ASS Benefit & More 11th -13th April
ASS benefit
Open access squatters-housing-land art – photography exhibition
Workshops & stalls
Cinema
Actions
Weekend long social centre/s event in London in occupied space/s to coincide with the Europe-wide days of action in defence of free spaces and for an anti-capitalist popular culture.
Various venues still to be confirmed, more info coming soon.
Advisory Service
housingmatters@hushmail.com
http://www.squatter.org.uk
——
MANCHESTER SPACE INVADERS LINE UP
Manchester Space Invaders are a collective of autonomous groups and individuals working together to reclaim our city…we are mobilizing to fight gentrification, ‘regeneration’ and all the borders that exist within the city. We call for all groups, individuals, networks and families to get involved and to join in our glorious celebration of autonomous spaces…
THURS 28TH MARCH
SPACE INVADERS MEETING 6pm
SQUAT FILM NITE 7pm
Films about squatting: securing a building, eviction, culture..
bring your own films!
Get involved in preparations for the days of action!
Popcorn, vegan cake and beer!
For location email manchesterspaceinvaders@yahoo.co.uk..
FRIDAY 11TH
SPACE INVADERS BAND NITE
The weekend will kick off from 5pm on Friday..come to the squat for food, music and help create the space…bring yer mates, art materials and enjoy the sounds of GNOD, CASH FOR YOUR STORIES, THE AUTONOMADS, SONIC BOOMSIX..and more!
Location TBC…call for more info
SATURDAY 12TH
I BIKE MCR BIKE ART PARADE
Dress yourself and your bike up for a bike art parade..Any theme for fancy dress for you and your bike is welcome..why not make it cosmic for some fun with the Space Invaders!?
Meet All Saints Park on Saturday 12th April at 2pm for a nice picnic in the park and to admire each others fancily decorated steeds and riders(bring some nice picnic food and drink)..also if you don’t get chance to bling your bike before you come, there will be opportunity and materials to do it there… then we shall ride around the city showing off how greatour blinged-up bikes look…..ending up at the Manchester Autonomous Spaces Squat where there will be food and entertainment and all sorts of exciting activity!!!
http://ibikemcr.org.uk
PARK FUN DAY…SAT 12TH
Cathedral Gardens, outside Urbis from 1pm to 6pm..
Bring your family and friends, picnics and crafts!
Folk bands, a soundsystem, magic tricks, street theatre and art session!
Transister madness with our mobile sound system…bring your portable radio!
Get creative and get involved before reclaiming the city with No Borders…
DEMONSTRATION IN DEFENCE OF AUTONOMOUS SPACES SAT 12TH
Saturday, April 12,a demonstration for FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT FOR ALL and IN DEFENCE OF AUTONOMOUS SPACES.Assemble at Urbis (next to Victoria Station), 5pm
Check http://www.april-12.blogspot.com/ for updates.
Across the country cities are being sold to the highest bidders. The drive for ‘regeneration’ is demolishing homes, marginalising communities, privatising public space and closing down vital community services. There has seldom been a time when fighting for autonomous spaces in Manchester has been more important.
The struggle for self-organisation and social autonomy brings migrants and squatters into inevitable confrontation with the existing social and political system. Self-organisation does not mean living outside of society. We want to live in it but according to our own rules. We want to emancipate ourselves from the capitalist processes that govern our city and our lives, without turning our backs to society.
INFO manchesterspaceinvaders@yahoo.co.uk
http://mcraz.wordpress.com
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/
SUBSCRIBE https://lists.riseup.net/www/info/manchesterspaceinvaders
CALL 07526256932 AFTER 6TH APRIL
………
MORE EVENTS TBC CLOSER TO THE TIME….if you could offer a workshop/equipment/skills/time….get in touch and join the invaders!
manchesterspaceinvaders@yahoo.co.uk
http://mcraz.wordpress.com/
——
the Audacious Space free cafe & info-shop
A Celebration of Free Spaces
Leeds City Centre, Friday 11th – Saturday 12th April 2008
Part of the international weekend of action in support of squats and autonomous spaces around the world (see www.april2008.squat.net for more info).
Across the world, communities are under threat as city “regeneration schemes” favour a glamorous , business-friendly environment over and above issues such as community,. social housing and diversity. Leeds is no exception as PFIs and similar privatised “regeneration” programmes threaten communities across the city.
We want to show that communities throughout our city are not prepared to lie down and accept this!
For this weekend we are planning a squatted space in Leeds City Centre, featuring:
– cafe
– focus on housing / squatting / gentrification
– free shop
– family friendly space: daytime cafe will be alcohol-free & drug-free space
– opportunity to link up with other communities threatened by the above issues
…but most importantly the space will be open for whatever you want it to be: an opportunity for films, displays, art, workshops… to get involved give us an email on leedssquat@googlemail.com or call 07526 261061.
