POWER FROM THE PEOPLE

A unique climate change project was launched this month as a thirty foot steel structure in Kirkup Gardens in Wythenshawe opened its doors to the public. 'The PowerStation' has been made from five shipping containers and is the HQ for the 'Wythenshawe Forever!' (w4e!) project that is engaging local residents in producing a 'Party Without Pollution' on Saturday 14th July. People living and working in the area are being asked to save enough energy so that the area can host the UK's first ever public festival that will not contribute to climate change. Household energy surveys, local food growing, zero-carbon publishing and knitting warm clothes are just some of the activities on offer.

Painted white and green the PowerStation reads 'We need your energy' and has been designed by a team of artists, architects and local people. There was the opportunity to use the worlds only bike powered photocopier, see solar oven demonstrations and the opportunity to visit a food miles project on Woodhouse Park allotments on Maismore Road.

Run by community radio station Wythenshawe FM 97.2. Wythenshawe Forever! is working with people all over Wythenshawe to help save energy or to create new energy in clean, renewable ways. The project will be adding up how much saved power has accumulated and in July will use it to put on a festival called "The Party Without Pollution". The more energy ‘generated’, the better the party.

The Party Without Pollution will take place on Saturday July 14th 2007 12pm-6pm at Kirkup Gardens, on Simonsway, opposite Parklands School. Everyone is invited and entry is free of charge. There will be fun activities and performances, showing how we saved and created enemy to power the The Power Station is the base for Wythenshawe Forever! and the venue for the Party Without Pollution. Leading up to the Party in July there will be a variety of activities going on at the Power Station. find out more about the project and how you can get involved ring Eleanor on 436 4165.

Why we need guerrilla craft

Craft has political roots that run deep. Now, in an age of climate change, craft – or the act of making rather than unquestioningly buying into the consumer treadmill – is taking on a particular political significance.

it was the human-scale of craft that inspired the Art and Crafts movement towards the end of the 19th Century. The social reforms set out by people like John Ruskin and William Morris saw a return to handcraft as the means for restoring individuality and quality into the work process, destroyed by the industrial revolution.

Craft hasn’t only inspired reformers, it has also inspired revolutionaries. India’s independence movement did not have a weapon as its symbol, but craft – the charkha (spinning wheel).

And in the UK, we don’t need to look too far into the past to begin to unearth the importance of craft. The ‘make-do and mend’ ethos in response to the shortages of the second world war played a major role in reducing consumption.

Recycling old clothes, unpicking the wool from pullovers to darn socks became second nature in many homes. Ask almost anyone, and a memory of craft of some description will play a significant role in family folklore.

From my mother sitting by the fire with my grandmother on cold winter evenings learning to make rag rugs, to my friend Judith’s memory of the excitement she felt choosing fabric with her sister for their annual party dresses. Memories of craft are generally warm and happy ones.

But craft has recently regained its ‘cool’. There are craft-inspired club night around London. Radical reformers in the world of knitting and lace-making have already overthrown the status quo, providing a model that other crafts can follow. Knitting clubs meet in cities from San Francisco to Stockholm.

There is even a group of activists that stage knit-ins in the London underground.

Artist and ‘radical knitter’ Shane Waltener clearly expresses the political edge implicit in contemporary craft: “On the one hand, I am celebrating this tradition that I really believe in. On the other, its about self-sufficiency. By knitting you are resisting capitalism and consumerism. You are not responding to the fashion industry; you are making your own decisions.”

The practice of craft has many of the characteristics that the science of well-being tells us has the greatest influence on our happiness. Craft tends to be communal, it involves learning and sharing new skills – or flourishing.

And, according to Karl Marx, craft – alongside music and art (arguably both crafts in themselves) – are the only forms of labour that allow people to truly be themselves. In an ideal world, says Karl Marx, “Our product would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.”

Today, as companies look to technical fixes as ways to sell us more stuff in the name of combating climate change, perhaps part of the real answer lies in returning to our crafty roots and rediscovering our ability not just ‘make do and mend’, but make for the pleasure of making.

