Opening May 1st: For no reason of my own

For no reason of my own
Exhibition dates: 1 –24 May 2026.
Opening hours: Wed–Sun 12–5pm

Launch evening: 1 May, 6–8pm, free all welcome

For no reason of my own is an archive display that introduces Justice & Change, a two-year research project exploring the history of the Brent Community Law Centre (BCLC) and the Young People’s Law Centre (YPLC). Bringing together materials from the BCLC and YPLC alongside films from Cinenova and London Community Video Archive and photographic materials from the North Paddington Community Darkroom, the display situates the law centre movement within a wider landscape of grassroots organising — documenting how working-class communities built infrastructures of mutual support, political education and resistance in response to structural inequality.

The Brent Community Law Centre (BCLC) was one of the first community law centres in the UK, founded in 1971 as part of a wider movement that emerged from a lack of accessible legal welfare for 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 an approach to law grounded in collective action rather than individual cases, while redistributing legal knowledge to community organisations across the borough. From this work grew the Young People’s Law Centre (YPLC), a unique initiative within the movement that supported young people facing legal struggles in care, employment, education and the criminal justice system.

For no reason of my own takes its title from a text, If we can’t get our points across… we ought to have a spokesperson for ourselves (1981), which outlines the need for a specialised legal service for young people. Through correspondence, reports, newspaper clippings, photographs, moving image and paperwork, this presentation traces the conditions that made services like BCLC and YPLC necessary. These archival fragments speak to both legal histories and broader struggles around housing, racism, migration, labour and policing that shaped — and continue to shape — everyday life in Brent and beyond. By placing these materials in dialogue, we ask: what can we learn from collective and community action as a form of justice that extends beyond the limits of legal systems? In a moment when social welfare legal support has been drastically reduced and state violence continues to isolate and dismantle racialised communities, these histories offer both a record of past struggles and a resource for building resistance in the present. In Justice & Change we ask what it means to practice justice as community care, and how learning from these collective responses to harm might inform new forms of solidarity, repair and action.

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.

---

Justice & Change

Justice & Change is a long-term 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 presentations and exhibitions creating spaces for reflection, sharing and collective learning.