Then and Now: The Art of Protest and Community Organising

Drawing on the AIU Race Centre’s Tandana Collection, a rich collection documenting the Asian Youth Movements, this creative workshop invites young people to explore how communities have historically mobilised for change and how these legacies continue to shape movements today. Through original archival materials, discussion, and creative reflection, participants will trace the evolution of mutual aid, protest, and youth-led activism from the 1970s to the present, examining how solidarity and grassroots organising have challenged inequality and injustice.

The session bridges archive and imagination and asks: whose voices are preserved, whose are missing, and how might we record the movements of our own time? Participants will be invited to respond creatively through short writing and zine-making, envisioning what an archive of contemporary protest might include.

By combining history, creative practice, and collective dialogue, Then and Now encourages participants to imagine new possibilities for community action and social transformation. Reflecting on documentation as a form of resistance, the workshop positions participants as future record-keepers and storytellers, capturing the gestures, networks, and solidarities that define the social justice movements of their generation. Participants are encouraged to bring flyers, photographs, or other artefacts that express their take on today’s movements.

Nasia Sarwar-Skuse is an award-winning writer and artist whose practice explores questions of place, culture, community, politics, and justice through a decolonial lens. Working across installation, film, and text-based media, she merges fiction, poetry, academic research, and visual art to interrogate inherited narratives and create counter-histories. Her work frequently engages with archives and museums as spaces of power, sites where she reconfigures dominant histories and recovers suppressed voices.

Her practice is grounded in socially engaged methods, often involving community collaboration and activism to seed dialogue and collective reimagining. Nasia was the lead Artist at St Fagans Museum of History on a major project titled Perspective(s), where she examined archives, collections and storytelling practices through a decolonial lens.

Nasia is the recipient of the Swansea University Research Excellence Scholarship and is completing a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing that investigates colonialism, Partition, migration, and their intersections with memory. Through this research, she applies decolonial methodologies to creative practice, developing frameworks that challenge institutional authority and expand possibilities for representation.

Winner of the Queen Mary (Wasafiri) Writing Prize 2023 and Co-Editor of Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature (404 Ink), Nasia’s work has appeared widely in print and digital publications.

www.nasiasarwarskuse.com

The Tandana Collection is an extensive and historic collection documenting the Asian Youth Movements in the north of England (based in Sheffield, Bradford and Manchester).

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Everyone in the 18-25 year age range is welcome; we particularly encourage Global Majority heritage participants to sign up.

This is a free workshop, and refreshments will be provided.

Accessibility

The Chief Librarian's Office is located on the third floor of the Central Library. There is lift access to the room. There are accessible toilets on each floor of the Central Library. There is a Changing Places toilet on the ground floor and we can provide a Radar key. For more information, please see the Manchester Central Library website. If you have any queries or requests relating to access, we are committed to meeting these as best as we can - please contact [email protected].

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Manchester Central Library, Chief Librarian's Office, St Peter's Square, Manchester, United Kingdom

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