Radical Review: The organisations who sought change in 2024

At the end of a difficult year, we’re grateful for the grassroots organisations who have shown us another way. We unpack a handful of these groups' practices and teachings, and look towards 2025 with hope

Article by Jj Fadaka | 09 Dec 2024
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For marginalised communities across Scotland, 2024 has been one long inhale, with little release. Whether we’ve been waiting for election outcomes, the national budget, rent reviews, or an end to police brutality and far-right riots, after we survive one hurdle, there’s soon been another on the horizon. We’ve found relief in collective anger, although the foundations of already pressured communities have been pushed to their limit. Meeting to strategise, cry and rest together has helped us hold each other tightly. 

If 2024 has taught me anything, it’s how to create in the face of destruction. We’ve had our finances and sense of safety slowly chipped away. At the beginning of the year, I wanted to hide and give in to the world’s apparent apathy. The industry I work in – the arts and culture sector - was tight-lipped and closed ranks at any mention of genocide. My finances seemed to cover less and less of my necessities. Across Scotland, justified desperation and anger was spilling on the streets, in organised and spontaneous protests. Meanwhile, as reported by The Scotsman and Big Issue respectively, an increase in shoplifting and the number of unhoused people exposed the slow churn of local services. 

We could have stayed stuck: a shit politician got into power so let’s wait another four years; the far-right has taken the streets so let’s stay home; the police officer got off so we’ll forget the victim’s name. But grassroots groups have taken up arms, opened their circle and reformulated our avenues for change. Companionship and collective grief have been short-term relief in fighting for a world that exalts rather than tolerates our existence. For the end of 2024, I want to share practices from grassroots groups for community building and resisting an increasingly hostile world. 

State the Reality of the Matter with Art Workers for Palestine 

It’s maddening to watch human-made disasters unravel on our screens, look up to the institutions we engage with and feel as if the world has already moved on. In 2024, Art Workers for Palestine (AW4P) reignited accountability in the Scottish cultural sector by demanding explicit solidarity with Palestine from the country’s leading art organisations. 

These institutions are smarter than we give them credit for. Anger in response to vague, abstract, footnote mentions of genocide – particularly those funded by the UK government – is justified. 

AW4P cut through the noise of obscurity to state the reality of the matter. The Global North is funding, enacting and ignoring multiple genocides across the Global South. Investment companies like Ballie Gifford strategically fund the arts to move our understanding of their companies from war profiteers to benevolent philanthropists. The Scottish arts sector allows itself to be the store-front of this art-washing, moving its workers further away from the radical potential of art to critique and protest. 

Such a statement may feel uncomfortable. After all, the arts have been purposefully de-politicised to accommodate more funding, with little consideration of how money changes us and our morals. AW4P proudly identify themselves as workers; for them, art workers are the backbone of an industry staying silent on the lived reality of many people featured in its exhibitions, films, programmes and advertising. These prestigious spaces exist because we enter them, recommend them and create within them. We cannot forget the right to life for each of us, whether or not we have the money to buy your attention. Refusal to be a silently smiling majority frees our creativity to be used towards collective liberation. 

Use your Labour Power with Fossil Free Books 

Fossil Free Books (FFB) is a collective of workers in the book and literary industry. From their inception in 2023, they have challenged the idea that one writer is more important than the rest of the planet. Bringing authors and book workers  together, they demand the industry’s biggest sponsors divest from fossil fuels. 

This isn’t a union but the worker solidarity is palpable upon realising that whatever your bookish role, your livelihood relies on the (good) practices of the book industry. FFB tells us we can’t continue to pretend art is made in a dark room by a lone auteur. Rather, it is a practice handed down from those producing paper to those using their hourly wage to buy a new novel. They all deserve clean air to breathe, a life free of bombing and to live to see the realisation of the world they read and dream of. 

Solidarity isn’t easy, especially in an industry that intentionally separates artists and audiences. ‘Making it’ as an author comes with the (often false) promise of stability, but at this crucial political moment, so-called success might also mean abandoning your beliefs and the people who believe in your work. FFB don’t expect anyone to have all the right answers or to brave the realities of labour action alone. The group makes resources to educate their community on bloody money that cleans itself in book festivals and literary prizes. They create templates to help workers explain why they want to withdraw their labour while also inviting industry leaders to join their demands for change. FFB understands that bravery relies on the faces that meet you on the picket line. Strong labour power should come with the community to hold the mess and anxiety of protest.

Do-It-Yourself with Porty Pride 

We can re-make spaces that already exist. Old activist methods often don’t need to be thrown away, but simply remade, in the image of people that look and feel like you. Porty Pride stands alongside Edinburgh’s bigger Pride. It’s a volunteer-led, community-driven LGBTQ+ space hosting panels, intergenerational parties, film screenings, and (of course) a march. Anyone can suggest an event, as long as they have the will to see it through, giving local queer people a platform to DIY Pride. This gives inroads for a Pride that can centre intersecting marginalisations in the queer community; silenced, angry, questioning, joyful, quiet voices that would be drowned out by the need for a palatable ‘queer’ face elsewhere. 

The power of stepping away from corporations – who remember they have queer staff once a year and use Pride for pink-washing – reclaims Pride as a radical queer space. Rejecting tokenistic sponsorship saw Porty Pride become the first fossil-free Pride in Scotland, keeping the organisation accountable to their local community, rather than an abstract list of funders.  

Doing it yourself means you might not start big, but there is beauty in creating something that matters a lot to a small number. Attendees, volunteers and event participants put energy and resources in and get meaning out of it. Instead of a corporation eventually co-opting our history and activism and selling it back to us, our many big and small contributions can create something spectacular, here and now. 

Put New World Theories into Practice with Radical Book Fair 

Educational spaces aren’t free of restriction, discrimination or capitalism. Engaging with radical theory can induce feelings of self-doubt and imposter syndrome. Lighthouse Books has long been a refuge for those seeking change, hope, and warmth. Every year at the Radical Book Fair, they bring the curious and compassionate together to share radical ideas and imagine new worlds. 

The Radical Book Fair looks to the future with optimism and practicality. This year’s theme ‘We Are It’ invited attendees to make a collective film, share actions in response to local and global issues and rest together. If we are to build a new world, they say, we have to make space for each of us. Before you think about sharing knowledge, consider format, inclusivity, aftercare, discussion – and give people a meal! World-building is hungry work. 

The Radical Book Fair creates a hub to respond to issues particular to Scotland. Rampant transphobia is especially close to the queer community they are intertwined with. They’ve long spoken up against transphobia, complicity and silence in the arts, cultural and literary sectors and provided a meeting space for organising groups, book clubs and community events. 

Access to independent publishers means access to under-represented voices and disrupts the hegemony of white, middle-class professional writers.  From anarchy to trans-feminism to the Black radical tradition, the Radical Book Fair brings ideas outwith the mainstream into collective focus. Come to find your future co-conspirators and stay to get ideas for your first action.


Yet still, we will come together this winter to grieve, rest, and celebrate with our loved ones. We will retreat with our grievances, less naive and maybe more cynical about so-called cultural leaders and voices for change, but we will have a newfound energy. We will be braver, bolder and more outspoken, with a collective voice of different registers and languages. Let the curated press releases and notes app apologies die in 2025. Everything worth hearing this year, I heard on the street.