Below is the latest outline of plans for the summer – with more to come. To subscribe to the Freedom Summer newsletter, email info@manifestoclub.com
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- MAY
Thursday 14 May – Manifesto Clubnight, Launch of Freedom Summer: What Next for Freedom? Our May Club Night will be the official start of Freedom Summer, a pan-European series of events standing up against the Hyperregulation of everyday life. Following on from the discussion begun by libertarians and freedom campaigners at the Convention on Modern Liberty in February, we will kick-start Freedom Summer by asking What Next for Freedom? What are the key limits to freedom today, and how should we begin to organise against them? We have invited a range of civil libertarians from different campaigns and perspectives to debate the key challenged to freedom in contemporary society.
Tuesday 19 May – Freedom of the Streets? Booze and the regulation of social life – Salon, Huddersfield – Josie Appleton will speak to the Huddersfield Salon about bans on happy hours and public drinking, and what this means for social life. Partner campaign: Manifesto Club Campaign Against Booze Bans.
Wednesday 20 May – International Academic Freedom Day
The campaigning organisation Academics for Academic Freedom has declared 20 May ‘International Academic Freedom Day’. This coincides with birthday of John Stuart Mill, erstwhile free speech campaigner and author of On Liberty.
Academics for Academic Freedom is hosting a keynote seminar from 2-4pm on 20 May at Oxford University. Speakers at ‘Understanding Academic Freedom’ include Roy Harris, Steve Fuller and Dennis Hayes. Ann Mroz, editor of the Times Higher Education magazine, will chair. Full details here.This event will also include the launch of a Special Edition British Journal of Education Studies on Academic Freedom.
There will also be a meeting in London, with Kenan Malik, broadcaster and author of ‘From Fatwa to Jihad, the Rushdie Affair and its Legacy’, and Dolan Cummings, Research Director, Institute of Ideas. Details can be found on the IAFD Facebook group.
The Manifesto Club is delighted to be a headline sponsor of Academic Freedom Day.
Wednesday 27 May – Blueprint project on Public Space
As part of Freedom Summer, the Manifesto Club is working on a project with Blueprint, the architecture and design magazine, to explore how free our public spaces are.
Volunteers performed various activities in public spaces – from drinking alcohol to playing football – to see if there was any response from police or other officials, and photographed what happened for a feature in the magazine. The photoshoot took place in London on Thursday 28 May – and the results will be published on 4 July.
- JUNE
Tuesday 2 June – Freedom in Europe, Prague
The Prague-based freedom group, Everything is Political (EiP), is holding a Freedom Summer/Euro Election Special at Pink Floyd Café – a discussion about the erosion of freedom across Europe, and a discussion about what DIY politics could and should be about. Full outline here.
Wednesday 3 June – Cabaret Without Borders, London – This will be a convivial evening of satirical artistic interventions, passionate political rhetoric and personal testimonies at the East London gallery, Rochelle School, celebrating free movement for all and opposition to the Home Office’s new Visa controls for visiting artists and academics.
Talks and performances include : Harold Offeh (performance intervention), Susannah Hewlett (performance intervention), Mark McGowan with Jaemini Kim (performance intervention), Cyril LePetit (sound piece & photograph/poster based on a project with Asylum Seekers), Andrew Mitchelson (travels to Kurdistan-Iraq), Josie Appleton (on why free movement matters).
Partner campaign: Manifesto Club’s Visiting Artists Petition. Supported by A Foundation and Artsadmin.
Sunday 21 June – Sports Day Against Vetting, London – The Manifesto Club’s Campaign Against Vetting will host an informal sports day in a park in central London, for local adults, parents and children. This is a day for fun and furious competition – and also to celebrate adult volunteering and informal community sports. No CRB checks required: just bring your trainers and sports clothes. Partner Campaign: Campaign Against Vetting. Partner organisations: IoI Parents’ Forum; WorldWrite
22/23 June – Save our Pubs and Clubs – The Manifesto Club is delighted to be supporting Save Our Pubs, the alliance against the smoking ban and other forms of regulation of pub life. Two excellent launch events put the case for a more commonsense approach to smoking regulation.
Thursday 25 June – Debate on Booze Bans, Brighton – Brighton Manifesto Club members are challenging the city council to a debate on its booze control zones, which mean frequent confiscation of alcohol from city residents. This event will also launch a report, based on interviews with Brighton residents, showing the impact of these alcohol control rules on the life of the city.
Saturday 27 June – Picnic Against Booze Bans, Brighton beach – Brighton members of the Manifesto Club will hold a picnic to protest against the city council’s regulation of drinking and social life, and to speak out for Brighton as a free and fun city.
- JULY
Thursday 2 July – Manifesto Clubnight – Attention Please Launch. Last year the Manifesto Club Launched Attention Please, an online photo album which captured the unnecessary, absurd and patronising safety warnings in public space. We asked our members and supporters to send examples of the kinds of ludicrous signage we all encounter in our everyday lives. By turning our cameras on questionable safety warnings, we began to reveal the extent to which safety regulations affect the look and feel of public space around the world. We are delighted to now bring a selection of those contributions together in published form. Attention Please will be launched at a Club Night on Thursday 2 July. Project convenor and author Tom Mower will introduce the project and a selection of submissions. He will be joined by other speakers to reflect upon the regulation of public space, and what we can do about it.
Sunday 26 July – Freedom to Move, Belfast – The Home Office recently introduced new restrictions on international artists and academics visiting the UK for talks, temporary exhibitions, concerts or artists’ residencies. Visitors now have to submit to a series of arduous and expensive procedures to get their visa, and then more bureaucratic controls when they are in the UK. Continuing to raise awareness and encourage discussion around issues of artistic freedom and mobility, Belfast Exposed invites you to join artist and writer Raimi Gbadamosi as he investigates questions of freedom, mobility and the arts.
The talk will be recorded and made available for download, as a first step towards making the participants of the session mobile. Participants can also bring their travel documents, and photographs taken whilst abroad. Partner campaign: Manifesto Club’s Visiting Artists Petition.
- SEPTEMBER
10-13 September – Freedom Fest, Paris – Manifesto Club is a partner at the Libertarian International conference in Paris, which is hosted by Manifesto Club member and head of Libertarian International, Christian Michel.
24 September – Venice and the Republican Idea of Freedom, Venice Dr Dominic Standish will lead a discussion on the past, present and future of republican ideals.