My placement at Mayday Rooms archive in London was oriented around one central question: what are the connections between anarchist thought, organising, and creative practice? Mayday Rooms is a self-described “archive, resource and safe haven for social movements, experimental and marginal cultures and their histories.” The collections vary hugely, containing archives of urban housing struggles, niche situationist publications and eco-anarchist ephemera. My concern was with combing through an immense amount of their material to try and figure out how anarchists have thought about creativity, how artists have thought about anarchism, and whether we might be able to figure out an anarchist theory of creativity. In doing so I learnt a huge amount about how the collection works, its various characters both within its pages and those populating its building, which also functions as a space for organising meetings, film screenings and performances.
My time on the placement was largely spent between archival research, learning about the catalogue and its various processes, meeting potential speakers for events and preparing written material. The experience was invaluable in learning how a radical archive operates, from the more expected or mundane tasks, such as digitizing materials, to the care work that goes into facilitating a space that is accessible and welcoming to users. I’ve thought a lot about archives from a conceptual and critical framework through my research network ‘Ambivalent Archives’, and this placement allowed me to see many of these ideas put into practice, with all the emotional as well as physical labour this entails. I have a huge admiration for my temporary colleagues, who manage to create a welcoming space while ordering printer ink and filling out the funding applications which enable it to remain open.
As well as writing a forthcoming piece for Mayday Rooms regular slot in DOPE magazine (a mutual aid magazine given to free to street vendors who keep all the profits), I’ve been organising a series of events, which will explore my primary question with various people who’ve donated to Mayday Rooms. One of the highlights of this process was getting to meet artist Stefan Szczelkun, whose donations relating to the experimental music/art group ‘The Scratch Orchestra’, I’d consulted as an researcher over two years ago and subsequently written an article about. It was a joy to finally talk to him about the objects I’d thought about for so long. Happily he’s going to be the first speaker at my upcoming event series.
My advice to any prospective placement-seekers is to find an organisation or institution which shares your values. It was a truly transformative experience working in a space so oriented to radical politics, and so alien from the often-exclusive high walls of academia. Knowledge is made in a plethora of ways, often outside of the institutions which claim it for their own. It was an honour to have this insight into an alternative way of doing things, which I will carry into all my organisational practices in the future.
