It is becoming more and more difficult to get to the facts of the matter. The long-awaited release of government records arrive blackened out — heavily redacted and illegible. Declassified documents, verifying war crimes and clandestine military operations, turn damp and moth-infested in archival warehouses and basements. Freedom-of-Information requests are rejected on grounds of research costs and lack of specificity. These procedural roadblocks exist whilst the rightwing pundits often enjoy boundless informational and epistemic freedom in a post-truth climate.

Given that the act of reading declassified/redacted documents and writing FOI requests is a complicated and exhausting process, the proposed workshop encourages attendees to refine their FOI writing skills — with attention paid to the specific conventions of EU, US, and UK FOI frameworks. The workshop will also provide attendees an opportunity to read a range of recently declassified materials collectively, opening up the space to communal interpretation and analysis. Through an interactive program, we will consider the forms and genres of classification, attend to particular strategies of gatekeeping, blackboxing and obfuscation, and finally, explore recent and emerging forms of ‘epistemic’ violence and alethocide (the deliberate destruction of truth). The workshop will be followed by a lecture on the writing and study of history in ‘redacted times’.

In the 1990s, living in a tree on the route of a planned bypass was where it was at. Everyone spent all their time down tunnels, climbing on top of diggers and then dancing all night at outdoor raves. Well, OK, that wasn’t everyone and not every day was like that, but… the British ecological direct action movement of the 1990s pioneered tree villages and tunnels as tactics of resistance against the destruction of nature by road building, quarrying and a spreading tide of concrete as well as resisting deforestation, car culture and genetic engineering. Join us for a full day of talks, presentations, screenings and archival workshops to explore what we can learn from the environmental direct action movement of the 1990s and early 2000s

On the day, together with past members of direct action environmental groups, we will delve deeper into the political and social context in which this movement emerged, untie the interwoven strands of political movements, ideologies and subcultures that came together under the banner of radical ecology and reflect on the noisy defeats and silent victories that came out of it.

The second part of the day will be devoted to activist media and forms of remembering. Focusing on the history of the campaign against genetically modified crops, recent efforts to digitise 20 years of Earth First! Action Update newsletter and the creation of the online platform Resistance! Archive, we will reflect on the value of independent media and radical archives and how they can help us fill important gaps in collective memory.

There are breaks planned throughout the day and a shared dinner in the evening, with food inspired by the eco-anarchist archive. We will wrap up the day with a selection of classic activist films from the 1990s and 2000s, and some drinks and music till late!!

This collection forms part of a wider project on the Ecological Movement, generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Keep an eye out for the other collections we will be launching later in the year.

Creative Anarchy’ is an event series exploring the relationships between anarchist thought, organising, and creative practice. Resulting from a placement at the Mayday Rooms, researcher Ruari Paterson-Achenbach will host a series of discussions around materials in the archive, alongside creative practitioners, trying to explore what it might mean to ‘create anarchically’. What might it mean to consider creative practice a form of direct action, or vice-versa? How can artists incorporate the principles of mutual aid into their work? Is the notion of ‘art’ compatible with anarchist thought? Across these three events, we will answer these questions together using historical examples, with all the possibilities and limitations they might offer us.

For the first session, Ruari will be in discussion with Stefan Szczelkun, artist and former member of the Scratch Orchestra. They will focus particularly on a performance by the Scratch Orchestra at the 1971 Art Spectrum exhibition where they collectively built a cottage, “conceived as a place to play – insulated from the context of ‘high art’”, based on Szczelkun’s designs. Using materials from the Mayday Rooms collection pertaining to the Cottage performance and Szczelkun’s work more broadly, they will think about the possibilities for conceiving of creative practice as a form of direct action, and the particular kinds of political imagination that can be worked towards when making something together.

Future events in the series:

Situationism Revisited – 5th March 2026 7 – 9pm

Creativity and Mutual Aid  – 9th April 2026 7 – 9pm