This page lists any entry on the site marked with one of the selected categories in the left hand column, most recent first. Selecting other categories will further hone this list.
Who Owns the Wind? – the promise of a publicly owned renewable energy system
Blog post -
Oct 3, 2022
The North Westerly gale billows and shakes the heavy white pvc of the marquee on the Portsoy harbourside, Aberdeenshire. Festival goers drift from stall to stall, under the pallid light of sun through plastic, dithering over the t-towels and pots of honey. At one end of the tent, a wall is taken up by a...
The Cardinal’s Song – In honour of Suzi Gablik and her bright bold inspiring words
Blog post -
May 26, 2022
Amongst the White Oaks and Hickory trees at the headwaters of the New River, the Cardinals are singing. Their brilliant red wings flashing amongst the silver branches and trunks. Spring time in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia. Suzi Gablik is leaving her body behind. As breath moves slowly in and out of her lungs,...
‘Oil is the poison: Action is the antidote’ – sixteen days in the movement to end fossil fuels
Blog post -
Apr 22, 2022
At 8.25 on Friday 15th April, as the rush hour traffic poured off the M4 at Chiswick, four activists stepped out in front of an Eddie Stobart oil tanker. Two held up a banner declaring ‘Just Stop Oil’ whilst two others disabled the braking system and clambered up onto the back of the tanker. Passing...
Time to kick Oil out of Football? – The Economic War, part 3
Blog post -
Mar 23, 2022
Roman Abramovich under sanctions! Chelsea up for sale! Scandal engulfs Everton FC as a key donor Alisher Usmanov is added to the UK government’s list of ‘named Oligarchs’. The Economic War has opened a new front on the pitch. Football is pulled into the Russian invasion of Ukraine just as Western corporations and the oil...
Cambo & Viking Energy – the common wealth of wind in Shetland
Blog post -
Jan 18, 2022
In July 1881 a fleet of Sixareen boats were working the haaf fishing grounds 30 or more miles West of Shetland in the vast North Atlantic. Each craft twenty foot long, hand built from wood, with a crew of seven men fishing for Cod and Ling. This valuable catch was taken on lines of hooks,...
#ShakeTheSystem: Legacies & futures with Voices that Shake!
Blog post -
Mar 9, 2020
[From the #ShakeTheSystem team] It’s 2020 and we’re celebrating 10 years of Voices that Shake! with an anthology, toolkits, workshops, showcases and more. This is #ShakeTheSystem: A Decade of Shaping Change Over 200 marginalised and underrepresented young people have directly been part of the deep personal and community transformation that the unique space of Shake!...
Of Turmeric and Truth – ‘Fuel for Thought’ and the struggle in Ogoni
Blog post -
Jun 12, 2019
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...
Singing Planet – Soundcamp 2019 and the Platform ‘Tree of Life’ Tent
Blog post -
May 25, 2019
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...
Compelled to Be Wise in the Tent that Can Hear
Blog post -
May 10, 2019
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...
Iraq, BP and the British Museum – look upon these works and hang our heads in shame
Blog post -
Mar 14, 2019
I had read in advance the briefing that Culture Unstained had put out to accompany the planned action. The protest at the British Museum was to be against BP’s sponsorship of the exhibition ‘I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria’, a display of treasures from the land of Iraq. I read lines...
‘The Knowledge Quarter’ – resistance to capture and divestment from capital
Blog post -
Jan 24, 2019
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...
When we ask them they say ‘Don’t stop!’ – Knowledge as resistance to erasure at the launch of Black Cultural Activism Map
Blog post -
Nov 20, 2018
We watch in wonder as dancer Akeim Toussaint Buck moves his body as fluid as water across the black box of the stage. Our eyes are transfixed as the voice of activist Max Farrar intones the words of Sai Murray’s poem ‘Stop Signs’ over the sound system. And in Lane number 1 from Nigeria, wearing 1969,...