The venue will be an easy walk from Leeds city centre / train station / bus station – for location please call 07526 261061 or email leedssquat@googlemail.com
——–
Action for squats and autonomous spaces in Nottingham
On Friday 11th and Saturday 12th of April, we are planning to answer the international call out for two days of demonstration, direct action, public information, street-party, squatting etc in defence of free spaces and for an anti-capitalist popular culture.
People from a number of cities across the UK have already announced that temporary autonomous spaces will open for the 11th and 12th of April 2008. A group of people will open a temporary autonomous space in Nottingham city centre. We want this (hopefully) vibrant and public space to be an exuberant response to news of a final closure of the ASBO.
By visibly taking a space in the city centre, we intend to raise awareness of squatting and so contribute to a future of squatting in Nottingham with more long-term squats elsewhere in the city.
One goal for this weekend of action will be to inspire and empower people who have previously been unfamiliar with squatting. By providing materials and information, workshops, squatters’ handbooks and by relaying our own experiences, we can enable people to house themselves without compromising with capitalism. In addition, we can utilise the autonomous environment created by squatting for other needs than housing. Discussing campaigns and sharing knowledge and skills we can support one another and be
empowered ourselves, as well as drawing in new people by creating a vibrant and exciting place to be. This can be in the form of food, workshops, films, art, talks – and absolutely anything you are motivated to provide.
Over the last few weeks of meetings we’ve made some basic logistical decisions. We welcome creative, energetic and/or enthusiastic people, and everyone else, to help us realise and then use the space. Every Tuesday at 7pm we will have open planning meetings to discuss and plan the weekend. These meetings will be held at the Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, Forest Fields, Nottingham.
Alternatively, you can contact us at squatnottingham@hotmail.co.uk
——
Free Social Space weekend of events in Birmingham, April 11th to 13th 2008
As part of the Europe-wide call for decentralised action for squats and autonomous spaces (see http://april2008.squat.net/ ), there will be a temporary free space and weekend of workshops and events in Birmingham on the 11th to 13th of April.
CALL OUT: FREE SPACE BIRMINGHAM AND THE EUROPE-WIDE CALL OUT FOR SQUATTED SOCIAL SPACES.
Across Europe on the weekend of April 11th-13th, people will be taking over buildings and open spaces left abandoned by state or private concerns. For one weekend we will be united in a festival of resistance across Europe. (see http://april2008.squat.net/ )
Birmingham, UK will be responding to this call and invite you to join in. We’re a group of people who have formed an autonomous voluntary collective. We have no bosses to obey, no shareholders to feed and make decisions by consensus, all pulling our weight.
We have chosen to occupy an empty building in the city (close to Birmingham’s main rail stations and the city centre) for the weekend, hopefully to improve its neglected condition and open it up for the benefit of the city of which we are a part.
We hope you can join us for this event, and invite you to join our collective or form your own with similar aims.
Come and learn stuff, play games and enjoy the food and company – or come and facilitate a discussion, play a song, sing and dance.
EVENTS:
Workshops including: bike repair and maintenance, consensus decision making, action against climate change, disability rights and politics, 12volt electricity, LETS, permaculture, guerilla gardening, introduction to social centres, housing rights, DIY arts (jewellery making, paper mache, sculpture and making banners)and many more…
Demonstration against gentrification and for free space outside Birmingham City Council headquarters on Friday 11th (see next article)
Entertainment including an open mic night, film showings and live bands (TBC)
Free shop
Food by Birmingham Food Not Bombs
WHY SQUATTING?
There is a long tradition and history of squatting in the British Isles, dating from at least the 14th century, as people occupied land previously worked and occupied in common. The mania for enclosing land as private has always been resisted. The Diggers, levellers and others in the turbulent period of the 17th century occupied land for common use.
The practice of occupying buildings became popular amongst de-mobilised soldiers in the 20th century. Returning home from the Great and Second World wars, finding none of the promised ‘homes fit for heroes’, squatting empty buildings was a common method of growing viable homes in the cracks and empty matrices of post-war Britain.
More recently, squatting enjoyed a revival in the 1960s and 70s against the disastrous housing and architectural policies of the time. And in the last ten years there has been a revival of squatting to answer the need for social space as well as housing need. Today squatting acts as a bulwark against and alternative to gentrification – the growth of exclusive housing for the rich, pushing out the poor. This is what’s happening in Digbeth.
Squats are portals into other societies. Places where real alternatives can be grown and autonomous collective ways of organising and living found free of red tape, in places otherwise left empty and wasted.
There’s nothing ‘dirty’ about squatting. On the contrary, the practice cleans up after the waste and dis-ease produced by capitalistic authoritarianism, transforming wasted space into liberated space. Thus many people prefer the term ‘free space’ as an alternative to ‘squat’.
