built on IMC servers, Indymedia embodied the ethos of DIY journalism and autonomous media. It is a vital part of the pre-history of social media and digitally-enabled activism.

New Architectural Movement Digital Archive

A unique collection of documents from a significant activist movement that challenged the established order of architectural practice both in the private and public sectors goes online in November. In the mid-1970s the New Architecture Movement (NAM) gave a voice to progressive and inclusive initiatives that encouraged people to promote social change and greater equality through their work in the built environment.

The launch of NAM’s archive provides both a new resource for historical research and also a challenge to present and future generations in the field to reinterpret and apply NAM’s radical ideas to current issues. NAM brought together young idealistic architects, engineers and planners from across the UK seeking ways to reform working practices and the planning and development process. In an intensely productive period from 1975-80 the movement ran workshops, campaigns and seminars on a range of issues – professional education and governance, workplace structures, feminism, public sector design, worker unionisation – to create an alternative vision that put the priorities of people and communities ahead of developers,corporations and officials.

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