AUTONOMY NOW! PRESENT: ‘Colin Ward: the anarchist tradition and do-it-yourself urbanism’ with Verity-Jane Keefe and Ken Worpole

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2024 marks the centenary of the birth of Britain’s most famous anarchist, Colin Ward, and the publication of Mutual Aid, Everyday Anarchy: Essays on Colin Ward (Five Leaves, 2024). Ward wrote more than 30 books, whose ideas and writings remain influential across the world, including ‘The Child in the City’, ‘Arcadia for All’, ‘Reflected in Water’ and ‘When We Build Again’. Artist-activist Verity-Jane Keefe and writer Ken Worpole discuss Ward’s community-based, self-reliant urbanism, prioritising social networks as being at the heart of everyday life in towns and cities, Ward’s anarchist approach playing a major influence on their own working practices.

Verity-Jane Keefe is one of the UK’s pre-eminent urban public artists, currently working with Towner Gallery (Eastbourne), Eastside Projects (Birmingham) and a Pre-Doc candidate with ZHdK (Zurich). Other recent commissions include Lead Artist on the Design Team for the Moorings Sociable Club on the Thamesmead Estate, documented in her new book From Social to Sociable, lead artist for the centenary of Becontree, delivering ‘Living Together’, an ambitious art project including a solo exhibition, new collection, palm tree planting, and new tenant’s handbook which was distributed by letterbox to 27,000 residents.

‘Living Together’ marked the end of a 15-year period working in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, as artist in residence working with planning policy, archives and heritage departments, housing and regeneration on a variety of self-initiated and invited projects, including the now-renowned ‘Mobile Museum’.

Ken Worpole is a writer and social historian, and author of books on architecture, landscape and public policy. For many years he has also pursued a particular interest in the social history and landscape of 20th century Essex, about which he has written extensively. The New Statesman observed recently that: ‘Worpole is a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition.’ 

Andrew Kelly is former Director of Bristol Ideas. He is a visiting professor at the University of the West of England and has written or edited 20 books on subjects ranging from film and cinema to aviation and Bristol’s rich cultural history.

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