WHY SOCIAL CENTRES?
A viable social centre can be squatted (occupied), or facilitated through bureaucratic means such as renting or purchase. In recent years there has been a growth in social centres across Britain, from Manchester to Bristol, London to Leeds, Glasgow to Nottingham and in Birmingham too.
In creating a short term occupied social centre we hope to create a free space for the benefit of the city. The only real limit on what can happen in a social centre is the imagination. Since we respect the integrity of the building and don’t trash it (unlike its ‘owners’) we can as a collective open it for positive community projects. Social Centres can and have been used for: film screenings, healthy food and drink, libraries of books and information exchange (including free internet access), freeshops (the free exchange of goods) and all manner of creative/artistic projects,
and political organising around local and global issues.
In these times, when councils are closing and privatising public facilities hard won by our forebears, social centres are an invaluable part of society today, fulfilling an increasingly ignored need.
Free Space Collective
freespacebrum@riseup.net
http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/birmingham_social_centre
—
Details of what’s on in Brum:
The venue will be within a short walk of the Custard Factory and of Moor Street Station – email freespacebrum@riseup.net or phone 07527580190 for exact location details.
FRIDAY 11TH APRIL:
10.00am (approx): Venue opens
11am – 1.30pm (approx): Banner and prop making for demo (see below)
2pm: “Stop Selling Off Our City” demo outside Council House (see http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2008/04/395252.html )
5pm (approx): Return to temporary social centre
6pm: Talk on public sector privatisation and gentrification, followed by dinner courtesy of Birmingham Food Not Bombs
8pm onwards: Acoustic open mic night – all singers, poets, musicians and performance artists welcome…
SATURDAY 12TH APRIL:
11am – 1pm:
Workshop A: Introduction to Social Centres
Workshop B: Bike repair and maintenance (possibly ongoing for rest of Sat)
Workshop C: Jewellery making
1-2pm: Lunch
2-4pm:
Workshop A: Talk by Mexican activist on the Zapatista movement
Workshop B: Local Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS)
Workshop C: T-shirt printing
4-6pm:
Workshop A: Talk on the UK disability rights movement
Workshop B: 12Volt electricity
Workshop C: Art from recycled materials
6-7pm: Dinner by Birmingham Food Not Bombs
7-9pm:
Workshop A: Squatting and land rights
Workshop B: Palestine solidarity
Workshop C: Poi/fire spinning
9pm onwards: evening entertainment TBC
SUNDAY 13TH APRIL:
11am – 1pm:
Workshop A: Permaculture and Transition Towns
Workshop B: Rocket stoves (DIY wood burning stoves)
Workshop C: Face massage
1-2pm: Lunch
2-4pm:
Workshop A: Introduction to co-operatives (Radical Routes)
Workshop B: Climate change activism, including the Camp for Climate Action
Workshop C: Poetry
4-6pm:
Workshop A: Consensus decision making
Workshop B: Stencil art
Workshop C: Guerilla gardening
6-7pm: Dinner by Birmingham Food Not Bombs
7-9pm: “What Next?” The future of free social spaces in Birmingham – discussion, all welcome to participate and make suggestions!
All workshops subject to time change or cancellation depending on number of people interested.
——–
Autonomous Space Events in Reading! Common Ground to be Reopened!
As part of the global days of action for squats and autonomous spaces (see http://april2008.squat.net for two (maybe three!) events will take place in Reading, Berks.
FRIDAY 11TH APRIL:
* Free Cafe Event*
Reading Grassroots Action will hold a free cafe event in a privatised area of the riverside in the Town Centre. The action will aim to temporarily reclaim some space in the town centre, publicise further events and organisation and spread information on several linked up struggles from the autonomous spaces movements to the Zapatistas and from community gardens to Starbucks workers. Hopefully a film will be shown illustrating the global resistance against empire and good free food and Zapatista coffee will be given out.
SATURDAY 12TH APRIL:
* Common Ground Squatted Community Garden will be Re-Opened!*
Common Ground – a squatted community garden in Katesgrove area of Reading – was closed down by Reading Borough Council in October 07, following two previously unsucsessful eviction dates.
But on Sat 12th April, it will once again by opened to the public!
– Free Entry from 1pm!
– Free BBQ (trad & vegan options) from 3pm!
– Live Acoustic Music from 5pm!
Featuring:
* Neil Sutherland – Positive folk-punk in the vein of Billy Bragg.
* Clayton Blizzard – Acoustic hip hop – lyrical genius!
* Smoky Bastard – Irish style folk-punk in vein of Flogging Molly/Pogues/Dropkicks
* Kelly Kemp – Country style folk-punk from ex-vocalist of No Comply
* Naomi Hates Humans – Soulful folk-punk melodies
* Sam Russo – “Boss mad sounds!”
