[matilda] Why Matilda is important to me

[dan at aktivix.org]

Morning,

Just read Ben's e-mail, and Dan's response.  Ben, that was really moving. Thanks
for giving to the list. So much stuff to think about...

Feel a bit sheepish writing coz I've been absent from MATILDA for a while...

Techno party and knitting workshop: I wonder if that's a first?  Probably not;
it's a big world out there...!

Ben: somewhere up your end of town, there's a youth parliament / forum, I think.
 I have the contact details written down somewhere... at home in last year's
diary, I think.  If we don't get put off by the name, it might be worth
contacting them.  Equally, talking to some of the local forums would reveal who
might have ideas on this. (I got a name to suggest we could follow up, won't
put on list though...)

Coz actually finding ways to expand and draw more people in is going to be down
to making those connections, and building relationships with people over time. 
I know there's a schizm here too: a lot of us autonomistas presume that anyone
in e.g. a council or funded role has gone over to the other side. Some have.
Many haven't - and we'll find out who through talking to people and working
with them.

Question is: what exactly do we say to people about what MATILDA can offer?
Although we want to emphasise DIY, just saying 'anything can happen there!'
isn't going to get 'em in.  

Another problem is this: if we're trying to tell others - "come over to our way
of doing things! DIY culture is better than you're cow-like passive consuming
of popular culture! Lift the veil from your docile working class eyes!", the
response is unlikely to be great...

Obviously, no-one's actually going to say that directly.  And that's why
something like the Lantern carnival is so fantastic - it does everything you'd
want DIY culture to do (well - minus the shouting at ministers, but hey...)
without patronising anyone.

So maybe you have to think: what can I be doing in my area? That's easy for me,
living in Sharrow and - I'd say - relatively easy if you're in Burngreave too,
coz networks already exist.  I don't know about elsewhere in the city.

Having said that - about connecting with other areas: Sheffield Live and Sangita
would be well worth talking to.  In a chat some time last year, she was saying
how important it was for Sheffield Live to be where it was - not in anyone's
hood: on neutral ground.  This, she reckons, has made it possible for the place
to draw in a whole load of people that localised projects wouldn't be able to.

So MATILDA has the same potential, if we can just work out what the hell to do!

And that's what we need to do, rather than having abstract debates where we all
end up agreeing, yes, it should be for everyone.  OK - let's get Chesney Hawkes
for the students, and Westlife for the proles, then... er, or can we think of
another way?

p.s. When I first read these e-mails, I was reminded of the several past
occasions when Sheffield e-lists have turned into a 'I'm more working class
than thou' rant, in which people have openly laid bare their heritage.  I've
done that in the past myself, and try not to now.  It can get extreme: I
remember many years back being in a context where it felt like a perverse
parody of Nazi policy on being Jewish: "if you can provide papers proving you
have four working class grandparents, we won't incinerate you..."

It comes down to what experiences we've had in life, and what our environments
have done to us.  Notwithstanding unforeseen circumstances, I am never likely
to have to spend 18 hours a day in a sandwich-making factory being paid £2 an
hour and sleeping in a shed - as happens somewhere in this country.  But that
privileged position does not stop me from being able to fight that injustice.
(Not that I do, but the principle's there!)

This is not to diminish your experience, Ben: unlike (luckily not too many!)
others I've had to listen to over the years, your writing shines with shared
experience that says something - not using it as a stick to beat people with,
as others do.  The difference is huge: having to listen to certain people tell
me what I am, when they know nothing of my life, makes me angry to the point of
breaking stuff.  We should not judge others.

Which is to say, it would be nice if whoever comes into the space *could* come
as themselves, and not the group they are forced to represent.  I think,
generally, we do that well in MATILDA.  I mean - where the bloody hell were all
you lot hiding before?  Melting pot, or wot?

Oo, oo, academic point coming up! We might presume networks are purely social
connections, but MATILDA shows that having a physical space can bring together
networks in the same city that, previously, you might have presumed were more
inter-woven... 

.. which brings us back to Ben's point: "If you are coming here to help us
don't bother. But if you see your fate inter-weaved with ours perhaps we can
help each other."

More weaving! Er... knitting as a metaphor for social struggle?  I never knew
struggle could be such fun!

Dan