How can we document creative resistance to corporate power? How can materials from the past catalyse climate action in the present?
The Bishopsgate Institute holds over 300 boxes of materials gleaned from 40 years of climate justice organising at Platform: photographs of oil pipelines in Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey. Flyers from strikes by dockers, doctors and teachers. Plans for a steel sculpture featuring the names of the Ogoni 9. Banners calling for a Free International University, an end to war and climate chaos, and the release of political prisoners. Minutes from meetings about community energy companies. Interviews on cassette tapes. Exhibition guides. Freedom of Information requests. Musical scores, play scripts, press cuttings, hand-drawn maps.
These materials contain provocations for our political strategy and creative practice today. But they are also scrappy and incomplete, only a gesture toward a rich history of social movements. Some of the most important stories lie well outside of archival boxes.
Over the next year, we’ll be experimenting with history from below, or people’s history. We’ll bring activists, artists and archivists together through a public programme of events to assemble a creative counter-history of climate action, inspired by collective and community-owned archives.
Ahead of launching an open call for artists and facilitators, we’re hosting two 2hr visioning workshops in January 2025. These will help us explore questions and provocations at the heart of our year-long events programme.
One workshop will be online and one in person. These participatory workshops are free, open to all, and designed for anyone interested in climate organising – past, present and future. We have limited bursaries available to support attendance. Register your interest here.
If you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to collaborate, please get in touch.
