 The Cowley Club store front, 2004 | |
| Company type | Self-managed social centre |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Brighton, England , United Kingdom |
| Services | Independent bookstore, café, members bar. |
| Website | cowleyclub |
The Cowley Club is a libertarian[1] self-managed social centre in Brighton, England. It opened in 2003, providing resources and meeting spaces for groups and individuals active in areas such as workplace and unemployed struggles, international solidarity, animal liberation, ecological defence, feminist and queer activism and opposing the arms trade.[2] Its political identity is close to anarchism or libertarian socialism. It also houses a vegan community café, a bookshop,[3][4] and free English lessons for migrants.
The Cowley Club is named after local activist Harry Cowley and is part of the UK Social Centre Network. In their study of the radical social centre movement in the United Kingdom, academics Stuart Hodkinson and Paul Chatterton characterise the Cowley Club as a similar type of collective-ownership initiative to the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), "with the added dimension of a housing cooperative".[5] Chatterton depicts the club as one of a number of resurgent social centres in the 2000s.[6]
- ^ "The Cowley Club – Safer Spaces". The Cowley Club. Archived from the original on 7 June 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2014.
- ^ Maximum Rocknroll, issue 254, July 2004.
- ^ Gellatley, Juliet (2006). Guide to Vegetarian Brighton. Viva!. ISBN 978-0-9547216-5-7.
- ^ "The Guv'nor's spirit lives on". The Argus. 7 January 2003. Archived from the original on 29 September 2007.
- ^ Hodkinson, Stuart; Paul Chatterton (December 2006). "Autonomy in the city?". City. 10 (3): 305–315. Bibcode:2006City...10..305H. doi:10.1080/13604810600982222. S2CID 143032260.
- ^ Chatterton, Paul (2006). ""Give up Activism" and Change the World in Unknown Ways: Or, Learning to Walk with Others on Uncommon Ground". Antipode. 38 (2): 259. Bibcode:2006Antip..38..259C. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.501.1522. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2006.00579.x.