Thoughts for June: Our Field Guide to Luddism
Alex Hargreaves in Shirley: An Awakening R&D in 2025. Photography by Pishdaad Modaressi Chahardehi.
This month, in reflection on our ongoing collaboration with Leeds Industrial Museum, including on their upcoming community-curated exhibition (exciting details to come)... we’ve pulled together a set of thematic provocations and suggestions for how we can, quite easily, address systemic issues without changing our behaviour much.
Use the tools within your hands
Both the caveat and the provocation for all of this. Not all of us have the same tools, same privileges, resources, networks and freedoms to implement everything. And that is not our failure but it is our responsibility - to not be pulled into a belief that if you can’t do everything you might as well do nothing.
Luddites used the tools they had in their hands; literally in the physical tools they used to destroy but also the support of the community that buoyed them and the strength of organisation and solidarity that made them effective. The Luddite movement arguably laid the foundation for every workers rights movement in the UK that came after it. Their ultimate success was in showing us that acting, in the ways that you can, creates change - even if it's in the generations that come after you.
Use technology with context and not just for convenience
Luddism is, importantly, technological criticism; not technological ineptitude. It’s necessary to embrace, understand and use technologies, just not at the expense of the planet, human creativity and wellbeing.
Playing on our need for convenience is obviously widespread in the tech world; but there is a wealth of knowledge, perspective and data that suggests that actually the selling of convenience itself is a bit of a lie.
One really close to my heart is the Spotify debate. Like most people, I spent quite a long time accepting that Spotify was a necessary evil worth putting up with for the benefit of on-demand, mobile access to lots of music.
Until I realised that it wasn’t…
We listened to, and shared, music for quite a long time before tech companies started to commodify it and provided a convenient solution for the commercial music sector to deal with the possibility of equitable access to music through the internet. There are also a handful of far more ethical platforms (Bandcamp and Qobuz come directly to mind) which work better for both audiences and artists.
Through (conveniently complex and boring) media licensing agreements, Spotify has led the charge in bottoming out the recorded music sector, destroying sustainable income streams for artists and producers. To top it off, has now moved into some very questionable areas of investment.
The other aspect of contemporary Spotify usage is that it doesn’t even sound good. This blog isn’t about lossless audio, LUFS and file formats (although if anyone wants that discussion with me, I’m more than happy to have it). I implore anyone to do a quick A/B comparison with the listening experiences on Spotify and Qobuz - And you can make your own mind up on which one is preferable for the same price.
Realistically, no streaming platform is entirely ethical. This is because of the legislative wool which was pulled over culture’s eyes when streaming first became a thing; and by virtue, a ‘stream’ is defined differently to a ‘buy’ or a ‘radio play’ (remember the conveniently complex and boring media licensing agreements?). The route one, most ethical consumption is to, when and if possible, buy your music directly from an artist. Some alternative streaming platforms have the option to stream and buy music.
If you love music, I sincerely believe that leaving Spotify for another platform is the only option for you to continue loving music, and regularly engaging with beautiful things made by real humans.
And while we’re on horrible, exploitative tech products, please Quit ChatGpt. OpenAI is a massive Trump donor and there are literal lawsuits currently ongoing into the terrible impact ChatGPT is making in the world. You didn’t have nor need ChatGPT three years ago, so why do we need it now? I get it, AI is ubiquitous and, under certain circumstances, there’s a convenience to consolidated, simplified access to information. This isn’t all the time though, and Chat GPT doesn’t need to do your shopping list or act as a search engine for you. It’s probably quite important to recognise when convenience for you has a larger scale negative impact on humanity.
Also falsified information is widespread on all commercially available AI platforms. Let’s just be aware of that please.
Be money-mindful and cherish what’s hand-made
Remember that the Luddites were artisans. The cry of the oppression they were fighting against was the death knell cry that led to the boom of fast fashion and over-consumption. In Santa Must Die!, one of the lyrics was “Money said you know you love to buy stuff”. And look, we like things, I’m not an austerist by any measure. But William Morris (himself a socialist babe) had the great mantra of "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." Give me the bread and the roses please, but I’m going to take the time to stop and smell them both with more awareness.
We live in a world that, whether we like it or not, is built on capital as the value system. So what you choose to do with your capital matters. That includes charitable and cause giving as much as it does buying a coffee from your local independent rather than a chain (which fyi is statistically likely to be up to 30% cheaper) and a quick search on the fantastic directory of fashion and beauty, Good On You, will show you which brands are trying to at least somewhat address the ethical considerations of their impact.
And in case we don’t preach enough on this, this extends to the art you consume. Please support the indies around you, in these small spaces you can much more closely see the hands and efforts that make the work. Useful and beautiful.
Centrise Community
One thing that we can fully assume about the Luddite movement is that it needed full community backing and support. During the Lady Ludd riots in Leeds in August 1812, a group of women and boys marched through the street attacking corn merchants in protest at perceived high prices, their leader declaring herself ‘Lady Ludd’ in relation to ‘King/Ned Ludd’ the figurehead of the Luddite movement.
