Hello! From the Radical Childcare Collective.
We are an autonomous collective of anti-capitalist people (men, women, children, parents, educators and also including those who have no personal childcare responsibilities). We are dedicated activists in various fields (social and environmental justice groups, anarchist and feminist groups, anti-poverty and anti-deportation groups, radical education and home education groups, to name but a few). We meet regularly in a child-friendly space in Hackney, East London.
The group came together out of concern about the lack of enthusiasm in our activist scenes around providing space, resources, support and time for kids and their parents/carers to be involved in their scenes. The Radical Childcare Collective acknowledges the political importance of children, carers and childcare both in mainstream society, and in our own alternative movements.
We want to spread this movement of ours, yet we don’t make our activism accessible to parents, carers and children. Parents are often left out because of lack of childcare, meetings being held in inaccessible locations at inaccessible times and also because they can be devalued by members of our 'activist' communities. Many of the women in this country are mothers, yet groups don’t prioritise or always provide childcare at meetings. Maybe a meeting isn’t the most suitable place for children, but if parents are going to be there then we need to accept that children will be too, and sort out ways to deal with it, and there are many positive ways that this can be done.
We also believe that other parents shouldn’t be the only people interested in childcare- it should be an integral part of our community, as important as all the actions, as important as providing disabled access to events, and as important as banning other discriminatory behaviour (sexism, racism) from our groups.
Children should both be seen and heard! They have played a crucial role in social movements around the world from anti-apartheid to squatting and traveller movements, from environmental protests to Zapatista social justice resistances. Children can be vibrant, creative, inspiring and clever. They should be involved in decision-making and respected as part of this community, with valuable insights and energy. Children are a vital part of our movement, yet are often not included in our organising.
We need to consider the many benefits children gain from being involved with activism, and –in return- what we gain from them being involved. Why are we social, environmental, and political activists if not for future generations? Involve children in your activism! They are the future, you are their inspiration, and together we must fight for a better world.
Mainstream society and schooling does not provide our children with the education that they need or deserve. For kids to actually be involved in environmental groups/events/actions, to be organising alongside positive adult role-models, and to be understanding alternative ways of working and socialising together- it privileges and reaches them on a much deeper level. For example, much more than hearing mainstream adults or school geography classes that just pay lip service to ‘eco-living’.
The Radical Childcare Collective hopes to be one step towards the more child, parent and carer-friendly world that we all deserve to live in. We are interested in not only providing childcare for meetings and events, but more importantly we are dedicated to the process of actively including children in our social, political and environmental movements, and bringing awareness of these issues to other positive activist groups in these fields.
Please contact londonradicalkidscollective@aktivix.org for more information and for details of the next meeting.
Monday, 24 August 2009
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
Home Educators: we're part of your community!
The government wants to give local council officers the right to enter our home and question children alone, just because we home educate.
There is no evidence that home educated children are more at risk than children educated at school.
The new proposals are disproportionate and unnecessary. They infringe our, and our children's, rights.
Please sign the petition at
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/
If you have friends, neighbours, colleagues or customers who educate their children outside the school system, please send a card to your MP to reassure them that
home educated children are not hidden- they are part of your community
[by home educators in Brighton. Please see our other blogposts with the label 'home education' for more information]
There is no evidence that home educated children are more at risk than children educated at school.
The new proposals are disproportionate and unnecessary. They infringe our, and our children's, rights.
Please sign the petition at
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/EHEreview/
If you have friends, neighbours, colleagues or customers who educate their children outside the school system, please send a card to your MP to reassure them that
home educated children are not hidden- they are part of your community
[by home educators in Brighton. Please see our other blogposts with the label 'home education' for more information]
Monday, 29 June 2009
New Book Extract: 'Turning Children into Consumers' by Sharon Beder
[This book report is from Media Lens- "Correcting for the Distorted Vision of the Corporate Media" www.medialens.org, please sign up to their emailed 'media alerts' to receive more info about media-related books like this one]
Introduction
Sharon Beder, visiting professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, is one of our favourite political analysts. Her book ‘Global Spin’ (Green Books, 1997), is a devastating exposé of corporate, including corporate media, manipulation of politics and culture. Like Mark Curtis’s ‘The Ambiguities of Power,’ it is a book that defies attempts to underline the interesting bits - it’s all interesting! The title of Beder’s new book is self-explanatory: ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market- The Corporate Capture Of Childhood.’ (Pluto Press, 2009)
Once again, this is a must-read analysis explaining how people and planet are being systematically subordinated to profit. We were so impressed by the second chapter, ‘Turning Children Into Consumers,’ that even before finishing the book we wrote to Beder asking if we could use some of it in a guest media alert. She has very kindly agreed. You can order a copy of ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market’ at a specially discounted price from Pluto Press here: http://www.plutobooks.com/beder/ Sincere thanks to Sharon Beder and Pluto Press for letting us publish this tremendous material.
We invite you to imagine a world in which Beder’s work was “on every school curriculum”, as John Pilger recommends. Imagine if children were provided with tools of intellectual self-defence to counter the relentless campaigns of corporate manipulation. It is simultaneously depressing and heartening to consider how much happier, healthier, more compassionate our society would be as a result.
David Edwards and David Cromwell
Media Lens
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TURNING CHILDREN INTO CONSUMERS
Sharon Beder
Extracted from “This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood”, Pluto Press, London, 2009.
Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that overtime they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come. What is more, children influence family spending decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars on household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car.
Corporations began targeting their marketing messages directly to children during the 1980s, as affluent adult markets became saturated with consumer goods. Large firms established ‘kids’ departments and smaller firms specialised in marketing to children. A number of advertising industry publications were created such as Selling to Kids and Marketing to Kids Report. The academic literature began to feature studies of children as consumers. In the US the amount corporations spent marketing to children under twelve increased by five times between 1980 and 1990 and ten times more during the 1990s. In 2004 around $15 billion was being spent marketing to children.
Conferences on the best ways to market to children are held all over the world. There are also awards for the best advertisements and marketing campaigns with hundreds of entries. Much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations exercises such as using celebrities and licensed characters to visit shopping centres and schools. These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the children’s market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising.
The international children’s market is increasingly attractive to transnational corporations who seek to make their brands and products popular in different cultural milieus. The food industry was a pioneer in these efforts. In 1997 Brandweek magazine noted that McDonald’s was the favourite fast food all over the world and Coca-Cola the favourite drink.
To read the rest of this media alert, please go to: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Introduction
Sharon Beder, visiting professor at the University of Wollongong, Australia, is one of our favourite political analysts. Her book ‘Global Spin’ (Green Books, 1997), is a devastating exposé of corporate, including corporate media, manipulation of politics and culture. Like Mark Curtis’s ‘The Ambiguities of Power,’ it is a book that defies attempts to underline the interesting bits - it’s all interesting! The title of Beder’s new book is self-explanatory: ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market- The Corporate Capture Of Childhood.’ (Pluto Press, 2009)
Once again, this is a must-read analysis explaining how people and planet are being systematically subordinated to profit. We were so impressed by the second chapter, ‘Turning Children Into Consumers,’ that even before finishing the book we wrote to Beder asking if we could use some of it in a guest media alert. She has very kindly agreed. You can order a copy of ‘This Little Kiddy Went To Market’ at a specially discounted price from Pluto Press here: http://www.plutobooks.com/beder/ Sincere thanks to Sharon Beder and Pluto Press for letting us publish this tremendous material.
We invite you to imagine a world in which Beder’s work was “on every school curriculum”, as John Pilger recommends. Imagine if children were provided with tools of intellectual self-defence to counter the relentless campaigns of corporate manipulation. It is simultaneously depressing and heartening to consider how much happier, healthier, more compassionate our society would be as a result.
David Edwards and David Cromwell
Media Lens
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TURNING CHILDREN INTO CONSUMERS
Sharon Beder
Extracted from “This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Capture of Childhood”, Pluto Press, London, 2009.
Children are naïve about advertising and can easily be manipulated and exploited by marketers to want and demand their products. Corporate marketers believe that overtime they can be shaped into lifelong consumers with brand loyalties and that can be profitable for decades to come. What is more, children influence family spending decisions worth hundreds of billions of dollars on household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car.
Corporations began targeting their marketing messages directly to children during the 1980s, as affluent adult markets became saturated with consumer goods. Large firms established ‘kids’ departments and smaller firms specialised in marketing to children. A number of advertising industry publications were created such as Selling to Kids and Marketing to Kids Report. The academic literature began to feature studies of children as consumers. In the US the amount corporations spent marketing to children under twelve increased by five times between 1980 and 1990 and ten times more during the 1990s. In 2004 around $15 billion was being spent marketing to children.
Conferences on the best ways to market to children are held all over the world. There are also awards for the best advertisements and marketing campaigns with hundreds of entries. Much marketing to children now consists of sales promotions such as direct coupons, free gifts and samples, contests and sweepstakes, and public relations exercises such as using celebrities and licensed characters to visit shopping centres and schools. These additional forms of marketing have supplemented rather than replaced advertising as the importance of the children’s market has grown. Their aim however is the same as advertising.
The international children’s market is increasingly attractive to transnational corporations who seek to make their brands and products popular in different cultural milieus. The food industry was a pioneer in these efforts. In 1997 Brandweek magazine noted that McDonald’s was the favourite fast food all over the world and Coca-Cola the favourite drink.
To read the rest of this media alert, please go to: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php
Thursday, 25 June 2009
'Fallen Princesses': Anti-Disney Art
Disney.
What images and emotions does this word conjure up for you?
For years now, I've been wanting to create a visual image- a piece of artwork- that sums up how I feel about the sexist, racist, capitalist, (add your own 'ist' here), Nazi-funding empire that is 'Disney'.
Finally the life-long dream was fulfilled when, thanks to a photoshop-savvy friend (view her online news and culture mag here: http://www.labouchemag.com/), the image of TinkeREBEL burning down the pink Disney princess castle appeared within the CRAP! Collective's 'Raise Some Hell!' zine (see PDF in sidebar, or email the Collective for a copy of the zine). The Collective is planning to create a series of these images- probably as more of a cathartic remedy for ourselves, rather than a political statement! (Get in touch with us for collaborative possibilites, or if you know of any great anti-Disney art out there that would satisfy our bloodlust)...
Anyway, when reading the blog 'blue milk' (http://www.bluemilk.wordpress.com/), I saw this series of wickedly stunning photographs entitled 'Fallen Princesses' by Dina Goldstein (See 'Cinderella' photo opposite; more photos from the project here: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/11918), and they totally hit the spot! Although they're not anti-Disney, and also aren't empowering images of the women, they are certainly thought-provoking, and it's refreshing to see the Disney facade stripped away. As Dina describes them: "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues...such as illness, addiction and self-image issues".
Have you created feminist anti-Disney art? Send us a photo here!
What images and emotions does this word conjure up for you?
For years now, I've been wanting to create a visual image- a piece of artwork- that sums up how I feel about the sexist, racist, capitalist, (add your own 'ist' here), Nazi-funding empire that is 'Disney'.
Finally the life-long dream was fulfilled when, thanks to a photoshop-savvy friend (view her online news and culture mag here: http://www.labouchemag.com/), the image of TinkeREBEL burning down the pink Disney princess castle appeared within the CRAP! Collective's 'Raise Some Hell!' zine (see PDF in sidebar, or email the Collective for a copy of the zine). The Collective is planning to create a series of these images- probably as more of a cathartic remedy for ourselves, rather than a political statement! (Get in touch with us for collaborative possibilites, or if you know of any great anti-Disney art out there that would satisfy our bloodlust)...
Anyway, when reading the blog 'blue milk' (http://www.bluemilk.wordpress.com/), I saw this series of wickedly stunning photographs entitled 'Fallen Princesses' by Dina Goldstein (See 'Cinderella' photo opposite; more photos from the project here: http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/11918), and they totally hit the spot! Although they're not anti-Disney, and also aren't empowering images of the women, they are certainly thought-provoking, and it's refreshing to see the Disney facade stripped away. As Dina describes them: "These works place Fairy Tale characters in modern day scenarios. In all of the images the Princess is placed in an environment that articulates her conflict. The '...happily ever after' is replaced with a realistic outcome and addresses current issues...such as illness, addiction and self-image issues". Have you created feminist anti-Disney art? Send us a photo here!
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
URGENT: Lewisham School Eviction Order Tommorrow!
