The Glasgow Social Centre Winter Solstice Party 21/12/12

The Winter Solstice is fast approaching, and this year The Glasgow Social Centre brings you an evening of food, comedy & music to celebrate that we've all made it half way through the darkness of winter. The People's Kitchen is providing a meal from 6.30pm. We'll have comedy from The Laugh Out Loud Club Compéred by Sarah Cassidy, and live music from Looking For Lola, Seeds Of Thought, & Ceylan Hay.
Entry is £5/ £4 (Students) / £3 (Unwaged)
Alcohol is BYOB ( a small corkage fee applies)

Join us as we take collective refuge from the commercialism of Christmas & Celebrate the Winter Solstice.

Garnethill Multicultural Centre, 21 Rose Street, Glasgow.
Facebook Event

Doors open 6.30pm
Food from 7pm
Comedy from 7.30pm
Music from 9.00pm
Close 11pm

Cheers,

The Glasgow Social Centre Collective.

Lindela Figlan In the Glasgow Social Centre Friday 2nd November

The Glasgow date of Lindela Figlan's UK tour - he was brought over for the London Anarchist Bookfair as a member of Abahlali baseMjondolo - the Shack Dwellers' Movement.

Abahlali baseMjondolo only formed in 2005, but by using popular democracy, direct action tactics and fighting on issues directly relevant to themselves as shackdwellers this genuinely grassroots organisation has grown to be a strong and successful movement.

Event is free, however we will have a voluntary and anonymous collection towards

travel costs for Lindela, with anything leftover donated to Abahlali baseMjondolo.

All welcome. Abusive and oppressive behaviour will not be tolerated.

BYOB for social afterwards in the new Glasgow Social Centre (GSC) space.

Meeting hosted by Glasgow AFed with assistance and cooperation from other individuals. We are especially happy to be hosting Lindela in the new GSC, which is open every Tuesday and Friday evening. More details on their website linked below.

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Lindela Figlan was born in Flagstaff in Pondoland in 1970 what was then the Transkei bantustan. His father, a mineworker, had been a militant in the Pondo revolt of 1960. Lindela was politically active in high school and continued to be involved in politics when he moved to the shanty towns of Durban in 1998 to work as a security guard.

He joined Abahlali baseMjondolo when the movement was formed in 2005. What excited him most about Abahlali baseMjondolo was the idea, on which the movement was founded, that poor people should think for themselves rather than always relying on other people to think for them. Lindela has held various elected positions in the movement and is currently its Deputy President. He has been subject to serious and ongoing intimidation as a result of his political work with Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Lindela is very critical of trade unions arguing that “there to exploit. It is a double exploitation – we are exploited by the bosses at the companies and then we are also exploited by the union bosses.” His politics is based on a commitment to immediate equality. He says that: “The only thing that I believe is that all people are equal. No matter where you come from, no matter how you look, no matter how poor you are or what your gender is we are all equal. Abahlali baseMjondolo has trust in the people. The movement insists that everyone must be respected no matter who they are. That is why I joined Abahlali baseMjondolo. It is not wise to think that somebody else must think for your future. In Abahali baseMjondolo everybody is equal.

Everybody joined the movement to emancipate themselves from oppression and the difficulties of the world. You do not join Abahali baseMjondolo for someone else to emancipate you.”

There is a fuller biography online at: http://abahlali.org/node/9214

GSC launch at Garnethill Multicultural Centre

Coming up....

We have a social centre!  Glasgow Social Centre will be in the basement of GMC on Tuesdays and some Fridays 6-10pm.  Come along to find out what's going on and get involved!

Govan PoP-Up

The Glasgow Social Centre PoP's Up in Govan.

This Weekend the GSC is holding a PoP-UP Event at the pearce institute In Govan.

Friday: Film Showing: Wasteland 6.30pm

"Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores”—self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Director Lucy Walker (DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, BLINDSIGHT and COUNTDOWN TO ZERO) and co-directors João Jardim and Karen Harley have great access to the entire process and, in the end, offer stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit."

Empire:
“Beautifully captured, this portrait of a very proud and resourceful underclass rightly tugged the heartstrings of everyone who saw it.”

New York Times:
“We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials,” Tião, an impoverished Brazilian catadore, or trash picker, declares to a talk-show host in Lucy Walker’s inspiring documentary “Waste Land.


Saturday: Govan Together,

You are warmly invited to the final event of the Govan Together partnership. Events throughout the day to include:

- Seed Planting
-Film Screening
-Workshops
-Community Visioning
-Torchlight Procession

The evening will climax with a reconvening of the Parliament on Doomster Hill at Water Row.
http://www.facebook.com/events/355019111216489/

Sunday: Banner Making, Sunday Lunch & "This Space Is Your Space" Discussion

-Banner Making: 11am

Have a cause, a group or campaign you'd like to tell the world about? Get involved in our banner making workshop. Lets all pitch in together! (Paints & Some Materials Available)

-Lunch: 2pm-3pm

-"This Space Is Your Space": 3pm-5pm
We're aiming to plan a series of PoP-Up Social Centres throughout 2012, and we'd like to know what you want, bring suggestions for workshops, talks, film screenings, or anything else you're passionate about.
This Space Is Your Space!

