The Feminist Lecture Program is excited to announce their Summer term of amazing online weekly feminist lectures!
We welcome guest lecturers Lucy Brownson and Matilde Manicardi to explore Housing Activism in Queer and Feminist Communities in BUILDING IT OURSELVES, BUILDING IT TOGETHER: A HISTORY OF QUEER AND FEMINIST COMMUNITY-BUILDING THROUGH HOUSING ACTIVISM
CLASS DESCRIPTION
In urban centres across the UK, once-thriving pockets of grassroots LGBTQ+ and feminist activism have been all but eradicated, replaced with generic new-build apartments, artisanal bakeries, and craft beer pubs aplenty. These radical spaces may be barely perceptible today – either demolished, redeveloped, or gentrified beyond recognition – but in the 1970s and 1980s, feminist and queer squats and housing co-operatives provided the material and spatial infrastructures for homegrown community-building, political organising, and collective resistance.
From the late 1960s onward, derelict Victorian terraces scheduled for demolition in major cities like London, Glasgow and Manchester were reclaimed as communal homes for artists, activists, intellectuals and countercultural figures who, either by necessity or by choice, embraced collective living in the face of landlordism, years-long social housing waiting lists, and the heteropatriarchal curve of private home ownership. In these spaces, there was no distinct boundary between the personal and the political: in the course of a day, what was originally a dining room might serve as a banner-making workshop, a crèche, and an impromptu women’s centre. For lesbian feminists, marginalised within both the Women’s Liberation Movement and the broader gay rights movement, squats provided much-needed spaces to build their own communities on their own terms. In meting out domestic labour, caring duties and building maintenance equally, squatters and co-op tenants also forged new possibilities for reimagining conventional hierarchies of gender and the family.
Taking as its starting point the women-only squats that proliferated around East and Central London, this lecture will trace a longer history of feminist and queer housing struggles around the UK, locating collective housing arrangements as key sites of community organising. It will explore the social and political forces that turned these informal squats into legitimate, registered housing co-operatives in the 1980s and 1990s, and the afterlives of these co-operatives today. Drawing extensively from archival materials and the testimonies of women and queer people who choose to live collectively and intentionally today, this talk aims to connect intentional, collective housing to reproductive labour, grassroots educational campaigns, the abolition of the 'traditional' family, and the fight for LGBTQ+ rights.
Many DIY feminist housing spaces have long since been swept away by the aggressive landlordism and gentrification that now define our cityscapes – so where do their legacies reside? And how have some collective housing projects survived, and even thrived under late capitalism? This talk concludes with a consideration of the lessons to be taken from the history of queer and feminist communal living in Britain, including the radical possibilities and anticapitalist, abolitionist imaginaries that they represent.
ABOUT OUR LECTURER
Lucy Brownson is a researcher, feminist community organiser, and writer based in Sheffield. Taking Chatsworth House as its site of investigation, Lucy’s doctoral thesis explores the history of archival practices at the intersection of gender and class. She is a co-organiser of Sheffield Feminist Archive, a community archive documenting feminist histories and grassroots activism. Lucy works at UCL as a Lecturer in the Department of Information Studies. In the past she has worked as a project coordinator at the V&A Research Institute, where she lead a collaborative project exploring National Trust properties as sites of public history and public benefit. She has also previously undertaken research residencies at Glasgow Women’s Library and the British School at Rome.
Matilde Manicardi is an Italian-born cultural writer and arts professional based in London. She holds an MSc in media, communications & cultural studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she researched contemporary examples of intentional communal living in the UK and the role of archival mediation in reshaping social imaginaries around housing.
X: @lucy_brownson and @matildemanicar2
UPCOMING SESSIONS WITH THE FEMINIST LECTURE PROGRAM
Monday 20th May
Lucy Brownson (she/her) and Matilde Manicardi (she/her)
Building It Ourselves, Building It Together: A History of Queer and Feminist Community-Building Through Housing Activism
Monday 27th Mat
Jasmine Reimer (she/her)
Feminist Monsters: Transformation and the New Weird Divine
Monday 3rd June
Nicola Hill (she/her)
Visions, Veils And Virgins: A Short History of Epilepsy Through the Lives of Extraordinary Women
Monday 10th June
Kate Robinson (she/her)
An Introduction to Textiles as a Feminist Discourse
Monday 17th June
Joanna Sperryn-Jones (she/her)
Breaking As Making: Women Artists Employing Breaking, Violence and Destruction
Monday 24th June
Hettie Judah (she/her)
On Art And Motherhood: The Construction of Perfection and its Feminist Subversion
Monday 1st July
Luisa-Maria MacCormack (she/her)
Ana Mendieta: Soil, Dirt and the Body as Art
Monday 8th July
Janine Francois (she/her/they/them)
Oppositional Gaze: Black Feminist Photography as Feminist Resistance
Stay tuned in to be the first to hear about our Autumn term!
RECORDING
A recording of the lecture will be sent out by The Feminist Lecture Program after the event finishes, within 2 hours of the end of the class. This email will also contain any resources/reading list the lecturer shares.
Please add hello@feministlectureprogram.com to your email contacts to ensure you receive the recording as expected.
Please note that the recording will expire 7 days after sending.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN
Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class. We suggest a donation of £20, however, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we can continue to offer our sessions on a donation basis.
MORE FLP…
Can’t get enough? The Feminist Lecture Program has our very own digital archive, where you can find some of the best past lectures from our back catalogue to rent and watch ON DEMAND. Check out our ever growing collection here: https://thefeministlectureprogram.vhx.tv/
Follow us on Instagram @thefeministlectureprogram
And check out our sustainable merch from FLP Studio at https://feministlectureprogram.com/shop & @flp__studio
And that's it!
We're really looking forward to you joining us x