WInfoshops are places in which people can access anarchist or autonomist ideas. They are often stand-alone projects, or can form part of a larger radical bookshop, archive, autonomous social centre or community centre. Typically, infoshops offer flyers, posters, zines, pamphlets and books for sale or donation. Other items such as badges, locally produced artworks and T-shirts are also often available. Infoshops can also provide printing and copying facilities for people to produce their own literature or have a meeting space.
WThe 1 in 12 Club refers to both a members' club and the building in which it is based, in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Owned and run by its membership as a collective based upon anarchist principles, its activities include social and political campaigning—most visibly as a centre for the city's May Day activities—and use of the building as a social centre and host for performing arts. In the 1980s it was one of the main locations for the UK crust and anarcho-punk scene, and in the 1990s played host to much of the country's straight edge metalcore scene.
WABC No Rio is a collectively-run arts organization on New York City's Lower East Side. It was founded in 1980 in a squat at 156 Rivington Street, following the eviction of The Real Estate Show. The centre featured an art gallery space, a zine library, a darkroom, a silkscreening studio, and public computer lab. In addition, it played host to a number of radical projects including weekly hardcore punk matinees and the NYC Food Not Bombs collective.
WACU is a political-cultural venue in the city centre of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. The name ACU is derived from "Auto Centrale Utrecht" and is one of the many signs of its origin as an old squat. Nowadays it is still run by volunteers as an infoshop and social centre in order to keep it an independent and non-profit harbour within Utrecht's nightlife.
WADM was a squat in the Port of Amsterdam, to the west of the city next to the North Sea Canal. The squat lasted from 1997 until its eviction in early 2019. Around 130 people lived on the terrain of 45 hectares in buildings, on boats and in vehicles.
WThe Amsterdam Subversive Center for Information Interchange (ASCII) was a squatted communication laboratory in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. The first incarnation was formed in 1999, based based at Herengracht 243a. The lab then moved to the following locations: Jodenbreestraat 24, Kinkerstraat 92-94, Kostverlorenkade 2e, Wibautstraat 7 and Javastraat.
WThe Bank of Ideas was a squatted, self-managed social centre in a disused UBS office complex on Sun Street in the City of London, England. It remained in the building from November 2011 until January 2012. The building was owned by UBS, and the squatters were members of the Occupy London protest movement. The building was described by an Occupy London spokesman as "a space for political discussion".
WBlitz is an anarchist, communist and socialist youth community in Oslo, Norway, founded in 1982.
WBloomsbury Social Centre was the name given to a building in Bloomsbury, London, which was squatted as a self-managed social centre by students in affiliation with Occupy London, and the global Occupy movement. It was occupied on Wednesday, 23 November 2011, and evicted on Thursday, 22 December, lasting a total of 30 days. It was situated at 53 Gordon Square, in an historic six-storey Georgian Grade II-listed building, renovated by famous British architect, Charles Holden, the principal architect of nearby Senate House.
WBluestockings is a volunteer-supported and collectively owned radical bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It started out as a feminist bookstore and is named after a group of Enlightenment intellectual women, the Bluestockings.
WBoxcar Books was a non-profit, independent bookstore, infoshop, and community center in Bloomington, Indiana. Collectively run by volunteers, Boxcar Books was "one of the highest-volume zine sellers" in the United States. According to its website, the store existed to "promote reading, self-education, social equality, and social welfare through increased accessibility to literature and workshops." Boxcar Books was for a time also the home of the Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, a non-profit organization that distributes books and reading materials to prisoners. By the end of 2017, Boxcar Books had closed their operations.
WC (See)-Squat is a former squat house located at 155 Avenue C in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City that has been home to musicians, artists and activists, among others. After a fire, it was taken into city ownership in 1978 and squatters moved in in 1989. The building was restored in 2002 and since then it has been legally owned by the occupants. Its ground-floor storefront now houses the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space.
