Nottingham Contemporary

Protests, Plenums and the struggle for the commons

In 2015 workers at the DITA Factory in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, occupied and took control of a factory inactive due to bankruptcy and corruption. Drawing from the force of the plenums (public encounters for resisting state corruption held in Tuzla’s national gallery) workers have the factory up and running and are joined by activists, artists and researchers in founding a Worker’s University within the factory walls. How do the ideals of self-managed socialism find themselves in recent movements which contest the global webs of debt, corruption and neo-liberalisation on a global scale? How do these relate to histories of worker struggle in the Midlands and how they are being reconfigured, particularly when they are increasingly reliant on the so-called ‘knowledge economy’?

All are welcome to this event to discuss new forms of direct democracy, like the Citizen's Plenum that emerged out of protests in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2014, in relation to worker movements there and in the UK and Nottingham in particular.

The event will be hosted by Tuzla activist Damir Arsenijevic and Artist Margareta Kern with contributions from DITA worker occupiers, ally Vanessa Vasic-Janekovic and local activists Tom Unterrainer and Tony Simpson from Nottingham People’s Assembly and the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.