May Day and the Rights of Common

Join us to mark May Day in the first event in our Sanctuary in Sydenham series!

Many city green spaces we take for granted today still exist because the communities who used them resisted their enclosure and development in the past. Alex Hodson from Past Tense will discuss the fight to save two such green spaces: Sydenham Common and One Tree Hill. Join us for tales of legal shenanigans, rioting, class intrigue, greed, violence, and of how the enclosure of common land helped create modern suburns and our relationship to the land - and what that means for sanctuary past and present.

Then, engage with facsimile archival materials and our wide array of craft supplies to create zine pages, collage, or other creative responses to May Day and its relationship to our rights. Chat with other participants over refreshments and engage with the local community and its past and future. You will have the opportunity for your page to be scanned and included in a collective zine about the past and present of Sanctuary in Sydenham, which will be contributed to the Lewisham Community Zine Library. The Zine Library (including Past Tense's May Day in South London) will be available to explore throughout the event.

This event is free and all materials are provided. Booking a place allows us to know how many people to expect, but walk-ins are welcome as
space permits.

This event is part of Calico Libraries' Sanctuary in Sydenham series, kindly made possible by Borough of Sanctuary. Archival materials have been made available by Lewisham Heritage and the Lewisham Local History Society.

About Past Tense: Past Tense is a project exploring working class, social, subversive, and underground history and geography, mainly (but not always) around the areas where we live in London - in print, online, and through walks, talks, and other actions. We're not historians! We are interested in the past, not as an academic exercise divorced from our own lives and experiences, but because our own struggles to change the world around us for the better resonate with the movement of the past, and have taken place in the same streets and spaces. We've produced pamphlets, books, maps, walking guides, and an occasional blog. Alex Hodson has contributed to Past Tense for over 20 years.