Craft is also displaying an activist edge. In Manchester, the graphic collective UHC celebrated their fifth birthday by indulging in a little light guerrilla craft.

Incensed by the invasion of Manchester’s public space by adverts, UHC took crafty action. Constructing carefully woven white shrouds, UHC shielded Manchester’s public space from un-needed, unwanted advertising hoardings.

On each shroud, the roots of a tall oak tree bear the legend ‘trees breathe, adverts suck’. As we try to find our way in a warming world, if the future is crafty we may well find that we can live good live without costing the earth, and even have a little fun along the way.

Ruth Potts

MANCHESTER'S ADVERT BREAK

HAZEL HEALY

A ghostly parade of hooded advert hoardings met Manchester commuters on their way to work last week, in place of the usual promotions for Fila, Nokia and Loyd Grossman's sauces.

Every single one of the city centre's 88 free-standing ads communicated instead the anti-consumerist slogan "trees breathe ads suck", stencilled on to made¬to-measure calico covers.

A team of volunteers installed the ads early on Friday morning. They offered to pimp their city with the environmental message after hearing about the idea by word of mouth.

Manchester-based arts collective UHC was commissioned to produce the temporary artworks by McDemos, the "protest solutions company" set up by comedian Mark Thomas and artists Tracey Moberly and Tony Pletts.

Thomas described the event as a "poetic gesture for the city of Manchester".

UHC has authored numerous street-based art interventions including a replica of Guantanamo Bay in Hulme in 2003.

UHC said in a statement: "We feel this presents those travelling to work with a gift of peace and beauty in place of the incessant noise of advertising."

IT consultant Matt Atkins, 31, from Hulme, was one of the volunteers who had been up since 7am de-commissioning the ads. Fear of climate change had motivated him to take action.

"There's too much rubbish in the world already and the problem with consumerism is that it's all about 'more' and not 'better'," said Atkins.

JC Decaux, the advertising company that owns the hoardings, has built hundreds of free-standing adverts across Manchester. They are situated strategically on busy roads in the heart of the city and are championed by the firm as the best way to expose audiences to outdoor media.

A spokesperson from JC Decaux said they had sent teams out to take the covers down later that day.

Confused commuters stopped to stare at the newly decorated hoardings, some taking photos with mobile phones.

Passerby Mike Potts, 24, from Levenshulme, was positive about the art stunt.

"I really like them," he said. "It's refreshing to see trees instead of ads."

The Big Issue

XFM DJ Dave Haslam mentioned UHC as his 'heroes' in 2006 for highlighting social inequality in Manchester. Click on the image above to see his full comments.

'Heroes and Villains' By Emily Pykett and Kelly Foran in The Big Issue In The North December 11-22, 2006 No. 649

City on new mission for peace

by Paul R Taylor

A NEW peace policy has been adopted by Manchester Council to mark the anniversary of the city de¬claring itself a nuclear-free zone.

The council agreed to promote so¬cial inclusion, social justice, good citizenship and peace between the people, cultures and faith communi¬ties it serves. It has distributed post¬ers and leaflets about the new policy.

Cllr Neil Swannick, council plan¬ning and environment chief, said: "Manchester has a long-standing commitment to peace and it is a cor¬nerstone on which Manchester's quality of life is founded.

"Peace cannot be taken for granted. It is hard earned. Those who lost their lives in the first and second world wars did so for peace - not more war. The new peace policy aims to promote the value of peace in our lives, and in our engagement with the wider world.

"I hope people will react positively and be motivated to do something in their community to make peace a lit¬tle more real for them and their neighbours."

On November 5, 1980, the city de¬clared itself a nuclear-free zone and led an international campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Film highlights Guantanamo disgrace

By Lawrence Smallman

Thursday 09 December 2004, 15:48 Makka Time, 12:48 GMT

Reigniting the debate over the morality of holding prisoners indefinitely and without charge, abritish filmmaker is to screen a documentary highlighting what he calls absolute disgrace that is Guantanamo.

