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Social Centres are community spaces. They are buildings which are used for a range of disparate activities, which can be linked only by virtue of being not-for-profit. They might be organizing centres for local activities. They might provide support networks for minority groups such as prisoners, or refugees. Often they provide a home for initiatives such as cafes, free shops, public computer labs, graffiti murals, legal collectives and free housing for travellers. The services are determined by both the needs of the community in which the social centre is based and the skills which the participants have to offer.
Social centres are tend to be in large buildings and thus can host activist meetings, concerts, bookshops, dance performances and art exhibitions. Social centres are common in many European cities, sometimes in squats, sometimes in rented buildings.
Free spaces
Social centres provide a place to socialise in a bar, cafe or music venue.They also provide access to alternative, hard to access information through projects such as libraries, infoshops, film nights and talks. Other activities organised might include events, meetings, exhibitions, classes and workshops on a range of topics.
The projects are run on an entirely voluntary basis by the people involved, who are neither charity workers nor social workers. The projects are run in the spirit of co-operation, solidarity and mutual aid.
Whilst every individual case is different, most centres are run on the basis of non-hierarchical consensus decision-making. Politically most centres lean to the left, being anarchist, autonomist or communist in viewpoint.
"Social centres are abandoned buildings - warehouses, factories, military forts, schools - that have been occupied by squatters and transformed into cultural and political hubs, explicitly free from both the market, and from state control... Though it may be hard to tell at first, the social centres aren't ghettos, they are windows — not only into another way to live, disengaged from the state, but also into a new politics of engagement. And yes, it's something maybe beautiful." (Klein, 2001).
Different to Community Centres
Social Centres are distinguished from Community centers in the particular relationship social centres have toward the state and governmental institutions. While "communtiy centre" is a term used to describe any center of "public" activity, occasionally sanctioned by the state or private interests such as a corporation, social centres are characterized by their quasi-legal and sometimes illegal existence, their direct subsistence on the community that supports it and their political vision vis-a-vis the state.
Italy
The social centre concept has taken root most successfully in Italy, beginning in the 1970s, where large factories and even abandoned military barracks have been "appropriated" for use as social centers. There are today dozens of social centers in Italy. The historic relationship between the Italian social centers and the Autonomia movement (specifically Lotta Continua) has been described briefly in Storming Heaven, Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomous Marxism, by Steve Wright.
Social centres in Italy continue to be centres of political / social dissent. Notably the Tute Bianche and Ya Basta Association developed directly out of the social center movement, and many social forums take place in social centers.
The Netherlands
Since the Sixties there is a long and continuous tradition of squatted social centres in the Netherlands, particularly in the capital, Amsterdam.
In Leiden the Eurodusnie collective provide a service to the community by running a free shop and a cafe/bar.
In Den Haag there was the De Blauwe Aanslag, which was used for 23 years.
In Amsterdam, the ASCII centre has been providing free internet to all its 'customers' since 1997 and is now mutating into a hacklab. The Overtoom301 squat has a cafe, a non-profit printshop and a music venue. Vrankrijk is open seven days a week, hosting a range of projects including a kraakspreekuur (squatters' advice hour), a bar, a queer night and benefit events. The Occii is a busy music venue and children's theatre.
In Rotterdam, the Poortgebouw hosts a twice weekly cafe on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Spain
In Barcelona, there is a tight network of squatted social centres which publishes a weekly newspaper detailing activities and news. The paper is fly-posted on the doors of the squats themselves. As a result of the relaxed attitude of shop-owners towards dumpster diving there are free food cafes every night, often vegan. Other squats offer free music or free internet.
The United Kingdom
In the UK there is an active Social Centre Network, which aims to link up "the growing number of autonomous spaces to share resources, ideas and information" *. This network draws a very clear distinction between the many autonomous social centres around the country on one side and the state or large NGO-sponsored community centres on the other. Despite there being a tradition of large squats, the recent upsurge in social centres has come about in the last five years.
In London, places include the RampART social centre, the London Action Resource Centre, the Square, the Freedom Club and the 56a Crampton Street infoshop.
Elsewhere in the United Kingdom, there are centres in Oxford (the OARC), Leeds (the Common Place , Bristol (Kebele), Nottingham (Sumac), Bradford (the 1 in 12), Manchester (the Basement), Sheffield (the Matilda), Brighton (the Cowley Club) and Birmingham (the Cottage of Content Social Centre).
See also
References
- Klein, N. Fences and Windows, Picador USA , 2001 ISBN 0312307993.
- "The Social Centre Network" as described by the London Action Resource Centre.
External links
"Social center"