Testimonials
The Class Works Project are doing essential work to create open dialogue about class differences and oppression and support people who are fighting to build a better future to turn understanding into action. I have seen plenty of challenging and provocative conversations inspired by the Class Works Project lead to more effective collaboration and more equitable distribution of resources in social justice movements in Scotland.
Lucy Mason
Trainer & Co-Director
Tripod: Training for Creative Social Action
Lumpen gave me a voice where I didn't actually know I had one. I have always written. And always viewed the world of publishing and editors a realm of perfect Grammar, short neat sentences, introductions and conclusions. There was no room for my dyslexic backward sentences or descriptive fluff.. and despite boxes of diaries I never once considered painting my trauma and class frustration as it splurged out onto a page for others to read. I did it for lumpen and it opened a door I didn't know I had the key for. It turned out to be instrumental in a much bigger healing journey as I am still processing my past. It was the beginning of a journey as I realised for the first time in many years, what happened to me was important and it's ok for me to talk about it. I think the work lumpen do is both integral, inspiring and instrumental in working towards a social justice that's not top-down.
Zoe
Writer
Lumpen as a project has helped inform my own understanding of my upbringing, my relation to systems of power and how to act with agency within them. The experience of the class and co-ops workshop I attended last year has had a fundamental impact on how I relate to myself and my friends. It's made me more confident in discussing access and distribution of essential resources to build a world that's more democratic.
I can't stress how important the workshop was for me, having come away with it with a greater realisation of how class has affected me and what its legacy in me is. In the months since I've become far more confident in my history, no longer shameful of what I was taught, but can now understand it in context to the world we live in.
Gemma
Edinburgh Workshop Participant
I attended the class workshops this year. The class workshop facilitated by The Class Work Project was the most powerful workshop I've been to in recent memory. It provided huge amounts of material for reflection months after the event as well as a rich well of info during. Challenging, thought-provoking and genuinely groundbreaking it is a workshop not to be missed. Since going on the workshop I have had countless conversations within and outside of political organisations about class, with family, friends etc and have been able to begin influencing the language and perspectives of those around me equipped with a sharper lens and keener vocabulary to name and address class injustice.
Thank you for the work you and all those in the workshop, particularly those from capital-light backgrounds, have done to help me get somewhere further along in that ongoing journey
Camille
Sheffield Workshop Participant
The collective working on Lumpen and the class workshops are the only people I've encountered doing effective work based around class through an intersectional lens. It is vital work that is challenging individuals and communities to stretch into finding what is needed to create real change working for economic justice. At this moment of political crisis and rising right wing dominance, supporting these clear, articulate and informed voices to deliver this transformative work is imperative.
Tahra
Brighton Workshop Participant
I’ve had the pleasure of attending a Chav Solidarity launch and chatting with D Hunter afterwards. The work done by Class Works Project is vital in that it spans the significant gap between the kind of academic research that is only accessible to professionals (and only presented at very expensive conferences) and the on-the-ground exploratory work done by charities and NGOs. It also (and equally importantly) brings together activism and performance in a way that is highly inclusive and oriented towards agency rather than charity. Class Works Project is providing a unique intervention and has my full support now and for the future.
Dr Debra Benita Shaw
Reader in Cultural Theory
East London University
Lumpen is a vitally important publication. After decades of liberal ideology (I won’t say “Neo” as there’s nothing “new” about capitalist exploitation), which have attempted to erase the markers of working class identity, the journal offers a space to address the often hidden injuries of class. More importantly, unlike the highly codified and exclusive world of academic journals, Lumpen does not ask its writers to jump through numerous exclusionary hoops to make a submission to the publication. As such, it is a truly egalitarian opening in the otherwise limited world of class studies.
Kerry William Purcell
Senior Lecturer in Design History
University of Hertfordshire
This workshop day was one of the most important pieces of training I think I've ever done. It was eye opening - and I went along thinking I was very aware of social and class issues. Everyone working in the field of mental health should do this training. Seriously.
Edith
Workshop for Mental Health Practitioners,
I attended one of the class workshops. It was an emotional, impactful and transformative two days. It changed my beliefs and behaviour, and not many things can claim to be that persuasive. The main way in which it changed my outlook was perhaps that I went from thinking mainly about state financial redistribution (where I could omit my own complicity in the current system) to the importance of personal financial redistribution in the here and now (where I could correctly see my hoarding as part of the problem). It led me and my partner to, within a couple of weeks, redistribute the majority of our savings and inheritance to people we knew who had been fucked over by the system. And I haven't stopped thinking about further ways in which I can redistribute and persuade others to do the same.
Ben
Brighton Workshop
As a lecturer in Architecture and Design at the RCA, Goldsmiths, Brookes and St Martins in particular (where there's a really wide sociodemographic across the student body), I have found Lumpen a brilliant companion in the validation of the positions and voices of my working class students.
I have also found articles on traveller communities, council estates, and class-mobility/class migration invaluable when teaching students about the way our environment is moved-through, perceived, translated and shaped by those who are often invisibilised by certain power structures.
Charlotte Grace
The workshop has a lasting impact on me. For weeks afterwards I talked to every friend, colleague, family member and anyone who would listen about it. Not only did it help bring about immediate and long term changes for me - pushing me to further redistribute wealth, examine and challenge my class privilege and be a better ally but it also gave me the language to talk about the issues with more confidence and have difficult conversations with others around me. Explaining the exercises in the workshop really helped when others tried to brush me off and several people said that just hearing about it also left them considering issues of class long after the conversation.
Amy
Brighton Workshop Participant.