WThe Camas Bookstore and Infoshop is a not-for-profit infoshop located at 2620 Quadra Street, on Lekwungen territory in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
WCan Vies is a building located in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, built in 1879. It has been squatted since 1997 when a group of youths occupied it and began using it as a self-managed social centre and infoshop. In late May 2014 riots broke out in a successful attempt to stop an eviction. The building was partially demolished and rebuilt by the local community.
WThe Catalyst Infoshop was an infoshop and bookshop at 109 N. McCormick Street, Prescott, Arizona, founded in 2004. It had closed by 2010.
WCIRA is an anarchist archive, infoshop and library of anarchist material in different languages based in Lausanne, Switzerland with other branches in Marseille and Fujinomiya, Japan.
WThe Civic Media Center (CMC) is a nonprofit infoshop, library and reading room in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It was set up in 1993 and in 2009 received the book collection of activist Stetson Kennedy.
WThe Cowley Club is a libertarian 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. Its political identity is close to anarchism or libertarian socialism. It also houses a vegan community café, a bookshop, and free English lessons for migrants.
WThe Cream City Collectives (CCC) was a volunteer-run collective space located at 732 E. Clarke St. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It existed from 2006 until 2012.
WCSOA Forte Prenestino is a large self-managed social centre based in a squatted fort in Centocelle, Rome. It was occupied on May Day 1986. Forte Prenestino is an "important node of production of cultural and political events" and hosts many groups and events across its 13 hectares.
WDe Blauwe Aanslag was a squat and self-managed social centre in the Dutch city of The Hague. The oldest part of the building was built in 1886. The large building formerly housed tax offices and was occupied in 1980. When the local council took over the ownership of the building, it was agreed to renovate it in three stages, with the squatters living there. However the plans changed and since 1995 the council decided to widen the roads next to the building; for this reason the squat needed to be demolished. After many efforts to block the demolition with lawsuits, the squatters were evicted by military police on 3 October, 2003.
WThe Ernst-Kirchweger-Haus (EKH) is a self-managed social centre in Vienna's 10th district, Favoriten. It was squatted in 1990 and legalised in 2008. The project is named after Ernst Kirchweger.
WEskalera Karakola is a feminist self-managed social centre in Madrid, Spain. Women squatted a bakery on Calle de Embajadores 40 from 1996 until 2005, whereupon they were given a building at Calle de Embajadores 52.
WFreedom Press is an anarchist publishing house in Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1886, it is the largest anarchist publishing house in the country and the oldest of its kind in the English speaking world. It is based at 84b Whitechapel High Street in the East End of London.
WInternationalist Books and Community Center, located in Carrboro, North Carolina, was a volunteer operated infoshop, non-profit collective, and community center for local activists. The store name was a reference to the political philosophy of internationalism. Often, the center was called "The Internationalist" or merely "Eye Books" by its volunteers, members, and supporters.
WThe Iron Rail Book Collective ran a volunteer-run radical library and anarchist bookstore in New Orleans, Louisiana. The infoshop's main focus was a lending library featuring a wide selection of books on topics including anarchism and socialism, fiction, gardening and philosophy. The Iron Rail also sold records, zines, local CDs and some miscellany. Events held at the Iron Rail included workshops and art presentations. The Iron Rail also contained the Above Ground Zine Library with a selection of thousands of zines, some very rare. As of September 2017, their personal site and Facebook page have not been updated in since 2015 and 2016 respectively.
WJura Books is an anarchist bookshop and infoshop located in Sydney, Australia.
WKafé 44 is a café, concert venue, and anarchist bookstore in Stockholm. Based in the Kapsylen work cooperative, which was founded by an artist group in 1976, the café Dagfiket opened in its basement in the early 1980s, and was later followed by the music venue Scen 44 in 1990, and the anarchist bookstore Bokhandeln INFO a few years later.
WKlinika was a squatted self-managed social centre in Žižkov, Prague, from 2014 until 2019. It followed in the tradition of anarchist projects such as Ladronka and Milada.
WKukutza was a gaztetxe in the neighbourhood of Recalde, Bilbao. It operated as a squatted free space between 1996 and 2011. It was used as a youth, unemployed and cultural centre. In those 15 years it had 3 different buildings. The first one, Kukutza I, was used in 1996 and just for 3 months, then Kukutza II in 1998 and for 2 months, and finally, Kukutza III, open between 1998 and 2011 and had a large activity programme. It was set in an abandoned factory and closed in 2011 because it was violently evicted by the police.
WLa Ingobernable is a series of self-managed social centres in central Madrid, Spain. The squats were used by feminist, environmentalists, LGBTI, anti-racist and other cultural groups. Between 2017 and 2019, the La Ingobernable was based in a municipal building located at the corner of Paseo del Prado and Calle del Gobernador. It was then located at Calle Alberto Bosch 4, behind the Prado Museum from March until April 2020, when it was evicted during the state of alarm.
WLadronka is a homestead at Tomanova 1028/1 in Prague 6, in the Czech Republic. Built by Charles IV, it was bought by an Italian count, then owned by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta before being broken into flats during communism. It was then squatted in 1993, becoming an internationally famous anarchist, self-managed social centre which was evicted in 2000. After several years of renovation, Ladronka was re-opened as an activities centre in 2005, to serve the park it sits within. There are facilities for dining, cycling, rollerskating, beach volleyball and football.
WThe Lucy Parsons Center, located in Jamaica Plain, Boston, Massachusetts, is an anarchist, nonprofit independent bookstore and community center. Formed out of the Red Word bookstore, it is collectively run by volunteers. The Center provides reading material, space for individuals to drop in, and a free space for meetings and events.
WMetelkova is an autonomous social and cultural centre in the city centre of Ljubljana, Slovenia's capital city. Formerly, the site was the military headquarters of the Army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then it became the Slovenian headquarter of the Yugoslav National Army. It consists of seven buildings extended over a total area of 12,500 m², which have been squatted since September 1993. The squat is named after nearby Metelko Street, which is named after the 19th-century Slovenian Roman Catholic priest, philologist, and unsuccessful language reformer Fran Metelko.
WMoira is a music and arts venue in the city center of Utrecht, Netherlands.
WThe Old Market Autonomous Zone, or A-Zone, was founded in 1995, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada by local activists Paul Burrows and Sandra Drosdowech, who also co-founded Winnipeg's Mondragon Bookstore. Its name is derived from "Old Market Square," the historic Exchange District in Winnipeg's downtown core area, combined with Hakim Bey's notion of a "Temporary Autonomous Zone". The Winnipeg A-Zone occupies a three-story building, originally built in 1899 and known as the "Imperial Dry Goods Building." Like many buildings in the area, it is classified as a heritage building by the City of Winnipeg. Since 1995, the building has been known locally as both the A-Zone, and sometimes the Emma Goldman Building.
WThe Really Free School was a collective squatting a series of buildings in central London in 2011. They organised lectures and workshops, stating "in this space, aside from the fact that you will not spend one penny inside these doors, you can also come and engage in a collective learning process directed by your own desires, ideas, questions and problems."
WRed Emma's Bookstore Coffeehouse is a radical infoshop located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States and run by a worker-owner collective. Named for anarchist Emma Goldman, Red Emma's opened in November 2004 and sells fair trade coffee, vegetarian and vegan foods and books. The space also provides free computer access to the Baltimore community, wireless internet and film screenings, political teach-ins, and community events.
WRHINO was a famous squat in Geneva, Switzerland. It occupied two buildings on the Boulevard des Philosophes in downtown Geneva, a few blocks away from the main campus of the University of Geneva. RHINO housed seventy people until its eviction in July 2007. It had been occupied by the squatters since 1988.
WRozbrat is a long-running anarchist social centre in Jeżyce in Poznań, Poland.
WSalon Mazal was an infoshop in Tel Aviv, Israel. Its purpose was to spread information and raise awareness of issues related to social change, including human rights, animal rights, the environment, globalization, social and economic oppression, consumerism, feminism and gender issues. It ran by an open, non-hierarchical collective of volunteers at 32 Yitzhak Sadeh Street, Tel Aviv.
