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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...
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...
#FromNopeToHope – Salon des Réfuseurs for our time
Blog post -
Sep 25, 2018
Heads up everybody interested in powerful political art and graphics. The exhibition From Nope To Hope – Art vs Arms, Oil and Injustice is running for an extra week, in Brixton Rec, London. Come and get inspired by the artwork of political artists, designers and activists who demanded their works were withdrawn from the Design...
Aliyev re-elected as President for another 7 years – the chain of oil autocracy that binds Azerbaijan
Blog post -
Apr 18, 2018
On 18th April Ilham Aliyev will be inaugurated for the fourth time as President of Azerbaijan. His re-election comes as no surprise. It is so predictable that it barely counted as ‘news’ and consequently got next to no coverage in the international media. Originally the election was scheduled for 17th October, but at nine weeks...
The slow dismantling the house of oil – The Gulbenkian Foundation divests
Blog post -
Mar 18, 2018
Quite unexpected comes remarkable news! Lucy Neal, a long-term part of the Platform family, e-mails out of the blue, forwarding an article from the Algarve Daily News, published on 1st February in southern Portugal. The headline reads: ‘Gulbenkian Foundation gets out of the oil business’ That truly is unexpected. Lucy had not foreseen this coming...
Today, remembering the Ogoni Bill of Rights
Blog post -
Nov 10, 2017
10th November 2017 marks the 22nd anniversary since the executions of nine Ogoni men from the Niger Delta who had been protesting against the exploitation of oil in their homelands. These Nigerian activists – outspoken author and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John...
BP funds homophobia: an open letter
Blog post -
Feb 22, 2017
BP has built a reputation for itself as a LGBTQ-friendly employer, with Pride floats, a Stonewall top employer badge, and recruitment events for LGBTQ students. But BP’s donations and deals also keep in office notoriously homophobic politicians, from US Congressman John Culberson to Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. We started this open letter to call on...
Fight BP’s Pinkwashing
Publication -
Feb 22, 2017
A briefing for LGBTQ rights campaigners by No Pride In BP, Platform and People & Planet Download briefing as pdf Pinkwashing: (n.) a public relations tactic, involving an appeal to LGBT-friendliness, in order to offset or ‘wash’ over other questionable practices Is BP a queer-friendly company? “proud to be a business where you can be yourself”...
Egyptian political prisoners remembered in unsanctioned performance at British Museum’s ‘Sunken Cities’
Press release -
Nov 24, 2016
24 November 2016 Unsanctioned vigil held for jailed human rights campaigners at ‘Curator’s Introduction to the BP Sponsored Exhibition Sunken Cities: Egypt’s Lost Worlds’ Exhibition displays objects from ancient sunken cities in the Nile Delta, where BP is now drilling for fossil fuels. Community opposition successfully halted BP’s gas plant plans – the North...
For Lucy Fairley, founder of Helix Arts and Crossings
Blog post -
Sep 30, 2016
My friend and Platform ally Lucy Fairley has died, aged 70. We’ve known her and her work for nearly 25 years and worked especially closely with her in the late 1990s. She founded Artists Agency in Sunderland in 1983, and in 1987 appointed Esther Salamon to join her initially as Placement Officer, then as in...
