Using Space

Cover photograph for issue one

Using Space is a zine made collaboratively by Mujinga and other people about squats, social centres and alternative ways of living.

All issues can be downloaded for free via Zinelibrary RiP or Northern Indymedia or squat!net or Cobble Books or mujinga.

Fifteen

Recent (2020) squats in Brighton on the short stretch of London Road which goes from St. Peters Church up to Preston Circus led me to refect on this area’s incredibly active radical history. To focus on just one element, let’s walk past the sites of former squats on London Road…

Fourteen

• Using Space 14 was written August 2019 and came out somewhat later. Hail inertia! It covers a day in London when I went on a social centre tour thanks to the anti-university and then went onto a Temporary Autonomous Arts event in a rave venue in Old Street. All in all a fine day out.

Thirteen

• Sqek is Dqed! This zine from 2019 has a long article discussing what happens when a collective falls apart.

Twelve

• Published August 2018. Amongst other stuff this features a callout for MORE zines, an account of what happened when Nazis tried to squat in Amsterdam and a book review of a terrible pro-gentrification book.

Eleven

• 2017: An interview with a squatter in Rotterdam

Ten

• Viva Poortgebouw! A whole zine dedicated to the history of the Poortgebouw in Rotterdam, previously profiled in issue one!!

Nine

Published 2016. With a cover that fortuituously predated the ridiculous stairs to the top of a building to celebrate 70 years of rebuilding Rotterdam (and providing much squatting opportunities), this issue reprinted some interesting articles:

• Six reasons to support your local squats
• Don’t support Nazi-inspired apartheid: Tourists boycott Rotterdam
• So what is violence then?
• The Vacancy Crunch: The Current Housing Crisis in the Netherlands and the Repression of Squatting

Eight

Number eight, published 2013 contains:

• "I've painted myself into a corner" - learning from the divide between 'artistic' and 'anarchist' squatters in Paris
• Open House London / Made Possible by Squatting
• Review of ‘Nine Tenths of the Law’ by Hannah Dobbz
• A quick update on Brighton courtcases
• Excerpt from ‘Dangerous Spaces’ zine
• List of back issues

Seven

Issue seven, published August 2012, contains:

• A short update on the criminalisation of squatting in England and Wales
• A callout for a mass squatting action in Brighton
• When 'glitter thugs' attack...
• Interview with a Seattle Squatter
• Keeping occupied - on the squatted Ocean estate, London
• A list of back issues

Six

Issue six contents:

• Facing Up to Mike Weatherley's Fearsome Gauntlet
• A Secret History of the City
• The CoolTan Arts Centre
• Watching the value of property melt away - Squatting in the U$A
• The Sacred Law of Private Property
• Informal Update on the Situation in Seattle
• The Story of Sabotaj
• Squat weblinks

Four

Issue four contained the following pieces:

• a visit to a squatted land project in central Amsterdam
• the UK national squat meet in Bristol,
• a rumination on social centres
• a large squatting action in Sweden
• a fotoreport from the Dutch national squatting day
• recycled newspaper reports

Three

Issue three featured various short pieces taken from a range of sources. These included: thoughts about the future of squatting; a report on the progress of the now defunct maelstrom centre in Leeds; a personal history of the ELF squat in Amsterdam.

Two

Issue two was produced in June 2007. It focuses on the story of a squatted street in Rotterdam. It has two articles, one in English, one in Dutch.

One

Issue one was released in November 2006. It is A5 format, 24 pages with a cover and contains an account of various visited social centres in Europe, with an indepth profile of the Poortgebouw in Rotterdam.

External Links

• Website
• Northern Indymedia