Pop Up & Showponies have programmed a series of events at Studio 18, Stroud on 25th March 2023 celebrating the Free Party movement and UK Sound Systems.
Including a panel discussion, exhibition, film screenings and culminating in a 5-hour party featuring the original DiY DJs and Sound System. This is part of a wider subculture event at the Sub Rooms 23 - 25 March 2023
EXHIBITION
13:00 - 02:00
Free exhibition featuring artwork, posters, flyers and photography from the DiY archives, including Adrian Fisk, Andrew Gaston, Alan Lodge, Michelle Miles, Guy Pickford, Sharon Storer, Ed Twist, Jess Warp and many more.
Director, Aaron Trinder said:
“When independently embarking on the idea to make a feature doc about the Free Party movement I had no idea of the breadth and depth of the stories I would find when interviewing people from the scene, including Circus Warp, DiY, Spiral Tribe, Free Party People, Bedlam and many others within the travelling, sound system and rave communities. As a result, I realised that the film could only ever show so much of such a rich and interesting cultural history, so the notion of an exhibition, allowing many of the contributors to the film to tell their own stories came about”
Photo credit: @labfoto
Film screening
16:00 - 18:00
This special work-in-progress preview of director Aaron Trinder's independently made documentary follows the birth of the Free Party movement in the late 80s and early 90s and the impact it's had on our present times.
Tickets are limited so it's first come, first served! The event is free but please donate what you can to help get this film through final stages of post production, archive and music licensing so it's ready for general release.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-party-a-folk-history-film-tickets-544591195927
Free Panel Talk + Q&A Free Parties & UK Sound Systems
19:30 - 20:30
Harry Harrison, DiY founder and author of Dreaming In Yellow; Aaron Trinder, director of Free Party: A Folk History, artist Sharon Storer, DiY DJ Pezz; plus Joe Muggs, author of reggae sound system oral history Bass, Mids, Tops, in conversation with Emma Warren on the cultural and political impact of the scene in 80s/90s Britain, its influence and relevance now, and the ongoing relationship with reggae, garage, drum’n’bass, grime and other Sound System cultures + Q&A.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-parties-uk-sound-systems-panel-tickets-544628216657
DiY Sound System Party
21:00 - 02:00
DiY Party w Grace Sands, Pezz, Nigel Deane (Disco Sucks), Dan Monkman & Dom Thompson, feat. the original DiY Sound System
Topping off a day of books, films, panels and exhibitions on the hugely influential early 90s Free Party movement, the DiY party night brings together the DJs who lived and breathed the scene, incl. Grace Sands, Pezz and Stroud-based keepers of the original DiY Soundsystem, Nigel Deane (Disco Sucks), Dan Monkman and Dom Thompson. 9pm - 2am.
Coming out of Nottingham in 1989 - and strongly twinned with Stroud - the DiY collective were one of the first sound systems in the UK. Merging the anarchic lineage of the free festival scene, the cultural and political anger of bands like Crass and the new, irresistible electronic pulse of acid house, DiY bridged the idealistic void left by the moral implosion of the commercial rave scene.
https://thesubrooms.co.uk/whats-on/diy-soundsystem-party-759/book
Images by Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge