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

Camera Forward!

The Antihistory Tabloid

Squatting Is Part of The Housing Movement

Pandemic Notes Workbook

Little Red Blue Book

Upcoming & Recent Events

January 21 @ 12:00 pm

Archive Open Day: MayDay Rooms + June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive + Statewatch Archiv

After the success of our first Open Day in November, we decided to join forces with June Givanni’s Pan-African Cinema Archive and Statewatch Archive to open the doors, not to […]

January 20 @ 8:30 pm

WINTER SOCIAL hosted by Pagliacci Rossi

Pagliacci Rossi are hosting MayDay Rooms winter party. The drinks will be flowing 🍻 the tunes will be banging 🔊 and the communism coming ☭ We’ll also be cooking some […]

January 20 @ 7:00 pm

HISTORY OF ‘AUTO-REDUCTION’ with Pagliacci Rossi

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 […]

December 14, 2022

BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND REVOLT

Wed, 14.12.2022—Sun, 7.5.2023 MayDay Rooms is happy to have collaborated with the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna on their latest exhibition THE FEST: Between Representation and Revolt. Celebrations are […]

December 7, 2022 @ 5:00 pm

MUTANT ECOLOGIES: SEMINAR AND BOOK LAUNCH

What are the political implications of genetic engineering in the twenty-first century? How is life industrially engineered? What kind of lives emerge from contemporary biological assembly lines? But also: How […]

MayDay Rooms Projects

All Projects

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.

Uncovering the Archive

Uncovering the Archive is an archival collaboration between MayDay Rooms and Iniva. We are offering a free series of workshops and screenings to existing youth programmes with an aim to engage young people (16-25) from marginalised communities such as Black and QTIPOC/PGM*, working class, migrant and Disabled. The intention is to introduce the archive as a resource and archiving as a mode of storytelling available to, and representative of, the identities and lives of those normally excluded from history making practices. By working with the collections held both at MDR and Iniva, the programme aims to offer young people with the tools to confidently explore, interrogate and create the stories they want to tell or wish were told through engaging activities that center creative play, conversation and making. By introducing young people to places, digital spaces and people that are made for/representative of them, we hope to empower their claim to history and uphold the integrity of what is important to them.

Stuart Christie Memorial Archive

The Stuart Christie Memorial Archive was founded in the spring of 2021 and is hosted by the Mayday Rooms. The Archive, brought together by researcher Jess Thorne, preserves Stuart Christie’s private library, personal correspondence, his publishing endeavours, oral testimony, radical ephemera and an extensive online library of anarchist films. In an ongoing process, the archive is being expanded to include a larger collection of oral histories, which will explore the sequence of revolts associated with ‘1968’ and the long winter of reaction that followed in the 1970’s.

Leftove.rs: Digital Archive

Leftovers is a shared online archive of radical, anti-oppressive and working class movements. The platform hopes to aid the dissemination of archived ephemera from these movements, campaigns, and struggles, casting light on histories of resistance from below. We hope that the project will become a vital resource through opening up archives of radical dissent.

The archive is very much a work-in-progress but we are happy for people to browse, download pdfs and get involved if the want to help add metadata and catagorise the material.

Exhibition: Print Subversion in the Wapping Dispute

Check out our first ever online exhibition Print Subversion in the Wapping Dispute, which focuses on print as a medium and militant workers’ self-activity subverting print to organise, build their own power and resources, and communicate with workers in other branches of industry. Drawing on the tradition of workers correspondence, Picket Bulletin, provides a central example of how print was used to coordinate and circulate autonomous activity by striking workers. The exhibition will showcase new documents recently added to MayDay Rooms collections, featuring audio, posters, zines, journals and other printed matter.

London Housing Struggles Archive

The London Housing Struggles Archive is a collection of documents related to housing campaigns, squatting and rent strikes. The archive is divided into three collections: the first documents housing struggles ranging from 1975 to 1991 including campaigns against the sell off of estates in the 1980s. The second collection gathers together a wide range of hard and digital materials produced by recent 2010 and reaching the present, including posters, flyers and pamphlets as well as archived websites and an extensive range of digital images and propaganda.

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