Published Date 2/1/16 6:52 PM
I’m writing this for people who are actively stepping away from the mainstream 9–5 world and moving into disreputable subcultures to live their lives differently.
One issue that comes up again and again in these spaces is group organisation. It usually comes up at moments of stress, and it is usually handled badly. The result is familiar: drained energy, burnt-out people, accumulated bad will, and long trails of failed groups.
For most people passing through these subcultures, this isn’t a pressing concern. Many dip in and out of the shifting social soup. The mainstream remains an easy fallback. They don’t stay long enough to notice the deeper patterns of growth and decay – and by the time they do, they’re often ready to retreat back to the (dulling) safety of “normal life”.
Rinse and repeat.
Each short generation leaves behind another layer of wreckage, and the result is predictable: alternative culture acquires a bad reputation in the mainstream, which then feeds back into the next cycle of failure.
Over the next few posts, I want to look at several groups I’m involved in that are currently at different stages of what might politely be called “crisis”. Before doing that, it’s useful to look at two organising models that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries and still quietly shape how we think about shared space today.
Village Hall
Small, less-radical groups have traditionally organised around structures like the village hall.
A village hall is a non-commercial space for community events – an open space for the social, political, and cultural activities a community holds in common. It’s a neutral space, designed to support cohesion rather than impose values. Typically, it’s run by an elected committee drawn from an active and open local membership.
The strength of the village hall model is its openness: it assumes that difference exists and that the role of the space is to hold that difference together rather than filter it.
Church Hall
A church hall often looks similar on the surface and shares many practical uses, but the underlying logic is different.
Church halls tend to be more narrowly focused, shaped by the moral and ideological positions of the institution that owns them. A Catholic church is unlikely to host meetings supporting abortion rights. More conservative churches won’t host young socialists, anarchist legal support groups, or black-flag collectives. Other religions may also be excluded.
In short, access is conditional.
While there may be a local management committee, the final authority usually rests with the church hierarchy, often mediated through the vicar or equivalent figure. The space highlights some parts of the community while marginalising others.
Why We Had Both
The reason villages often had both village halls and church halls should now be obvious. They served different social functions and embodied different values. One aimed for neutrality and shared ownership; the other for moral guidance and ideological boundaries.
In the mid-20th century, a third model emerged, particularly in urban areas: the community centre.
Community centres grew out of ideas about social justice, public culture, and collective empowerment. They expanded the role of the village hall while explicitly moving away from church-centred moral authority.
This wiki page is worth reading, it’s the most developed of the three.
Decline and Degradation
By the late 20th century, community centres were steadily degraded.
Commercialisation hollowed them out: “community empowerment” became “must pay your way”. At the same time, bureaucratisation suffocated them – a legacy of mid-20th-century managerial thinking that prioritised control, reporting, and risk avoidance over living social use.
So today, we’re left with three traditional, mainstream approaches to “space for the community”, all carrying the assumptions and limits of their time.
Rebooting for the 21st Century
There’s a current romantic tendency to look backwards – to reboot village halls, and in more conservative circles, to revive church halls. This instinct isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete.
These institutions were products of their historical moment. They worked because they matched the social realities of their time. If we want spaces that actually support 21st-century subcultures, post-mainstream lives, and horizontal organising, then we need to reboot the underlying ideas, not just recreate the forms.
The question isn’t which old model we choose. The question is: what kind of shared space fits the society we’re actually living in now?
UPDATE: That’s where things get interesting. With online spaces, the #OMN if you want, next we can:
- map these models directly onto #OMN / #indymediaback spaces, or
- talk about where horizontal projects rot and how to slow that rot, or
- sketch what a post-village-hall model might actually look like in practice.
