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Enough is Enough! - Medway's resistance to an unjust transition.

Enough is Enough! – Medway’s resistance to an unjust transition.

  Down the canyon of Chatham High Street comes the march. Banner of Medway Trades Council proudly to the fore. Chants and shouts echoing off the shopfronts and the buildings above. “Enough is Enough! Enough is Enough!” Past the pound shops and the charity shops. Past the boarded up windows and the off licenses. Through...
Tectonic shifts – the energy crisis and the leap beyond - The Economic War, part 4

Tectonic shifts – the energy crisis and the leap beyond – The Economic War, part 4

Shell declares it may go back into Cambo and the oilfield’s exploration license is extended by two years. The British government pushes for renewed drilling in the UK North Sea. There is public outcry at the Chancellor’s failure to defend households from the attack on living standards driven by price inflation. The Russian government announces...
How to Capture the Future and Store Capital - the plans for CCS in Liverpool Bay

How to Capture the Future and Store Capital – the plans for CCS in Liverpool Bay

You can see the future from Formby Beach. You don’t even need to climb up on one of steep sand dunes to catch a glimpse of it. It is out there yellow and white lights blinking in the grey dusk away to the North West. It has supplanted the red dots of the turbines on...
Silence in the Storm – Business and No Deal Brexit

Silence in the Storm – Business and No Deal Brexit

  The storm in Westminster rages so ferociously that at times it’s hard to hear ourselves think. There is second by second coverage of the House of Commons and Downing Street from every conceivable angle. Backbenchers so obscure that we’ve never heard of them before are dragged through the TV studios and closely cross-questioned. Others...
To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories

To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories

  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...
6 reasons why #Budget2016 really really shouldn't subsidise North Sea oil even more

6 reasons why #Budget2016 really really shouldn’t subsidise North Sea oil even more

Osborne is announcing his #Budget2016 on Weds, and there’s lots of pressure from the oil barons for more subsidies and tax cuts. Their income has been hit by the falling oil price, and in all those years of bonanza profits they never thought to save for this rainy day (even though it was predictable given the mostly cyclical...
2015 - The End of the Eternal Present

2015 – The End of the Eternal Present

Notes after a conversation with Doreen Massey, which took place ten days before the one-year anniversary of Syriza’s landslide victory of 25th January 2015. We were reflecting on the past year. What an extraordinary set of events has unfolded in those twelve months – the Syriza election, The Green Surge of last Winter, the transformational...
Take the Money and Run? How arts fundraising shapes the future

Take the Money and Run? How arts fundraising shapes the future

Article by Anna Galkina published in Dance UK magazine, March 2015. On a hot summer evening in July 2011, as the crowd in Trafalgar Square was settling down to enjoy a Royal Opera House production of Cinderella, a ballet dancer dressed as the White Swan appeared in front of the BP Big Screen. As she...

Art and power: reflections on austerity and sponsorship

We often get asked: if we want the arts to be free from sponsorship by climate-wrecking oil companies, where’s the money going to come from? And aren’t we just going to push art institutions towards other corporate sponsors (arms dealers, banks) with tarnished reputations to polish? My immediate answer to this question is in the...
Take the Money and Run? a response to an event about ethics, funding and art by Mary Paterson

Take the Money and Run? a response to an event about ethics, funding and art by Mary Paterson

Take The Money And Run? was an event about ethics, funding and art that took place at Toynbee Studios, London on January 29, 2015. Attended by over 200 people, it was a day of presentations and discussion hosted by three organisations, Live Art Development Agency, Artsadmin, Home Live Art and produced in collaboration with Platform. We commissioned Mary Paterson...
We forced Tate to reveal BP secrets - now what?

We forced Tate to reveal BP secrets – now what?

Nearly three years after we first set out to find out how much BP gave Tate, the galleries  have finally revealed BP’s contribution between 1990-2006. The figures range between £150,000-£330,000 a year – even less than we expected. When I tried to lay the numbers out on a graph for comparison, it was hard to even get BP’s contribution to be visible...

Fossil Fuel Finance – Divest/Invest

The climate transition changes everything. The next decade will require a wholesale recalibration of how our society and economy function. This creates opportunities to place democracy and social justice at the heart of our future political and economic structures. Platform data research and analysis shows that UK local government pensions are worth nearly £300 bn...