John Phillips
When Pippa Smith and I set up Paddington Printshop in 1975, neither of us could have dreamt that the organisation, albeit transformed through time, would still be kicking in 2025.
The original proposal was fairly basic “Come to our unheated semi-derelict factory and homemade press to promote your cause on the following condition: nothing sexist, racist, or commercial”. It worked: within days the place was full, and within a year numerous print shops, based on our DIY model, had sprung up around the country.
For the next decade Paddington Printshop worked with artists, musicians, squatters and activists in west London creating graphics to support a wide array of campaigns, festivals and local bright ideas. Unwittingly, we became a hub for floating ideas and mobilising. Let’s: start a campaign, open a women’s centre, create a community farm. The Printshop became an incubator for new organisations and resources locally, nationally and internationally.
Things didn’t change overnight, but gradually the demand for posters waned. Rebranded as londonprintstudio we opened a gallery and printmaking facility for artists, alongside our community activism. Over the subsequent decades, we supported thousands of artists and delivered dozens of community projects. Then, in October 2020, confronted by unremitting lockdown and a legacy of ever-dwindling state support, we closed that facility and set about imagining how our original intentions of linking the arts and social struggles might be reframed for today.
The idea of the Museum of Unrest emerged from this transition. It is rooted in the observation that many artists, designers and communities are addressing issues of social and environmental justice with inspiring results, but this work is scattered, and sometimes difficult to access, because we lack the spaces dedicated to promoting, supporting and embracing the common goal of these initiatives.
The Museum of Unrest is an online space with an ever growing series of collections comprising articles and resources focused around specific themes. Our first collection was dedicated to artists and activist museums and archives, our second collection explored the idea of ‘Good Design’ from an environmental and social justice perspective. Future collections will explore Community Arts, Carnival, and the Architecture of Play.
From one perspective, The Museum of Unrest is a new departure with few visible connections to the print studios from which it emerged. From another perspective, it is enriched with five decades of collective experience of friends, many of whom are contributing to this new initiative.