We’re called archipelago because our mission is to be part of a collection. To be amongst a diversity of people, ideas, stories and cherish what makes us unique and what ties us together; not seeing either as isolated from the other. We are all our own, but we also belong to each other.
Solidarity is our saviour.
Following on from having money in mind, I wince when going through my spending to do my tax return about how much money I spend at our local (shout out The Boston Arms) but, in the use it or lose it mentality, I cherish this as one of my essential third spaces. It’s a joy for your soul to be known somewhere outside home and work, to explore different sides of yourself in meeting people who think and live in different ways to you. And, not to erase the importance of being able to find those spaces in any way that’s best for you but, when so much of our work is now for most of us attached to a screen and imbued with productivity, low-pressure in-person spaces for enjoyment are vital. To be able to bring your whole self to the world. And give context to how you belong amongst it all.
When I first moved to Sheff I worked as the Community Producer for the brilliant Handlebards. One of the projects I managed was a women’s creative wellbeing drop-in. We basically sat together and chatted while crafting - a joy! At the end of it, one of the women said to me that it meant so much that she could go somewhere where they always remembered how she liked her tea and had the good biscuits. For every archipelago project, we never scrimp on the biscuits. And always feel it’s precious to make a new, third space, for people to be together.
Be an active agitator
And while we’re on ‘use it or lose it’, we need to remember that our democracy isn’t a forever thing. Around 160 years ago only 4.8% of the population could vote. The people involved in the Luddite movement weren’t able to vote and so the system was actively enshrined against them. And yet, the first record of this group of disenfranchised people using the system that they couldn’t actively participate in, petitioning parliament with urging to protect them, was 23 years before they started taking direct action in mass machine-breaking.
As a full circle from the beginning of the blog, we need to use the tools in our hands. Around 79% of the population now has the right to vote. Our system isn’t perfect - that’s a far bigger conversation but one we can sadly see play out at each election - but when voter turnout is trending downward, it really feels like something that’s feeding the machines that work against us is an assurance of our apathy. But maybe, with action, we can break that machine.
Seán recommends:
A read: A few months ago, Beth recommended Brian Merchant’s, Blood in the Machine - so if you haven’t yet read it, read that, too! But this month, I’m suggesting people have a look at his blog of the same name as a really insightful deep dive into all things technological and social activism.
A listen: For fans of slightly oddball ambient electronica, Boards of Canada’s new album - Inferno - is out now. It’s a great example of the two core principles of ambient music and is ignorable and interesting in equal measure.
A watch: Test Cricket in England is back! I’m a purist when it comes to this stuff and the longest form of the game is 100% the best. Watch it. Let it wash over you. But also, if you want some additional evidence re. how laughably poor The Hundred is, have a watch of Manchester Super Giants’ AI Slop.
An event: If you’re in Leeds this Saturday. We’ll be at Woolfest at Leeds Industrial Museum. Come along for craft stalls, live reenactments and live music. We’ll also be around to chat about some of the upcoming engagement projects we’ve got coming up in the region.
Beth recommends:
A read: I tore through The Names by Florence Knapp in basically one whole sitting. The most fantastic conceit and delivered with every gut punch imaginable without ever being sensationalist or cloying. A real wonder. Perfect for a BBC series. Manifest with me. 🙏
A listen: Forgive my 32 year-old heart, but Olivia Rodrigo continues to speak to and heal the teenage girl inside of me. (Shout out especially to my mate Ruth, who has sung along with wine with me to the whole of her debut album and we suddenly morphed back into the 21-year olds we were in our flat share in Leeds). And if you’re a snob and still sleeping on her, even when Robert Smith from The Cure is literally her bestie, then I’m not going to try to convince you. But just know you’re missing out on some of the gutsiest (pun), frankest, best pop in years. For everyone else, just know I’m counting down till the full release of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love and playing her live lounge cover of CMAT’s When A Good Man Cries on repeat.
A watch: I barrelled through the first series of Tina Fey’s great, witty, well-observed The Four Seasons just as a nice background watch with some really searingly smart twists, but series two has paved a new road on that foundation. A fantastic leaning into human messiness, regret, loneliness and what defines relationships across our lives. A beautiful drawn character study at every turn. And I want to wear the entire wardrobes of both Kerri Kenney-Silver and Colman Domingo from the show.
An event: A couple of shout outs! Following on from last month, you can now find out about all the National Theatre’s Connections Festival plays and groups that are performing at the Lowry at the end of the month. I’ll be there and implore you to show out for the future of theatre.
ALSO, our top pals at SBC Theatre are making the World Cup actually the global, celebratory, joyful thing it should be with Around the World touring Sheff; with the main event between 12-9:30pm on Wednesday 17 June at the Peace Gardens. Including a World Record attempt for the longest multi-club scarf. Don’t forget to donate your scarf to represent your club!