Skip Navigation | HOME | UK Indymedia | Editorial Guidelines | Mission Statement | About Us | Contact | Help | Support Us

manchester Indymedia

SchNEWS 573 with Social Centre Spoof

Jo Makepeace | 27.01.2007 00:15 | Free Spaces

SchNEWS 573 is the first issue produced from the Cowley Club, Brighton's autonomous social centre. To celebrate this we have done a spoof of an events listing at a typical British social centre

Disclaimer: This spoof is not about the Cowley Club - it is more generic - though there's an occasional reference to it.

SchNEWS Issue 573 / 26th January 2007

ON THE SOCIAL

A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT AS SchNEWS MAKES THE FIRST MOVE...

Welcome back for 2007 as SchNEWS enters its thirteen year of producing this ‘ere news sheet you hold in your hand. The new year has brought a significant change for us – leading to a longer Xmas break than usual. We’ve quit the Metway, the Leveller’s building, and moved into the Brighton’s autonomous social centre, the Cowley Club. Thanks must go to the Levellers, who back in 1994 gave Justice? (Brighton’s anti-Criminal Justice Act collective) an office to base their myriad of activities - from direct action to community squats to a certain weekly newsletter. The band probably thought the raggle-taggle Justice? crew wouldn’t need the office for very long – and indeed Justice? ran its natural course after several years - but they ended up giving the office to us for free for eight years, providing a solid base for SchNEWS to go on to produce nearly 600 issues in our twelve years there.

What took us away from the Metway was the opportunity to be at Brighton’s social centre, and closer to the hub of libertarian activity here. The Cowley Club was opened as a co-op in 2003, and likewise has its roots in the local direct action milieu, and the string of squatted street-front cafes often under the ‘Anarchist Teapot’ banner. The Cowley Club is a cafe/bookshop by day, a pub and gig venue at night, and is the centre of a whirl of countless groups, meetings, screenings, open days, jumble sales and gatherings.

Just as SchNEWS is run entirely by an unpaid (and unemployable) crew, all roles at the Cowley Club, from cooking, cleaning, bar and admin are undertaken by volunteers. Both projects show what people can do when they cooperate, and put the building of a better community - and a sustainable world - as a higher priority than doing the sort of jobs which only reward you with new cars and flat-screen TVs.

ONE FOOT IN THE RAVE?

Alternative media and the co-op movement in Britain are just pieces in a larger jigsaw of creating a sustainable and egalitarian future – in the here and now – and not waiting for a utopian revolution which isn’t gonna happen. Both show that these types of project can, and in fact must be, embedded in the community on a long term, cross-generational and multi-racial basis – proving that anarchism is for life, not just for yer two post-degree year’s dole-drums. This movement is inhabited – and inhibited at times - by some hard cases here for the long haul.

The Cowley Club is one of a network of autonomous social centres across Britain – and beyond – some of which arose in a wave since 2005, building up to the G8 Summit in Scotland, while others arose from previous movements, such as Bradford’s 1 in 12 Club, which was started in 1981, or Kebele in Bristol which started in the mid-nineties. These ‘legit’ social centres rise out of the squatter movement as veterans seek to break the eviction cycle. Either way – whether a centre is part of the new wave, or part of previous movements, or totally separate from these circles, these centres are all about creating community spaces away from commercialisation and prejudice – a place where you can nurse a cup of rooibosch tea all afternoon, and where activities cultural and political can happen. For a list of autonomous social centres in Britain see over the page.

CAUGHT IN THE NET

Likewise SchNEWS is part of a network of alternative media, which has the same goals of creating an autonomous media free from commercial forces. Obviously these days the network of regional Indymedia websites is at the heart of it all, but on top of this there’s a plethora of regional or campaign specific websites, publications, independent video crews and more.

The work of video crews like Glasgow’s Camcorder Guerillas (or SchMOVIES) feeds into free online distribution points like ClearerChannel, while at the grass roots level we find that there is still a healthy amount of highly localised free newsletters around the country such as Gagged in South Wales, or Gay Bishop in Reading, or Brighton’s virtually fact free Rough Music - proving that the web can’t reach the places a piece of paper still can. Again, this is no new phenomena – it serves a need which has always been there - and what we have now carries on from the FIN’s (Free Information Network) zines produced on a regional basis which were a popular format in the years between the anarch-punk zines of the eighties, and now the web.

Which brings us to the next point... SchNEWS has survived by growing with the political networks it is part of – and the technologies (it was around before mainstream use of the web). It has (tried to) stay relevant by keeping involved in these movements, and has always been open to feedback and participation by anybody. The move to the Cowley Club over the new year, leading to the longest break SchNEWS has ever taken has plunged us into a bout of navel-gazing.

