Project announcement: Justice & Change

Metroland Cultures is pleased to present Justice & Change, a 2-year archive research project exploring how the law shapes our lives, and how communities create justice beyond the limits of our current legal systems.

The project begins with Brent Community Law Centre (BCLC), one of the first community law centres in the UK, founded in 1971 as part of a wider law centre movement that emerged from a lack of legal welfare support available to working-class communities. Underpinning this work was a central question: what is the role of a lawyer in working-class struggle? In response, BCLC developed a unique approach to law that focused on collective action rather than on individual cases whilst also redistributing legal knowledge to community organisations across the borough. From this activity also grew the Young People’s Law Centre (YPLC), which supported young people facing legal struggles in four areas: care, employment, education and the criminal justice system.

Over the next two years, Justice & Change will bring together community partners – No More Exclusions and Redthread – alongside artists, researchers and young people to learn from this history and respond to it creatively. The project will build and activate the BCLC and YPLC archives, record intergenerational oral histories with people connected to the law centre, and commission new work from artists Francesca Telling and Rehana Zaman to be launched in 2027. Together, these activities will form an ongoing public programme of workshops, archival displays and exhibitions creating spaces for reflection, sharing and collective learning.

Through a process of collective research Justice & Change will ask questions about the relationship between law and safety: who the law protects, who it fails, and what justice looks like when communities care for one another. It also asks: how can we practice justice as community care? How can listening to past community responses to harm offer us lessons in healing, repair and prevention for now, and in the future? How can exploring these histories creatively support people to respond to the issues that are most impacting them today?

Justice & Change is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund. Thanks to National Lottery players, we have been able to build this two-year programme exploring community approaches to justice through archival work, oral histories, and new artistic commissions. With additional support using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. 

Get involved:

If you who have a connection to the BCLC or YPLC, If you worked there, were supported there, or have memories, stories or materials linked to these spaces, we would love to hear from you. Please email meera@metrolandcultures.com

With thanks to BCLC founders and staff who have supported us in the research and development of the project so far; Jamie Ritchie, Clive Grace, Sian Williams, Irene Grant Bannon, Maureen Vincent and Jeremy Smith.

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About The National Lottery Heritage Fund

Our vision is for heritage to be valued, cared for and sustained for everyone, now and in the future. That’s why as the largest funder for the UK’s heritage we are dedicated to supporting projects that connect people and communities to heritage, as set out in our strategic plan, Heritage 2033. Heritage can be anything from the past that people value and want to pass on to future generations. We believe in the power of heritage to ignite the imagination, offer joy and inspiration, and to build pride in place and connection to the past. Over the next 10 years, we aim to invest £3.6billion raised for good causes by National Lottery players to make a decisive difference for people, places and communities.