Today was very much dominated by a meeting at the delightful warehouse in Birmingham. Bought by the local Friends of the Earth group in 1977, it provides office space for the group, the national organisation and lots of other organisations for social change. There is a drop in information centre, a veggie/vegan café, and a vegan mini market.
I’ve always maintained that I was inspired to be a campaigner by dance music and festival culture, but I can very much imagine that if I grew up in a town with a decent alternative hub like the Warehouse or RISC in Reading then I would have found the same path much earlier in life.
Such places provide a valuable refuge for local groups and a point for people to meet, exchange change ideas and network. It is no strange coincidence that where there is a decent organised alternative social centre then there are strong groups of passionate people dedicated to changing the world.
So if anyone has pot and pot of money, and doesn’t want that money to be lost in the income stream of an NGO then why not use it to support another such centre, to light a beacon showing the way forward to a different future.
Until then perhaps there is hope in the network of anarchists and a disparate chain of squatted social centres that never last.
See Reading International Solidarity Centre (RISC), warehouse, Cowley Club, Manchesters basement social centre, London Action Resource Centre (LARC),
And more Social centre network
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