Whereas our video collective – SchMOVIES - is new, evolving and going from strength to strength (there is a new DVD out this month), the newsletter and the website are formats which settled into place years ago. The fact that it’s survived is partly because it’s been a popular format, and partly because it’s been a sustainable format on a weekly basis for the size of the crew. But the media world has caught up with SchNEWS – subjects we banged on about for years like globalisation, privatisation, climate change, corporate crime, and the environment are now common place not only in the Guardian and the Indy but the Daily Mail, BBC, and Woman’s Weekly. Is SchNEWS now flogging a dead hobby horse?

What’s missing from the mainstream is news of grass-roots resistance. People all over the world actually struggling to make a change rather than waiting for politicians to do it for ‘em - and especially here in the UK, where there is a chance for you, personally, to get involved and do something about it. If you’ve been a regular reader of SchNEWS, or if you’ve only just picked one up, how about sending us your feedback? (Don’t worry, we haven’t quite got key demographic focus groups in mind). E-mail us and release the bees in your bonnet, or go one step further and get involved, particularly if you’re in Brighton. And wherever you are, please continue to send your stories into us, and if SchNEWS isn’t the right thing for your town, start your own newsletter, or see what’s in your area. And if the food in your social centre isn’t quite to your taste, well don’t just moan, get involved with the kitchen crew!

In fact this extends to everything:– if what you see around you is beyond the pale don’t just sit in a pub moaning about it, get off your arse and do something about it. If not you, who? If not now, when? Do-it-yourself. That’s the one constant thing we have been banging on about for 12 years and, whatever else, will continue to do so.

Jo Makepeace
- e-mail: schnews@brighton.co.uk
- Homepage: http://www.schnews.org.uk

Download this article in pdf format >>

Email this article to someone >>

Submit an addition or make a quick comment on this article >>

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

Boring

27.01.2007 13:56

disclaimer: just having a bit of a laugh we all can't have our literary fantasies paid for by rich middle class bastards.

typical posh boy ex squatter types


Brilliant Spoof

29.01.2007 17:34

Loved the spoof events diary - I'm sure I have attended several of the events listed and I'm not even a
rave casualty.

Talk/Film Screening ‘The Pachamama Five’ Tues 7th 7pm
Screening of ‘The Pachamama Five’ - the story of a libertarian guerilla cell
operating in central Peru who blew up a bus-stop in Cuzco in 1964, injuring
nobody, and were in hiding for 20 years, plus talk (all in Spanish) from a
man claiming to be a Mexican anarchist.

ANTI-ELITIST READING GROUP Thurs 27th 7pm
This month we will be critiquing Hakim Bey's 'devastating' analysis of Zerzan's
seminal reposte to Negri's tract on John Jordan's paper about Buffy The
Vampire Slayer. Unless you’ve read the full works of Kropotkin, Gramsci and
Proudhon in their original languages, and know series three of Angel, don’t
even bother trying to break into our clique.

pat


Publish

Publish your news

Do you need help with publishing?

Kollektives

Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World

Other UK IMCs
Bristol/South West
London
Northern Indymedia
Scotland

Manchester Topics

Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista

Manchester Actions 2010

Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands

Manchester Actions 2009

COP15 Climate Summit 2009
G20 London Summit
Guantánamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
University Occupations for Gaza

Manchester Actions 2008

2008 Days Of Action For Autonomous Spaces
Campaign against Carmel-Agrexco
Climate Camp 2008
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Smash EDO
Stop Sequani Animal Testing
Stop the BNP's Red White and Blue festival

Manchester Actions 2007

Climate Camp 2007
DSEi 2007
G8 Germany 2007
Mayday 2007
No Border Camp 2007

Manchester Actions 2006

April 2006 No Borders Days of Action
Art and Activism Caravan 2006
Climate Camp 2006
Faslane
French CPE uprising 2006
G8 Russia 2006
Lebanon War 2006
March 18 Anti War Protest
Mayday 2006
Oaxaca Uprising
Refugee Week 2006
Rossport Solidarity
SOCPA
Transnational Day of Action Against Migration Controls
WSF 2006

Manchester Actions 2005

DSEi 2005
G8 2005
WTO Hong Kong 2005

Manchester Actions 2004

European Social Forum
FBI Server Seizure
May Day 2004
Venezuela

Manchester Actions 2003

Bush 2003
DSEi 2003
Evian G8
May Day 2003
No War F15
Saloniki Prisoner Support
Thessaloniki EU
WSIS 2003

Languages

english

IMCs


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech