CUBITT SUMMER READING ROOM

30 JULY - 16 AUGUST

This summer, Cubitt transforms into a reading room, an archive, and a bookshop.

Over the past two years, Cubitt has been working closely with community members and residents to reimagine its role as a shared resource. Rooted in our Civic Fellowship, we’ve been asking: how can cultural spaces become civic infrastructure? How can they offer access, support, and solidarity, working beyond temporary and transient engagement towards something that feels grounded and relational?

This summer we will present our space as a welcome to community organisers and art-makers, as the result of a pilot programme of Cubitt Community Press.This project grows from Islington’s rich history of radical publishing while exploring how print can be a tool for social justice, political imagination and collective documentation.

This summer’s transformation of the gallery into a bookshop, reading room, and living archive continues to hold these questions. As communities across Islington, London, and beyond face gentrification, displacement, and cultural erasure, we’re turning to publishing as a way to connect across streets and borders. Imagining Cubitt as a space that can resource and nurture the conditions for relationship-building and grassroots-organising.

Curated by Anahí Saravia Herrera, Civic Fellow 2023 - 2025.

Supported by Freelands Foundation and Islington Local History Centre.

CUBITT READING ROOM PROGRAMME:

30 JULY - 16 AUGUST: Maqam Mu’aqqat - a temporary bookshop residency

Maqam is a nomadic bookshop and archive that moves through books, textiles, sound, and conversation. It creates spaces for temporary community—a practice of gathering in transit.

Maqam Mu’aqqat is the second in a series of temporary residencies. For this iteration, Maqam will inhabit Cubitt’s gallery as a working bookshop and display space—bringing together books, prints, and sound for reading, gathering, and production. Elements of play, technology, and nostalgia thread through the residency: from video games to archival imagery, printed matter to speculative publishing—tracing out a space for memory, movement, and imagination.Public Activations and events TBA!

More information: www.maqam.uk

30 JULY - 16 AUGUST: Islington Radical Print Archives + Zine Library

In collaboration with Islington Local History Centre, Cubitt will hosts a collection of radical print material highlighting local Islington publishing projects from the 1960s to the present. In a borough shaped by a history of community action and rapid gentrification, this display shows the role of publishing as a form of grassroots infrastructure for collective organising.

The archival display will feature replicas and copies of material from:

• The Islington Gutter Press, a socialist newspaper created by feminists, squatters and Islington residents in the 1960s–80s, printed at the Newington Green “community press”. The paper documented struggles over housing, policing, local politics and social reproduction, offering a window into how Islington has historically used DIY print.
• Islington Bus Company, a collectively run resource and print centre in the shape of a roving school bus, active between 1972 and 1980. Leaflets, flyers and pamphlets documenting Housing Associations, LGBTQ Venues, Feminist Groups etc.

And more!

A zine shelf curated by Cubitt Civic Fellow Anahí Saravia Herrera brings together self-published work and books reflecting on DIY culture, local organising, and the overlaps between art spaces, political organising and publishing.

2 AUGUST: CUBITT COMMUNITY ZINE + PUBLISHING FAIR

12–6pm at Cubitt Gallery, free and open to all

A one-day publishing fair to celebrate and gather everyone who is making and thinking about books, zines, prints, self-publishing, community organising, and more.

With over 20 stallholders—including local publishers, artists, organisers + activists, and collectives from Islington and beyond—the fair will reignite Islington’s histories of radical publishing and self-organised print culture.

Join us for the launch of the Cubitt Community Press ISSUE 2, a collectively made community newspaper created and risograph printed by Islington Locals. Come grab a copy and spread the word.

Open

Wed - Friday, 12 - 6 pm from 30 July to 16 August 2025.

Weekend opening dates:

Saturday 2nd August: 12 - 6 PM Zine Fair

Saturday 9th August: 12 - 6 PM

Saturday 16th August: 12 - 6 PM