Parents in London have been occupying their children's empty primary school in protest at Lewisham councils plans to demolish the (now grade 2 listed building) school to make way for an exclusive school run by the ancient society of Leathersellers (the society sounds more akin to the Illuminati and their secret handshakes, than those selling tanned hydes...)An eviction order has been served for tommorrow wednesday 24th june at 10.30am.
They need as much support as possible to resist eviction: please head down there tommorrow in support of the parents, kids and their community campaign.
Lewisham is in South-East London. See this link for more info: http://london.indymedia.org.uk/events/1670
This link is to their blog: http://defendeducationlewisham.wordpress.com/
In support and solidarity.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Home Education after the recent Badman Report
Hi all
I just wanted to let people know about the changes to Home Education after the Graham Badman Report came out this week and how it compromises the rights of all children in the UK.
Ed Ball wants to go ahead and implement changes immediately... this means we have got very little time to stand up against this.
I have put together the website to be user friendly and specially aimed at anyone that has missed the report or thinks that because their child is not home educated this does not effect them, it actually has serious implications for all children in the UK and their right to privacy and their life decisions.
This is the link to the website: Home Education after the Badman Report.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Article 16: Children have the right to privacy. The law should protect them from attacks against their way of life, their good name, their families and their homes.
Graham Badman report on Elective Home Education.
Reccommendation 7: that designated Local Authority officers should have the right to access the home and to speak with the child alone without parents present and without their consent...
There has been a lot of bad press lately about home educated children being at risk of abuse, but as there is no evidence or any cases of this Graham Badman has had to state this in his report, however he still went on to change the law as if this was the case.
The NSPCC apologised publically recently about associating abuse with home education, you can find a link to this on the webpage.
Please try and consider Graham Badman's proposals and the wider implications and the loss of rights due to this report, if you feel strongly enough then please do write to your MP's, fill in the survey, write to Ed Ball or reply to the consultation. (links can be found on the website.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this and please do forward this information, so many bills are passed these days without people being aware of the changes in their rights.
Peace and Love
Christine, Jonathan and Cherry.
I just wanted to let people know about the changes to Home Education after the Graham Badman Report came out this week and how it compromises the rights of all children in the UK.
Ed Ball wants to go ahead and implement changes immediately... this means we have got very little time to stand up against this.
I have put together the website to be user friendly and specially aimed at anyone that has missed the report or thinks that because their child is not home educated this does not effect them, it actually has serious implications for all children in the UK and their right to privacy and their life decisions.
This is the link to the website: Home Education after the Badman Report.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Article 16: Children have the right to privacy. The law should protect them from attacks against their way of life, their good name, their families and their homes.
Graham Badman report on Elective Home Education.
Reccommendation 7: that designated Local Authority officers should have the right to access the home and to speak with the child alone without parents present and without their consent...
There has been a lot of bad press lately about home educated children being at risk of abuse, but as there is no evidence or any cases of this Graham Badman has had to state this in his report, however he still went on to change the law as if this was the case.
The NSPCC apologised publically recently about associating abuse with home education, you can find a link to this on the webpage.
Please try and consider Graham Badman's proposals and the wider implications and the loss of rights due to this report, if you feel strongly enough then please do write to your MP's, fill in the survey, write to Ed Ball or reply to the consultation. (links can be found on the website.)
Thank you for taking the time to read this and please do forward this information, so many bills are passed these days without people being aware of the changes in their rights.
Peace and Love
Christine, Jonathan and Cherry.
Friday, 12 June 2009
Carnival of Feminist Parenting
This Sunday 14th June sees the first online blog-carnival of feminist parenting!
The blog hosting this carnival is Mothers for Womens Lib (http://feministmums.wordpress.com/carnival-of-feminist-parenting/ ), so log on this Sunday to read fab posts, and link with other like-minded people, blogging about many different issues related to feminist parenting.
The carnival will take place every month, and anyone is welcome to submit a post related to the topic. See http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_7216.html for more details about this and other carnivals.
The blog hosting this carnival is Mothers for Womens Lib (http://feministmums.wordpress.com/carnival-of-feminist-parenting/ ), so log on this Sunday to read fab posts, and link with other like-minded people, blogging about many different issues related to feminist parenting.
The carnival will take place every month, and anyone is welcome to submit a post related to the topic. See http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_7216.html for more details about this and other carnivals.
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