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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...
Councils: Fuelling the Fire
Publication -
Nov 9, 2017
Councils: Fuelling the Fire reveals that UK councils invest £16.1 billion of their workers’ pensions into companies that extract coal, oil and gas, fueling dangerous climate change. Download the report The report uncovers: Councils invest £16.1 billion of pensions into fossil fuel companies out of a total of £289.9 billion, new data reveals No significant...
Bribes, bulldozers and BP: what makes a gas mega pipeline?
Blog post -
Sep 7, 2017
Earlier this week, the Guardian’s Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation uncovered thousands of covert payments totaling £2.2bn from Azerbaijan’s ruling elite to prominent Europeans through a network of opaque British companies. Today, Platform and other organisations had a letter published in the Guardian, filling in the blanks in the story. Azerbaijan is particularly keen to present a...
Conversations with Suzi Gablik – Living in wartime.
Blog post -
Apr 29, 2017
I’ve recently returned from a visit to my friend and mentor, Suzi Gablik, in Virginia, USA. She has been an inspiration to so many over the past 33 years since the publication of ‘Has Modernism Failed’, and later her book ‘Conversations Before The End of Time‘. Her work harnessed an ecological sensibility in the...
“Art is direct, it challenges the authorities, the power structure” Ken Saro-Wiwa jr, 1968 – 2016
Blog post -
Nov 29, 2016
Yesterday at All Saints Church in Fulham, London, we attended a celebration of the life of journalist, government special advisor, and digital tech innovator Ken Saro-Wiwa jr. His life was suddenly cut short at the age of 47. We are sorrowed by this profound loss to the Saro-Wiwa family, and of a talented man invested in...
We are still feeling the aftershocks of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s murder 21 years later
Blog post -
Nov 16, 2016
November 10th marked the 21st anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s murder by Nigeria’s military dictatorship for challenging Shell’s devastation of his home – Ogoniland. His only remaining son died a few weeks before this terrible anniversary. His funeral was this week. Last year, at the request of allies in the Niger Delta still resisting Shell’s oil...
Paradigm shift in the House of the North – reflecting on ‘The Sky’s Limit’
Blog post -
Nov 15, 2016
I’m trudging towards the top of Am Faochagach following my dear friend Greg Muttitt, who was for a long time central to Platform and is now part of the wider family. The smooth crest of this mountain rises like a whale’s back. Its lack of crags must have led to its name – Am...
So Switched On – The dream of London’s energy democracy
Blog post -
Nov 4, 2016
The train hurries south on the main line towards Brighton, carrying me away from the event I have just attended, ‘Power to Us’ organised by Switched on London at Myatt’s Fields in Brixton. Looking out from the carriage, over the roofs of the houses of Purley stacked up this steep sided North Downs valley at...
For Lucy Fairley, founder of Helix Arts and Crossings
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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...
The new is being born – reflections on Paul Mason’s ‘Postcapitalism’
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Sep 27, 2016
In these days of constant turbulence, in which what is nonsense on Tuesday becomes common sense on Wednesday, and what is common sense on Thursday becomes nonsense on Friday, I have found Paul Mason’s ‘Postcapitalism’ a valuable touchstone. This is a book profound, provocative and demanding a response. With boldness and a breadth of...
This is water defending itself – Protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline on Westminster Bridge
Blog post -
Sep 22, 2016
Forty feet wide by ten feet high the banner drapes delicately from the solid structure of Westminster Bridge. Standing at the parapet, gazing down at the brown river, we can see the upturned faces of over a hundred passengers looking up at us from the tourist vessel ‘Millennium Dream’. They are clearly trying to decipher...
Strip away the carapace – the Ice Age, BP, and the British Museum
Blog post -
Sep 15, 2016
It pushes me quickly to tears. I’m kneeling on the cold stone floor of the Great Court, legs tucked beneath me, one foot crossed under the other. I’m listening to a rendition of A Requiem to Sinking Cities – an agit-performance in the heart of the British Museum. Silent figures hold up two banners, ‘#DropBP’...
