Exhibition: Another World is Possible
Aberdeen People’s Press and Radical Media in the 1970’s
The exhibition will be displayed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre from Sat 29 Jan - Sun 6 March. No tickets required. Please note in Feb 2022 the Centre is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Aberdeen People’s Press (APP) operated between 1973 and 1984, publishing a fortnightly alternative local newspaper, pamphlets and books, as well as providing a printing service for a wide range of radical groups, community newspapers, trade unions and campaigning organisations. Originating at a time of re-thinking culture and society which took place across the western world in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, the press was an activist hub, a space for calls to action and exploring new ways of living and working together.
It was no accident that Aberdeen People's Press focussed on printing and publishing, for politics and the media have always been intertwined. In the early 1970s, a new generation of politically motivated do-it-yourself printers was appropriating techniques which had up until then been used principally in offices and administrations. Suddenly groups and individuals who for years had been ignored by mainstream media were 'getting into print'.
This exhibition, curated collectively by Peacock’s Visual Arts, the University of Aberdeen Special Collections, and former members of Aberdeen People's Press, reminds us that many of the issues that were addressed by APP and radical activists of the 1970s are still being disputed today – and that collective action can change lives and society.
