The International History From Below Network is a diverse organisation of historytellers, historical agitators, artists, independent archivists, history groups, political archaeologists etc.
Peter Box and Roger Ball will be explaining all about it on Monday 11 May 2015 at 5.30pm at Manchester Metropolitan University.
It was founded in 2012 in Barcelona to reflect a growing worldwide movement of historical activism and public interest in radical history, and to build an alternative, non-academic resource for the production and transmission of oppositional forms of history.
As radical history becomes increasingly popular, more and more activists, from squatters and footballers to street artists and curators, are making the transition to historians, merging past struggles, new technology and street culture to build new and surprising narratives. International collaboration also helps practitioners understand history from below in a wider context instead of merely via local fragments; not through making simplistic analogies but through understanding repeated cycles and patterns of struggles.
From these international collective observations we can recognise connections, draw inspiration from the courage and imagination of past actors (for better outcome in today’s struggles), and help to raise questions that encourage others to delve further into histories from below. We want to celebrate past victories, instead of just mourning the defeats.
History as subculture and self-organised do-it-yourself practice is about ‘commoning’ and ‘levelling’; promoting the sharing of resources and countering the idea that history is solely the province of professional historians. We aim to find new practices and arenas for radical history beyond the austere mood and sensibility of the academic lecture and conference. Mixing working class militancy with the emotive force of street art and theatre, dry GPS data with the excitement of international solidarity, and humour with benign social history, the network wants to promote a new generation of DIY historians from below, and hopefully make way for the next.
Monday 11 May 2015 at 5.30pm in Lecture Theatre 4, Geoffrey Manton Building, Manchester Metropolitan University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6LL. All welcome! Please book your free tickets here.
This talk is part of the ‘Future Histories’ strand of the Humanities in Public Festival, supported by MMU’s Institute of Humanities and Social Science Research, which sees a range of talks, debates, fairs, tours, and other events and activities, all of which are open to the public.
