(… or, “What I Did On My Holidays, part 1,” because I couldn’t resist a reference to my favourite Fairport Convention album.)
I’ve been having all sorts of exciting chats recently about a fascinating bit of work I got involved with over the summer. Thanks to Robb Johnson, Angie Travis of the NEU, and the wonderful people at Latest TV, I’ve been making a film about the left-wing history of Brighton, my adopted home!
The film’s being made for an event to celebrate the centenary of Pyotr Kropotkin, the Russian zoologist, geographer and anarchist thinker who promoted the idea that mutual aid is the basis of human (and animal) society – and who lived in Brighton from 1911 to 1917. The event, on Sun 24th Oct, is the brainchild of Angie Travis and Prof Brian Morris of Goldsmiths University of London: an afternoon and evening of talks, books, and music from Robb Johnson, celebrating the life and work of Kropotkin, and, while we’re at it, as much of the rest of Brighton’s radical left-wing history thrown in! It’s taking place at the Latest Music Bar, and tickets are available now.
And, as part of this fiesta of local social history, Latest TV have made a film of me presenting a virtual tour around some of Brighton’s most inspiring, important or intriguing sites of campaigning for a better world. We’ve had strikers, singers, socialists, syndicalists, starry-eyed dreamers and stubborn fair-minded types… all sorts of illustrations of action that people have taken right here on the streets we walk today. I have been in my element!
Here we are enjoying a rest during filming:
The film will be premiered at the event on Oct 24th – and then the plan is to share it online via Latest TV and many other regional UK TV channels. Watch this space for more details! And if you’re in the area, get your ticket to the event itself!
Jon the Storyteller 