The Oil Machine in Torrington, North Devon Cathy Slaughter is explaining a little about XR North Devon as people slowly drift into the foyer of The Plough Arts Centre in Torrington, North Devon. “There’s a good group of really active members and of course many more who are signed up on the Facebook page. We…
People from across the world commemorate the 10 years anniversary of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill that took eleven lives and ruined thousands more with creative online action. 10 years on, communities are still fighting the deadly impact of big oil companies in the Gulf. Last week, the Bank of England published a list…
This blog is co-authored by Andy Rowell (Oil Change International) and James Marriott (Platform) Lazarus Tamana, Europe Coordinator of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), holds up a small round plastic container, an inch deep, two inches across. It is filled with a rich yellow-ochre coloured powder. “This was grown…
Everywhere is the city. And everywhere is not the city. A small congregation, just a dozen of us, are guided in careful-footed silence along the central path through the cathedral of Russia Dock Woodland in London’s former Docklands. It is 04.30 am on 5th May. Our guides, John Cadera and Richard Page-Jones, draw our attention…
This is a Guest Blog by Will Essilfie, educator and researcher, on Platform’s event ‘The Tent that Can Hear‘. In this event, Platform looked back at ecological issues in London in 1989 when we made the ‘Tree of Life, City of Life’ project, and forward to 2049. This was a 30th anniversary return as the…
On 16th January 2019 news was leaked through the German paper Handelsblatt of The Alliance to End Plastic Waste. A new industrial coalition that will invest $1billion over the next five years in a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world. Here was a powerful body of major corporations determining to…
We drive slowly down the winding lane that leads across the flat landscape on the northern flank of the Solway Firth in the county of Dumfries & Galloway. As we move onto the farmland of Preston Merse, we are distracted by the red stone ruin of Wreaths Tower. All that remains of the craggy weathered…
In the Autumn I attended an utterly inspiring Shake! & Stuart Hall Foundation event – the launch of the Black Cultural Activism Map. It was held at the Platform theatre space in the Central Saint Martin’s art school – CSM – part of University of the Arts London. This new premises is a vast warehouse of…
In the flurry of a Tuesday afternoon, I receive an unexpected e-mail from Vicki Carroll. The header has your name in it Bruce, and I know instinctively within an instant what the message holds. I hover a while and then open the text to read the inevitable. You have stepped over, passed through the…
This piece was written before the news of the draconian jail sentences passed on those opposing fracking in Preston, Lancashire … but that bitter ruling does not destroy the reality that shortly before that decision we celebrated a Victory! The News of an Amazing Victory! We wrote of it as follows … The permission to…