RLC 2018!

Radical Librarians Collective aims to offer a space to challenge, to provoke, to improve and develop the communications between like-minded radicals, to galvanise our collective solidarity against the marketisation of libraries and the removal of our agency to our working worlds and beyond.

Our aim for this RLC gathering is to find voices working towards “utopia” and to amplify them through our network. In doing so we hope that we'll go some way towards addressing the question of what RLC is for and what form it needs to take in order to push these ideas forward.

Demand the impossible!

When we (the organising collective) were discussing this we decided it would be good to have a theme, to try and focus our thoughts. We settled on the idea of utopian demands, an idea that finds probably its clearest articulation in the writings of the antiwork Marxist feminist writer Kathi Weeks:

"Although utopian demands do not present a systematic program or vision - they are not a means to some preconfigured end - broader political visions can be enabled as different constituencies find points of common interest. As demands manage to intersect and groups link together, broader social visions can emerge, not as a prerequisite of these articulations but as their product."

We don’t want this to limit what folk want to explore though, it’s a guide rather than a rule. What this day is ultimately about is that non-work time. As Weeks argues, it’s about asking,

“what non-work time could be: time to cultivate new needs for pleasures, activities, senses, passions, affects, and socialities that exceed the options of working and saving, producing and accumulating." (https://libcom.org/library/imagining-non-work-kathi-weeks)

All welcome.

Notes

Catering - we will do our best to accommodate dietary requirements. The catering provided in the evening will be vegetarian and vegan. There will be no food provided during the event, however, please feel free to bring your own food and snacks for during the day.

Accessibility - the venue is wheelchair accessible.

Transport - The venue is 0.4 miles from the bus station, and 1 mile from the train station, and the bus numbers 4 and 16 from York Street stop F4 (outside the bus station) or City Square stop P5 (outside the train station) regularly run to Burmantofts Street Rigton Approach, which is 0.1 miles round the corner from the venue.

Childcare - Jess Haigh has offered to look after children whose carers would otherwise be unable to attend the event.

Jess is a leader within the GirlGuiding movement, and had a current DBS check. She has experience of regularly looking after children between 5-11 years, including many residentials.

Jess is happy to look after the following ratios of children.

4 children aged between 7-11 IF no other children

OR

2 children aged between 5-7 IF no other children, OR 1 child aged between 5-7 and 2 children aged between 7-11

OR

1 child aged between 2-4 years.

Jess is happy to look after a child under 2 year but does not hold a paediatric first aid qualification. If there are carers for children under 2 years who would still like their child to be looked after by Jess, please ask for her contact details and she will speak to you before the event. Likewise, children with specific needs or medical issues, please do ask for Jess’ contact details to discuss these-which will be kept confidential. Jess will not give children medicine aside from that declared by carers as necessary-Jess will not give children calpol etc.

This is completely voluntary and is not regulated by any third party. Jess holds no insurance and will not be responsible for disciplining children. Carers of children that behave in ways Jess finds unsafe or negative towards herself or any other children will be asked to intervene.

If more people who have attended the event before would be willing to volunteer to also look after children of those who would otherwise be unable to attend, then more will be able to take part.