Social Centres
The Creation of Liberated Zones - The Italian Lesson
Though it might be hard to imagine in Australia, in Italy, communists, anarchists, ravers, punks, hackers, and artists have seized vast, abandoned factories and forts, boarded-up schools and churches and transformed them into cinemas, concert halls, bars, squats and art galleries. Far from being decrepit pits, Italy’s social centres are among the country’s most vital cultural institutions. The French newspaper Le Monde in a story about the phenomenon has even called them “the Italian cultural jewel”.
Scattered, sometimes even hidden, around the country, Italy’s estimated 150 social centres are governed by a basic philosophy: anything goes. The work created as free spaces, autonomous zones free of government interference where folks should feel free to indulge in whatever they like, a stark contrast to the extreme regulation of most Australian social gathering places. Some are draped with spectacular works of art, while others provide shelter and services for new immigrants. For many young people, especially in small and medium-sized towns, social centres provide an ideal hangout, and the only alternative to expensive discos.
The social centre movement began in 1975 when some radical communists snuck into a dilapidated building in a poor neighbourhood in Milan, cleaned the place up and issued a manifesto. The neighbourhoods lacked a preschool, kindergarten, library, vocational school, medical clinic and spaces for organising meetings and concerts. They invited city officials and towns people to their social centre called Leoncavallo. Eventually, they opened a carpentry workshop, a sewing school, and theatre and other facilities. The centre, Italy’s most famous, has been shut down, and forced to change location several times. Today, however, it is a giant structure covered with magnificent graffiti, containing a concert room, a disco, a skateboard ramp, a centre to help immigrants and several bars. The folks who run it are into hip-hop, and Public Enemy chose to play there rather than in a traditional concert venue. What are social centres? Social centres organise to create new worlds, new possibilities, real leisure and social alternatives to wage labour and centralised power. Although more established in countries like Italy and Spain, the concept of social centres as a political strategy is taking off all over the world. Social centres are occupied (squatted) buildings. They are usually funded day-to-day by donations given by the users, and they will often raise funds through benefit nights such as gigs or cafes.
The popularity of social centres stems from a need for space, both political and social, outside the domination of capital. The construction of a new ‘political space’, an extra-institutional public sphere within which can emerge a common action, interest and identity among people, in all their differences.
As more and more of our time becomes capitalised with the commodification of everyday life in the new “social factory” it becomes vital to create places where people aren’t judged by their ability to consume or to produce, where real human discussion and action can take place. As the idea of social centres spreads we can begin posing serious alternatives to capitalism and wage-labour and start creating a new world in the shell of the old.
Social Centres in Australia
The social centre movement in Australia is a new concept. The most visible display began in earnest with a push from a group of activists galvanised by the example of the Broadway squats, Sydney 2000. The Social Centre Autonomous Network (SCAN) formed as a collection of self organised groups who make decisions through the network to occupy and organise around squatted social centres. SCAN aim to liberate property from real estate loop-holes, where owners sit on their properties, letting them rot away. SCAN wants to make spaces outside the boredom of work and consumption — spaces for creativity and social change beyond standard protests, like petitions and rallies.
SCAN acknowledges that any space appropriated in this country is already occupied territory, forcefully stolen from indigenous communities, and that indigenous people are the most marginalised through the politics of property. As both national and international space becomes increasingly militarised and restricted, the prevention of indigenous communities from free movement within their own land is echoed in the forced detention of those who cross borders without state sanction. In creating a space outside of the state, SCANners are attempting to resist border control and militarised policing.
Globally, and in Sydney the activity of squatted social centres ranges from providing alternatives to the monopoly of the money system (ie. the World Bank), to pursue campaigns such as local anti-racism, anti-fascism/police, anti-border control and housing equity.
SCANners appropriate spaces outside the control of the state and market for info shops, gallery space, free/cheap cafes and bars, independent film nights, forums, theatre, parties and free recycled multimedia access centres. SCAN exists to demonstrate the capacity of people to organise themselves outside the systems of state and market which increasingly control our lives. By providing our own social and political spaces we are empowered to express marginalised voices and take control of our communities.
Social Centres in Sydney - Trocadero, Newtown
On November 4, 2001, a group of 30 or so SCANners occupied an empty church-owned building on King Street. Later that evening police and fire brigade broke through the barricades and evicted the squat.
The building had been occupied at 8am that morning. The group of squatters had been meeting and planning the occupation, they aimed to transform the building into a squatted social centre with spaces for political organising, an infoshop, cinema, doof/band space, art space, copwatch, and Food Not Bombs kitchen. Neighbours alerted police soon after the occupation began, then police twice tried unsuccessfully to access the building. Later that night, the police returned with the fire brigade under the direction of the local conservative church. They used hydraulic cutters and axes to smash through the front doors and enter the building. No one was arrested in the eviction though church members did try to deliver a sermon to everyone on the importance of private property.
The building had been empty for almost 8 years. It had once been a roller skating rink and theatre. At the time of publication the Trocadero is still rotting away, while the wealthy church decides who to sell it to.
The Grand Midnight Star Social Centre
The Grand Midnight Star, Homebush was occupied by SCAN from February to December 2002. It was a vibrant non-residential space, set up to provide a venue for gigs — many doofs, punk, hip-hop, and jazz benefit gigs were held there, introducing people to the possibilities of occupied and autonomous spaces.
A pirate cinema, the oPeRaTiNg tHeAtRe, screened unusual and rare films, including Hindi films for the local Indian community, and served free food every week. Crews set-up a computer workspace/infoshop with discarded and donated equipment. The Midnight Star was alive with a number of free activities such as a local wireless technology networking group, copwatch, a weekly children’s theatre workshop, rehearsal space for performers, yoga, while art events/exhibit-ions were curated by SquatSpace.
The Midnight Star was a key space for three alternative political events in Sydney that year: Preparations for May Day demonstrations, a day of remembrance for workers rights struggles throughout the world, an anarchist/autonomist conference shortly after, and as a convergence point for protestors against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) mini-ministerial meeting held in Sydney in November.
The police had tried to evict the occupiers immediately prior to May Day, but were unable to break the barricades. After the WTO meeting, and significant mainstream media on the Midnight Star as the “nerve centre” of violent and politically motivated dissent, The Midnight Star Social Centre was evicted. Around 25 riot police forced their way in just after 7a.m, searched those inside for knives etc, tried to take down names, and gave them just a few minutes to leave. Within hours, the owners had enclosed the site with barbwire fencing and were not allowing people access to get their equipment out. There were no injuries and no arrests were made.
The eviction was designed and driven by the police, as the owner had been fairly indifferent to the occupation of the space.
The Balloon Factory, Newtown
The Balloon Factory social centre was occupied by SCAN in August 2003. The space was opened with a fantastic Empty Show, where a number of street artists from around Australia, bill posters, stencil/graffiti artists, street installationists, poets, performers and more donated their time and their art to decorate the centre. The Balloon Factory hosted meetings, parties, film nights, and a dumpster cafe. The building had been abandoned for over a year.
The project in Newtown commented on the rapid erosion of real public space in the area. Newtown is a suburb with a long history of militant, working class resistance (for instance, the Unemployed Workers Movement of the 1940’s), however this history is currently being diminished by gentrification and rising property prices. This reflects a broader pattern throughout Sydney, where inner urban areas are stripped of their working class roots, and those without money are pushed further out into the suburbs.
The Balloon Factory was forcibly evicted four weeks after it opened.