WSelf-managed social centres in Italy exist in many cities. They are part of different left-wing political networks including anarchist, communist, and autonomist. The centres tend to be squatted and provide self-organised, self-financing spaces for alternative and noncommercial activities such as concerts, exhibitions, farmers' markets, infoshops, and migrant initiatives. Over time, some but not all projects have opted to legalize their status.
WSelf-managed social centres in the United Kingdom can be found in squatted, rented, mortgaged and fully owned buildings. These self-managed social centres differ from community centres in that they are self-organised under anti-authoritarian principles and volunteer-run, without any assistance from the state. The largest number have occurred in London from the 1980s onwards, although projects exist in most cities across the UK, linked in a network. Squatted social centres tend to be quickly evicted and therefore some projects deliberately choose a short-term existence, such as A-Spire in Leeds or the Okasional Café in Manchester. Longer term social centres include the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford, the Cowley Club in Brighton and the Sumac Centre in Nottingham, which are co-operatively owned.
WSpartacus Books is a non-profit, volunteer and collectively run bookstore and resource centre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in 1973. Spartacus sells new and used books, zines, comics, magazines, CDs, videos, T-shirts, patches, pins, posters and cards. Spartacus Books is one of the longest running collectively run bookstores in North America.
WSquat Milada is a First Republic villa located in the Libeň district of Prague. Milada was intended to be demolished in the 1980s and thus deleted from the cadastre, becoming a house which officially did not exist. It became one of the Czech Republic's best known squats, occupied from 1997 until 2009. It was then reoccupied for a day in 2012. Acting as a self-managed social centre and infoshop hosting concerts and events, Milada was also home to a number of people. Despite various plans for the site, as of 2019, the building was standing derelict.
WThe Sumac Centre is an independent community and social centre in Nottingham, UK. It is a secondary co-operative and a member of Radical Routes. It provides resources, meeting spaces and workshops for groups and individuals. It supports campaigning for human rights, animal rights, the environment, peace and co-operation worldwide. It is part of the UK Social Centre Network. Veggies is based at the centre.
WThe Tabacalera de Lavapiés or Centro Social Autogestionado La Tabacalera de Lavapiés is a well-known cultural and social center in Madrid, Spain. It consists of a large set of connected buildings in the central neighbourhood of Lavapiés. The buildings are property of the Spanish Ministry of Culture, although since 2010 its use has been transferred to a local grassroots association, and since then it is managed by a local community. The space hosts a fab lab, a theatre, several music bands, artist collectives and multiple social activities. Nowadays, it is one of the major spots for cultural activities in the city, especially among the youth.
WThe Trumbullplex is a housing collective and showspace in the Woodbridge neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan, USA.
WThe Ubica buildings are two adjacent buildings standing at 24 and 26 Ganzenmarkt, in central Utrecht, the Netherlands. Number 24 is a rijksmonument. The first recorded mention of the buildings is from 1319. After centuries of residential use, the buildings were bought by the Ubica mattress company in 1913 and used until a devastating fire in 1989. The buildings were then squatted for 21 years, before being redeveloped into a hotel and café-restaurant in 2014.
WUngdomshuset was the popular name of the building formally named Folkets Hus located on Jagtvej 69 in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, which functioned as an underground scene venue for music and rendezvous point for varying autonomist and leftist groups from 1982 until 2007 when—after prolonged conflict—it was torn down, and later also for its successor, located on Dortheavej 61 in the adjacent Bispebjerg neighbourhood. Due to the ongoing conflict between the Copenhagen Municipality and the activists occupying the premises, the building on Jagtvej was the subject of intense media attention and public debate from the mid-1990s till 2008.
WVrijplaats Koppenhinksteeg was a complex of buildings first squatted in 1968 in Leiden, the Netherlands. It took its name from the alley on which it was located and was run since the 1990s by the Vrijplaats Koppenhinksteeg Foundation. Various groups including Eurodusnie used the different spaces as a bar, café, a freeshop, a foundation to support undocumented migrants, an information centre, a library and a sports club. In 2010, the entire complex was evicted. From 2012 onwards a new space called the Vrijplaats Leiden was set up elsewhere.