Past Projects


Here is a general overview & timeline of projects, 1983 – 2001 (from our old website).

Activist archive now! You can also visit our hard copy archive which is held in the Special Collections on London Protest and Campaigning at the wonderful Bishopsgate Institute, London. If you go to the Bishopsgate Institute in person you can request items and view them directly. With permission, items can also be borrowed.

The BI archive covers Platform from the founding in 1983 to around 2012 and includes documents from Platform’s development, project/artwork/campaign planning and management, processes, publications, video, audio, photographs, slides (old-style!) and many great banners. Much of our archive is of course digital and we are not yet able to make it available. In 2018/19 Platform was awarded a Research and Development grant from Arts Council England to work up ideas around the ‘Archive as Catalyst’ for social change. Watch this space.

Action Saro-Wiwa (2014-16) put pressure on Shell to clean up in the Niger Delta by marking the 20th anniversary of the executions of the Ogoni 9 in a dramatic way. In the year of the anniversary, September 2015, Platform sent the Living Memorial ‘Battle Bus’ sculpture to the Niger Delta at the request of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The Bus was then seized by Customs at Port of Lagos as it was perceived that it would cause civil unrest. It has remained seized ever since despite repeated demands by the civil society groups and even Nigerian National Assembly for its release into the hands of MOSOP. This caused a media storm and put the spotlight on Shell.

Remember Saro-Wiwa (2004 – 2013) is a comprehensive resource on the Platform’s project to create a Living Memorial to Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed alongside eight other activists by the Nigerian military in 1995 for protesting against the impact of Shell in the Niger Delta. Platform commissioned the Living Memorial in 2005 which was created by British sculptor Sokari Douglas-Camp CBE. Platform continues to call for corporate and government accountability in the Niger Delta region, with particular focus on Shell’s operations.

Below are descriptions of previous project websites. We apologise that they are not available at the moment. We are working to upgrade them as they are using old code.

Platform Portfolio shows selected previous projects.

Unravelling the Carbon Web gives access to Platform’s major resources on the oil and gas industry and publications that underpinned our campaigns from 2003 to 2010. This website guides you through strategies and background research that have laid a foundation for Platform’s activism and campaigning. Much of the UTCW material has been migrated to the new website.

Burning Capital is an online artwork & documentary on the environmental and global significance of BP’s fourth quarter and full year results for 2007, part of an ongoing strategy of revealing how climate change is fuelled from the inside.

And While London Burns is an acclaimed downloadable opera-for-one made in 2006. Part-fiction, part-fact, the story is a gripping walking tour through the heart of London’s financial district looking at London’s business impacts on climate change. Some buildings and paths have changed, but the walk and absorbing soundscape starring BAFTA-award-winning actor Douglas Hodge, still works.

Museum of the Corporation was a series of critical walks and exhibitions that took place between 2001 and 2004. It took the rise and fall of the biggest transnational in the world – the East India Company – as its starting point, and this deep history has affected Platform’s understanding of how corporations today operate.

PLATFORM BRINGS workers AND communities TOGETHER TO CREATE NEW, LIBERATORY SYSTEMS THAT TACKLE INJUSTICE AND CLIMATE BREAKDOWN.