LOCATION:
Entrance is through the alleyway, next to ex-Womens Information Centre, Silver Street, Reading, RG2. It’s two mins from town centre, just up London Street from Global Cafe/Great Expectations.
Q: “But wont the cops stop us?!”
A: “Never fear, Plan B is here!”
If the miserable council and moody coppers stop us, we’ll go cheer them up…
… by moving the entire event outside their offices!
So, if you can’t find us at Common Ground, ring 07757280546 on the day for latest info!
Hope to see ya then!
P.S. We’ve even heard rumour of a free party in town that night, so keep yer ears to the dirty Reading ground……
katesgrovegarden(AT)yahoo.co.uk
http://www.rgacollective.org.uk
——–
Bristol: with the Broadmead Expansion and its spillover into St Pauls and Old Market that is displacing our local communities, the time is now to take matters into our own hands and reclaim our public spaces.
For more info call: 07528 953 230 / 07591 631 230
FRIDAY 11th
– daytime: Come help create the space
– evening: Film night from 7pm
SATURDAY 12th
– Carnival Parade starting from Albany Green St. Pauls at 11am.
– Art Exhibition open all day
– Cabaret/Open mic, live music
REPAIR NOT REDEVELOP
Yuppie flats are not part of a sustainable future and are pushing social housing out of the city centre. Resist the displacement of local people and join the parade!
Come One, Come All!
Take back our public space – If this motivates you spread the Word!
International Days of Action for Squats and Autonomous Public Spaces have been called for on the 11th and 12th of April 2008. http://april2008.squat.net:8080/. Diverse groups of enraged creatives from Prague to New Zealand will be taking things into their own hands: reclaiming spaces for art, housing, workshops, discussions, talks, films, food, swap-shops, music, performances & open mics to name but the bare essentials.
Whilst their motives are locally specific, these autonomous actions are drawn together internationally by common threads: indignation at the impending grip that corporate expansion has on our cities; diminishing social housing; ‘streamlined’ rents; the homogenisation of the high street with corporate chains; the segregation of cities along the lines of wealth and power…
Here in Bristol we will be reclaiming a private space and breathing life back into it momentarily for a public weekend of celebration. As a rupture with the march of high speed commercial existence, we will show films, parade through the streets, open space for art and workshops, cook and eat food, listen to music and live a little. Whether you’re a lock breaking specialist, poet, painter or film-maker and would like to get involved – or if you just want to come have a look at what can be done with love and shoestring – come along!
The carnival procession will make its way through Bristol on Saturday 12th. We will assemble at Albany Green, St Pauls at 11am for the start of the parade – bring friends and family, whistles and horns, pedal power and music. By taking back our streets we’ll show our communities are fed up with the odious creeping hand of shiny redevelopment. And in preparation: come create costumes, banners and carnival trimmings at workshops in the space the day before, Friday 11th.
This open invitation is a call out to communities and individuals of all skills and interests that can help make these days as visible as possible- take action in OUR city! Come join to raise awareness that there is an alternative, and resist the aggressive private expansion into our public spaces.
http://april2008.squat.net/index.php/category/english/lang-pref/en
—
More Bristol details: Save Stokes Croft
Saturday 12th April: Protest Against Gentrification of Central Bristol
11.00am Albany Green, St. Pauls and 2.00pm Broadmead (Centre)
Bristol is undergoing massive attacks on our free spaces and culture by property developers and their friends in the City Council. Across the city green spaces, pubs, clubs and amenities are being closed and sold off with little consultation with the communities affected.
So if you oppose the…
* Threat of closure of the clubs and pubs on Stokes Croft (Clockwork, Lakota, Blue Mountain, Junction)
* The threatened sell off of Castle Park to the developers
* The loss of playing fields and green spaces city-wide
* The ‘private streets’ of Cabot Circus
* The dispersion orders on College Green
* The removal of the Bristol-Bath cycle path
* The loss of pubs and meeting spaces in our communities
On Saturday 12th April there will be street protests against the gentrification of Central Bristol. There will be two meeting points:
11.00am Albany Green, St. Pauls: Join the ‘Bristol Space Invasion’ Carnival Parade as part of a europe wide weekend of action against the privatisation of public space
Joining with…
2.00am Broadmead (Centre): ‘Save Stokes Croft from Gentrification’ party parade going to College Green
After the parades come along to Bristol Space Invasion Autonomous Zone featuring Art, performance, cinema, open-mic and live music – ALL FOR FREE! – Call 07528 953 230 or 07591 631 230 on the day for details of precise location.
Please show your opposition to the destruction of our places, spaces and culture, before its too late.
See you there….
Save Stokes Croft and Bristol Space Invasion