In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Occupy Collecting
  • Cathy Ross (bio)

Click for larger view
View full resolution
Fig. 1.

Shoreditch High Street graffito, 2011 (still there at time of writing), photograph by the author.


Click for larger view
View full resolution
Fig. 2.

The Occupy camp and St Paul’s facade, November 2011, photograph by the author.

[End Page 236]

‘[George Orwell] would have ripped the s*** mercilessly out of Occupy.’

Paul Mason, Occupied Times, London, 2012.1

‘We will ask nothing, We will demand nothing, We will take, Occupy.’

Graffito, Shoreditch, 2011 (see Fig. 1)2

In the first half of 2012, before Olympic fever struck, protest seemed to be the mood of the moment. Historians were not the only ones energized by this upsurge of activism (as described by Katrina Navickas in HWJ 73).3 Even the police took to the streets, with 20,000 officers marching through central London in May 2012 to proclaim ‘Police for Public not for Profit’. For armchair protesters, a good overview of what was going on in the capital was the ‘my london diary’ website of photographer Peter Marshall, an assiduous chronicler of London demonstrations.4 In March 2012 alone, he photographed twenty-seven events, including: Frack Off Big Oil, Protest for Trayvon Martin, Disarm The National Gallery, Stop Harassment At Abortion Clinic, Teachers Keep Up The Pensions Fight, Leyton Marsh Olympic Protest, STARR Homicide’s 9th Anniversary, Justice for Hollie Greig, Budget Media Village Protest, Free Syrians Protest, Asad-Supporters Counter-Protest, Students March Against Fees, Save Our NHS Human Chain, Million Women Rise March, and Boycott Workfare in Oxford Street.

The Occupy movement was the most high-profile expression of this mood of dissent. In London, the Occupy LSX (Occupy London Stock Exchange) camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral (Figs 2, 4) lasted from October 2011 until February 2012; the off-shoot camp in Finsbury Square, and later Shoreditch Park, had a slightly longer life, remaining in place until June 2012. During these periods, the movement attracted much debate. Commentators agreed that Occupy said something profound about the way we live now, but the exact message remained elusive. Many mused on the significance of Occupy – whether it was a movement or a meme, expressed a rational or [End Page 237] irrational public mood, was righteous or foolish, anarchist or fascist, a signifier of hope or doom. Whatever the phenomenon was, it did seem to operate almost as a brand, as Occupy *** spread around the world. In London the movement grew from Occupy LSX through Occupy St Paul’s and Occupy Mile End, to Occupy All Streets, Occupy All London Boroughs and beyond to Occupy Everything. People could sign up to Occupy History, Occupy Design, Occupy Oral History, Occupy Museums, Occupy Archives and other areas of professional practice. ‘Occupy Irony’ (a slogan on a placard)5 headed online reports of the police march of May 2012. The demands were specific enough, if utopian: ‘WHAT DO WE WANT? A fully publicly-funded democratically-accountable Police force whose aims and objectives enshrine the right to peaceful Protest in some sort of People’s Charter! When Do We Want It? NOW’.6

All this inevitably led to Occupy-collecting on the part of museums and archives. Contemporary collecting has become an essential activity for any self-respecting history museum over the last twenty years,7 and particularly so for city museums. Most large city museums in Britain have contemporary collecting programmes in place and policies which emphasize the value of community engagement and promoting active citizenship. With Occupy, American institutions were quick off the mark. The Smithsonian issued an official statement about its collecting intentions in October 2011, partly as a response to being on the receiving end of Occupy action a few weeks earlier.8 All the major institutions in New York collected material from the Wall Street and Zucotti Park events, as was much reported in the US media.9 The New York Historical Society quickly acquired an Occupy collection of 250–300 items. Staff at the Roy Rosenzweig Centre for History and New Media at George Mason University launched an online archive containing around 2,500 uploaded media files.10 As Ben Alexander, Head of Special...

pdf

Share