ABOUT

THE PROJECT

This exhibition has been created by collating just a small part of a number of radical archives. Many campaigners and activists are keen archivists, either through a personal collection (a box under the bed or in the attic) or through collective projects that seek to build material and digital depositories of alternative cultures and resistance.

Exhibitions of archive material are an effective way to publicise trespass, squatting, and direct housing actions, making wider moral arguments surrounding property and inequality, as well as challenging perceptions and prejudices. Both Made Possible By Squatting (2013) and the Resistance Exhibition (ongoing) are examples of activist-led projects which have attempted to inform and educate others whilst undermining public stereotypes of direct action.

ARCHIVES FOR CHANGE

The way in which we remember the past is never neutral, yet it is essential to how we perceive possibilities for the future. As such, archival projects such as the Remembering Olive Collective cannot only help us to address silences and biases in history (such as Black radical histories and struggles) but can also alert us to these exclusions in the present.

Archives can provide stability and coherence to fragile movement legacies; but this precarity can also put archives in danger. As well as losing material through squat evictions, archives can be destroyed via arson (such as the fascist attack on the former ASS HQ on St Paul's Road).

Archives can be useful for legal battles and the Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) continues to mobilise their archives as part of squatter defence cases today.

Rediscovering activist histories can help develop movement legacies as well as draw practical lessons from actions of the past, unsettling taken-for-granted views and re-orientating us towards possibilities for change in the present.

BEHIND THE RESEARCH

My name is Sam Burgum. I am a researcher in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield, currently conducting a 3-year research project into squatting and the housing crisis in London.

Disclaimer: by definition, exhibitions (and the archives they draw from) are never complete. However, it is hoped examples included here demonstrate the diversity of squatting, trespass and direct housing action, as well as some of the most noteworthy UK actions.

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