A redesigned economy
Helen Barnard explains how the causes of poverty interlink with employment, housing and social security, and the need for a redesigned economy.
Tag / community
Affordable housing is an urgent issue
Costa Christou is a young man from South London, who, with the organisation Advocacy Academy, took part in creative direct action to tackle the local housing crisis. By lobbying local councillors, and taking advice from a range of community members and organisations, the group obtained a site on which to build affordable housing.
Anti-apartheid campaign
Lela Kogbara talks about some of the tactics used by the anti-apartheid movement in her local area in the 1980s, handing out leaflets, encouraging people to boycott South African goods, organising benefits and building networks with churches and trade unions.
Arts activism and community participation
Chris Chalkley talks about art and activism as a tactic and the People’s Republic of Stokescroft, which provides spaces for artists in Bristol to create public artworks and share their work, engaging with community around a range of social and political issues.
Birmingham ‘a tale of two cities’
John Cotton, a Labour councillor in Birmingham, tells the story of in-work poverty and his campaign to make the local council introduce the Real Living Wage (RLW). All council staff and 17,000 employees are now paid the RLW and Birmingham has set up a Poverty Truth Commission to listen to those with lived experience of poverty.
Campaign Against the Arms Trade
Siana Bangura talks about the wide range of tactics used by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT). The organisation works collaboratively with similar organisations to campaign against the international arms trade on intersecting issues for a world where conflict is resolved without the use of force.
Combating clothing poverty
Louise Cooke founded Sharewear Clothing Scheme in 2014 to combat clothing poverty. She tells the story of how and why she created the scheme in Nottingham and her belief in the dignity of choosing what to wear.
Community action during COVID-19
Kiren Shafiq describes being part of Islamic Help in the summer of 2020. The group helped to deliver food and other basic supplies to people of all communities in Birmingham and other cities in the West Midlands in response to panic-buying at the start of the pandemic.
Community solidarity
Professor Nadia Valman tells the story of late nineteenth and early twentieth century strikes for better pay and working conditions in the East End of London. She explores how people from Irish and Jewish communities, in spite of differences, supported each other in solidarity when facing injustice and defending their rights.
Disability and sports
Sandra Hulme, Mark Palmer and Peter Wyman tell the story of the founding of Greenbank College by Gerry Kinsella MBE, elite athlete, GB medal-winner in the World championships for wheelchair basketball. The College offers education, training, employment, sport and recreational activities for disabled and other disadvantaged local people in Liverpool as a form of economic justice.