RESIST: RED SHOES POSTER ARCHIVE

Join us for a two-day gathering on resistance, struggle and collective activism.

Across displays, screenings, talks and workshops we’ll explore grassroots cultural and collective work, and organising for social change.

RED SHOES Poster Archive are exhibiting over 250 international protest posters from 1894 to 2024. From challenging governments, regimes, injustices and inequalities, posters are defiant objects of dissent, and this exhibition reflects on the power of the poster as an essential visual communication tool for protest movements worldwide. Over the weekend, Archive Curator Shaun Feathersone will be giving short talks oand there’ll be opportunities for you to contribute your knowledge to the display.

Reproductions of many of the posters are also for sale at affordable prices to make the works available for everyone and raise funds for the archive.

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ABOUT THE ARCHIVE

RED SHOES Poster Archive | Archif Bosteri’r ESGIDIAU COCHION is both a physical and digital archive, a mobile art installation and a political education and working-class history project based in south Wales. It’s artist- and trade union-led by volunteers, and collects and preserves posters from across the social justice spectrum. Launched in 2020, the archive now has over 1600 physical posters, ephemera and a growing library of books relating to political poster art, print and graphics.

The collection highlights campaigns and actions from across the progressive and radical left political spectrum eg.peace, anti-capitalist, climate emergency, international solidarity, racial justice, civil rights and feminism. Their primary function is cultural activism; utilising the collection to raise awareness of the cultural and social history of workers through posters. This opens up dialogue, discussion and appreciation of the role and value of posters as activist tools within the context of social and political change.

RED SHOES refers to the colour most associated with mass worker-led movements, and the notion that we walk in the footsteps of those before us, continuing the struggle to win a more fair, equitable and sustainable world. The archive is unique to Wales and the only collection in the UK solely dedicated to collecting and preserving social justice posters.