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BIT (alternative Information Centre)
BIT was an information service, publisher, travel guide and social centre founded, in 1968, by John "Hoppy" Hopkins. It pre-dated the Internet as a free service that would try to find any information asked for, but post-dated library reference desks, and derived its name from the smallest unit of computer information. BIT BIT was initially a partial spin-off from Hoppy's earlier '' International Times'' information service, which was being overwhelmed by the number of enquiries it was receiving, then subsequently took on a life of its own, becoming a much wider organisation more akin to the later social centres. Emerging from the UK underground as a volunteer-run business, it evolved into a collective and open house based in Notting Hill above the Badge Boutique. Although often undefinable, one staff member tried with "We're open every day of the year from 10am to 10pm (telephone 24 hours) and we give free help and information about anything to anyone who wants it. Dirty, untidy o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hopkins (political Activist)
John Victor Lindsay "Hoppy" Hopkins (15 August 1937 – 30 January 2015) was a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of 'Swinging London' " in the late 1960s. Life Hopkins was born on 15 August 1937 in Slough. In 1958, Hopkins graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which he had entered on a scholarship in 1955, with a degree in physics and mathematics, and began to work as a laboratory technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. When Hopkins took a trip to Moscow to attend a Communist youth festival, his security clearance was revoked. Hopkins then re-located to London at the beginning of 1960, and began to work as a photographer for newspapers and music magazines including ''Jazz News'', ''The Guardian'', ''Melody Maker'' and ''Peace News''. Hopkins photographed many of the leading musicians of the period, including The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Windsor Free Festival
The Windsor Free Festival was a British Free Festival held in Windsor Great Park from 1972 to 1974. Organised by some London commune dwellers, notably Ubi Dwyer and Sid Rawle, it was in many ways the forerunner of the Stonehenge Free Festival, particularly in the brutality of its final suppression by the police, which led to a public outcry about the tactics involved. History The first Festival in 1972 was promoted as "Rent Strike: The People's Free Festival", reflecting the political concerns of the organisers (coming as they did from squatting and commune movements), with an anti-monarchist choice of site in "the Queen's back garden". Attendance was about 700 in its first year, rising to 8,000 in 1973, and an even larger crowd in its final year. The 1974 Festival, due to last for ten days, was broken up on the sixth morning by a large number of police. Early on Wednesday 28 August 1974 the site was invaded by hundreds of officers from the Thames Valley police force with tru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
DIY Culture
"Do it yourself" ("DIY") is the method of building, modifying, or repairing things by oneself without the direct aid of professionals or certified experts. Academic research has described DIY as behaviors where "individuals use raw and semi-raw materials and parts to produce, transform, or reconstruct material possessions, including those drawn from the natural environment (e.g., landscaping)". DIY behavior can be triggered by various motivations previously categorized as marketplace motivations (economic benefits, lack of product availability, lack of product quality, need for customization), and identity enhancement (craftsmanship, empowerment, community seeking, uniqueness). The term "do-it-yourself" has been associated with consumers since at least 1912 primarily in the domain of home improvement and maintenance activities. The phrase "do it yourself" had come into common usage (in standard English) by the 1950s, in reference to the emergence of a trend of people underta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Centres In The United Kingdom
Self-managed social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings. These self-managed social centres differ from community centres in that they are self-organised under anti-authoritarian principles and volunteer-run, without any assistance from the state. The largest number have occurred in London from the 1980s onwards, although projects exist in most cities across the UK, linked in a network. Squatted social centres tend to be quickly evicted and therefore some projects deliberately choose a short-term existence, such as A-Spire in Leeds or the Okasional Café in Manchester. Longer term social centres include the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, which are co-operatively owned. The projects draw influences from self-managed centres in Italy, working men's clubs, and anarchist clubs such as the Rose Street Club. Each individual social centre's activities are determine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Centres
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analog signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. Information is often processed iteratively: Data available at one step are processed into information to be interpreted and processed at the next step. For example, in written text each symbol or letter conveys information relevant to the word it is part of, each word conveys information releva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counterculture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Houghton Mifflin. . (1993) p. 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. In the 1960s and Europe before fading in the 1970s... fundamentally a cultural rather than a Protest, political protest." A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach Critical mass (sociodynamics), critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964–1974). Definition and characteris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Subcultures
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Culture
British culture is influenced by the combined nations' history; its historically Christian religious life, its interaction with the cultures of Europe, the traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and the impact of the British Empire. Although British culture is a distinct entity, the individual cultures of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are diverse and have varying degrees of overlap and distinctiveness. British literature is particularly esteemed. The modern novel was invented in Britain, and playwrights, poets, and authors are among its most prominent cultural figures. Britain has also made notable contributions to music, cinema, art, architecture and television. The UK is also the home of the Church of England, the state church and mother church of the Anglican Communion, the third-largest Christian denomination. Britain contains some of the world's oldest universities, has made many contributions to philosophy, science, technology and medicine, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Underground Culture
Underground culture, or simply underground, is a term to describe various alternative cultures which either consider themselves different from the mainstream of society and culture, or are considered so by others. The word "underground" is used because there is a history of resistance movements under harsh regimes where the term ''underground'' was employed to refer to the necessary secrecy of the resisters. For example, the Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes by which African slaves in the 19th century United States attempted to escape to freedom. The phrase "underground railroad" was resurrected and applied in the 1960s to the extensive network of draft counseling groups and houses used to help Vietnam-era draft dodgers escape to Canada, and was also applied in the 1970s to the clandestine movement of people and goods by the American Indian Movement in and out of occupied Native American reservation lands. (See Wounded Knee). The filmmaker Rosa von Praun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
White Panthers
The White Panthers were an anti-racist political collective founded in November 1968 by Pun Plamondon, Leni Sinclair, and John Sinclair. It was started in response to an interview where Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was asked what white people could do to support the Black Panthers. Newton replied that they could form a White Panther Party. The counterculture era group took the name and dedicated its energies to "cultural revolution.” John Sinclair made every effort to ensure that the White Panthers were not mistaken for a white supremacist group, responding to such claims with "quite the contrary." The party worked with many ethnic minority rights groups in the Rainbow Coalition. Michigan years The group was most active in Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan, and included the proto-punk band MC5, which John Sinclair managed for several years before he was incarcerated. From a general ideological perspective, Plamondon and Sinclair defined the White Pan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oz (magazine)
''Oz'' was an independently published, alternative/underground magazine associated with the international counterculture of the 1960s. While it was first published in Sydney in 1963, a parallel version of ''Oz'' was published in London from 1967. The Australian magazine was published until 1969 and the British version until 1973. The central editor, throughout the magazine's life in both countries, was Richard Neville. Co-editors of the Sydney version were Richard Walsh and Martin Sharp. Co-editors of the London version were Jim Anderson and, later, Felix Dennis, and then Roger Hutchinson. In both Australia and the UK, the creators of ''Oz'' were prosecuted on charges of obscenity. A 1963 charge was dealt with expeditiously when, upon the advice of a solicitor, the three editors pleaded guilty. In two later trials, one in Australia in 1964 and the other in the UK in 1971, the magazine's editors were acquitted on appeal, after initially being found guilty and sentenced to har ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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