Damien Mahoney’s This is Camp X-ray will be viewed for the first time ever at Manchester’ Dancehouse Theatre on Sunday and will be immediately followed with an open forum for the public to express their reactions.

Commissioned by the UHC arts collective, the documentary features the build up to the creation of a life-size working replica of the Guatanamo Bay detention centres where volunteers were imprisoned in October 2003.

A testimony to the shocked and bewildered responses of the local community, the film also explores the range of emotions felt by the volunteer detainees and the guards during the nine-day project.

’Blatant injustice’

Mahoney told Aljazeera.net on Thursday that his own feelings of the “blatant injustice of holding people without charge for years” has intensified.

“How can the US and UK preach about democracy in Iraq and elsewhere when they can deprive people found guilty of absolutely nothing the most simple of basic rights?

”We are not talking anything complicated here, I mean basic rights like … the right to know what they are charged of and a right to defend themselves in courts. It is absolutely disgusting,“ Mahoney said.

The dramatic prison reality of the estimated 600 held at Camp X-ray becomes all the more real with participation by the sisters of Jamal al-Harith, the Manchester local who was held without charge for two years before being released.

Inspiration for film

The film is based on Jai Redman’s This is Camp X-ray installtion, which became one of the most critical acclaimed art events to take place in 2003, receiving widespread international press coverage.

The controversial installation – a meticulous working replica of the original camp in Cuba – stood for nine days in Hulme, an inner suburbs of Manchester.

The nine volunteers incarcerated in the life-size camp symbolically represented the nine British detainees then held in Cube. Featuring live prisoners and guards, it ran 24 hours a day and stuck rigorously to the regime of the actual camp.

Mahoney said a few people who had never heard of Guantanamo Bay believe tat US soldiers really had set up a similar prison in Britain and had poured a shower of verbal abuse on the voluntaeers.

”Others were just shocked out how the American government can treat human beings,” he added. “But the scary thing is this type of thing is happening in the UK’s Belmarsh Prison too.”

Al-Harith’s story

Four years ago, Manchester resident Jamal al-Harith was in Afghanistan and was seized by the Taliban on suspicion of being a British spy.

After his incarceration in Kandahar he was freed by the Taliban, only to be arrested by US forces almost immediately. Now suspected of being a member of the Taliban, Jamal was flown to Cuba.

He remained there for two years. No charges were ever brought against him.

Al-Harith and three other former detainees in the UK are currently in preparation to have their cases against the US administration heard in the Federal Court in Washington DC.

The allegations against the administration include torture and other violations of human rights.

The US Federal Courts have also halted the proceedings of a controversial military commission involving an associate of Osama Bin Laden. This could stop all further court proceedings at the camp from taking place.

Aljazeera

Metro

FILM
This is Camp X-Ray

Amnesty International refers to it as a ‘human-right scandal’ and the otherwise studiously neutral International Committee Of The Red Cross has diplomatically raised concerns about ‘significant problems regarding conditions and treatment’ there. But Maerica still keeps hundreds of prisoners in Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay.

Jai Redman is part of the Manchester based UHC radical art and design collective. Last year, in the unlikely surrounds of Hulme, he created a working facsimile of the camp (pictured), containing nine prisoners (representing the nine British ‘detainees’) and guards.

Film-maker Damien Mahoney decided that this was something which needed recording so, suing a variety of cameras and borrowed equipment, he filmed the nine-day project. The resulting documentary, This is Camp X-Ray, receives its first public screening on Sunday at the Dancehouse Theatre.

interviewed in the film are two sisters of Jamal al-Harith, a Mancunian who was arrested in Afghanistan and who spent two years in captivity without ever being charged. Originally, he was going to provide an introductory voiceover to the film but, with his legal action on the US pending, had to withdraw.

For Mahoney, the film was a case of maintaining the public profile of something that flickers only occasionally on to the news media and thus easily fades from public consciousness. The issues raised here will be addressed in a panel discussion, which will follow the screening.

Rob Hayes

Sun, Dancehouse, Oxford Road, Central Manchester, 7.30pm, £3. Tel: 237 9753, www.uhc.org.uk