Ten years ago, Reboot the Roots creative director Serge left the squats of Hackney and returned to Malaysia to facilitate and organise in solidarity with a community of recovering drug users, refugees, and people living with HIV. They blogged about their experience, and we wish to share highlights from their writings to highlight the origins of RtR as an arts-for-social-change organisation.

“We were lean young wolves, full of pride and thought: dangerous types. We had a certain fear of becoming careerists, as we considered many of our elders to be who had made some show of being revolutionary, and afterwards …”

Victor Serge, Memoirs of a Revolutionary

Perhaps at the repeated behest of the trustees of Reboot The Roots, perhaps because of reading Serge’s Memoirs of a Revolutionary, but probably mostly because it seems unfathomable that I have not done it before – this is to document and explore the coming tour of duty, or season, I will spend in Malaysia.

It seems incredible that I did not do this before, with so many rich and vibrant experiences through this kind of work – social cohesion, community arts, organisation – and so many characters … It is my intention that through documenting this process more thoroughly, and taking the time to reflect and respond to what is sure to be a multitude of experiences through the prism of anarchism, that I will come to match up intention and deed, and also deepen my comprehension of the impact of the work being done in Malaysia.

I leave on September 25th. This last week I was evicted from the social centre in Hackney where we have operated for the last five months, and already moved into a new squat over the road. The chaos served to catalyse my determination to return to South East Asia – I booked the ticket two days after the bailiffs kicked our doors in. The most direct impact this has had was the cancellation of the fundraiser, booked to take place last Saturday (27th August). Ideally, it would have brought the total funds raised closer to a grand, and now I am out of pocket due to investing in the alcohol.

In the next few weeks, we need to raise more money if possible, but regardless a key aim on returning to Malaysia is to find ways of making the community financially independent – the funding from UK should really only ever be a short-term assistance – I do not wish to replace one sponsor with another in the name of charity, or encourage dependency on outsiders.

Solidarity, not charity. The residents of Batu Arang, in my mind, are not charity cases, but fellow exploited humans to whom we are extending our support, comradeship, and showing solidarity through financial contributions. In turn, they get time to stabilise and reassess their position within society, and even contribute back through their work with other socially excluded groups.

Financial self-sufficiency could be achieved in a number of ways – but would require a high degree of consciousness on the part of the group. It has been attempted previously, and due to the mixture of trust and addiction issues, has had mixed results.

In addition to the ongoing autonomy struggle, a cornerstone of this tour will be the Bangun festival in Penang. This is the major reason for my return – to ensure the monies granted by the Commonwealth Foundation are appropriately spent and documented to satisfaction. It has been a year since we applied for that funding, and still we are battling to roll out our plans. Since the problems with the tour last year, we have had the use transferred to funding a festival in collaboration with Lost Generation Artspace and the residents of the jetties of Penang. Yeoh of LostGen has been worringly uncommunicative … but that has always been his way.

So, back to Malaysia I go. I will keep you posted on any developments, in the meantime, here’s a little taster of what we achieved back in 2009 with the original Bangun (Arise/Wake Up) festival. Lots of the current residents of Reboot The Roots are in there … see if you can spot them.

Original post can be found here.