Occupy Glasgow Will also be in the Pearce Institute all and we STRONGLY encourage you to get involved with their discussions.
Occupy The Future!
https://www.facebook.com/events/276527359088996/

Photos from the Pop-up Social Centre at Kinning Park

Hello!  Thanks for everyone who came along and joined in with the Pop-up social centre at Kinning Park Complex.  It was a magic weekend with food, craft, roller skating, talks, dancing, bike fixing and we left them with a garden!  Here are some photos.  If you would like to get involved please email us or come along to the CCA Electron Club on Mondays at 7pm.

Dr Bike this Sunday

On Sunday at the Pop-Up Social Centre we will be bringing you Dr. Bike.

Bring along your bicycle for fixing from 2-4pm at the Kinning Park Complex.

Pop Up Social Centre Launch

Launch of the Pop Up Social Centre 

@ Kinning Park Complex.

Over the weekend of the 10-12th February, the KP will see the first Pop-up Social Centre. For more details of what the popup is read on. Here's the line-up:

Friday 6.30 - 9.45 talks, discussions and film (details below)

7pm: Urban Activism and the Commons

7.20pm: Kinning Park Complex story

7.40pm: Sustaining Activism over the Long Term

8.30pm: Film: The Garden

Facebook Event

Urban Activism and the Commons

Sometimes it seems that our city is drowning under the torrential logic of capital. A councillor’s retirement package amounts to more money than many of us will make in a working lifetime; private developers and monopoly landlords gorge on public assets fed to them by local government; and the ruling parties continue to propagate the most insulting sound-bite of the current crisis: “We’re all in this together”. B*llsh*t, we’re not all in this together, the political, industrial and financial elites are doing very well on our labour, time and anxieties.

Stopping the rot starts wherever we find ourselves. There is no big secret to enacting change. The knowledge and skills required to end the rule of the few resides within each of us. Tapping into that knowledge is itself a learning process that takes place in the here-and-now, not sometime in the future. Our communities are worth more than any number of pound, euro or dollar signs. We realise this worth when we come together and share what we have. This ‘coming together’ is the essence of the Glasgow Social Centre (GSC).

From the 10th to the 12th of February, the GSC invites you to take part in a series of events spanning across the coming year in various locations around the city. These events, known as Pop-Up Social Centres, are intended to increase our collective confidence through sharing our stories and ideas. These events are intended to produce practical actions that defy the possessive logic of capitalist greed by creating collective ways of being-in-the-world.

Saturday 12am-10pm Roller disco, food, entertainment, stalls and more!

12-8pm People's Cafe
3-6pm   Roller Skating

6-10pm Acoustic Cafe and pot luck. For pot luck bring along anything you want to share: food, tricks, games, music, instruments, ball pools etc.

Also stalls during the day and free shop! Bring or take clothes for free.

Facebook Event

Roller Disco Disco, Food & Chat

The ‘Social’ in Social Centre is crucial to the ethos of the social centre movement. Theatre, poetry, music, dance and roller-skating discos: we use these mediums to tell our stories of love, adventure and resistance; we use these mediums to imagine new ways of being-in-the-world; and we use these mediums to simply make an arse of ourselves.

Saturday is about roller-skating, food and fighting capitalism. Saturday is about coming along to share a song, a joke, a story, some cake, a recipe; or a piece of utterly useless information about clocks, owls, coat hangers or sand paper. If, for the time being, you’d like to hold on to such particulars, then that’s fine too: your company is more than enough.  

If you can, please bring along guitars, trumpets, mandolins, drums, shakers, wobble boards, sport socks, bean bags, post-its and egg-timers (the fancier, the better).

Sunday 11-6pm Gardening, craft and bikes

11-3pm Gardening workshop/skillshare

2-4pm   Dr. Bike from the Bike Station (bring your broken bike!)

2-5pm   Craft workshop

Facebook Event

Gardening, Dr Bike & Craft

My mate gave me his old racer when he bought himself a brand spank’n new Rally Grifter. The racer is gubbed and in need of some serious attention. On Sunday 12^th February at the Pop-Up Social Centre our friends The Glasgow Bike Station are running a bike maintenance workshop. The winter is particularly harsh on our two-wheeler, ten-speeder dream machines: pop along for some Tender Lovin Bike Care. I’ll see you all there with ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ (that’s my new racers name).

Other friends will be there too. We will be running a workshop on raised garden beds. Dominate your vegetable patch without backache. Erect a raised garden bed on your urban plot and let the worms work their magic.

Sunday is about skill sharing. It’s about learning practical stuff with friends. As well as the above, the Glasgow Social Centre will be putting on an up-cycling workshop where you can learn how to turn bike tire inner tubes into wallets, purses and maybe even dinner jackets. There are all sorts of practical and fantastical things you can do with a wee bit of junk and imagination. We’ll let you what junk to bring over the coming week.

For directions please visit http://www.kinningparkcomplex.org/directions/