We're moving on from Redz!
Hiya folks,
Some of you may have already heard that the RYSE is moving on from our wonderful home at Redz Youth Hub and as such Stroud Community Space have triggered the break clause in the Redz lease and we'll be moving on/closing doors in Feb 2027.
For those of you who don’t know, The RYSE and Stroud Community Space have been working together to run the building, with amazing support and collaboration from loads of other local young people, for the last 1.5 years. We're organised more than 100 events, run drop-ins, hosted Stroud's most radical library, fed, entertained and hopefully opened the imagination for a better world of everyone whose passed through Redz doors.
We didn’t take this decision lightly as we’re sure you can imagine - taking into account the responsibilities we have and the analysis we have for change. We’re sad to leave this place that we - and many of you - have put lots of work and care into. It’s so beautiful and has contained a lot of great times and important work. But we’re also very excited about the possibilities for the future and the avenues that are opened up by leaving, building on the work we’ve done here.
We have spent several months talking it through with the Redz crew individually and collectively, getting advice from comrades and elders across the country and internationally, and taking time away to reflect. We considered many options, but ultimately leaving is the only choice that makes sense for us.
What swayed us in this direction was ultimately:
Our mission is to create Radical Youth Space(s) for (internationalist, revolutionary political) Educations, as our name suggests. The amount of work that we’ve put into making Redz a thriving youth hub has meant we’ve become more of the “Youth Space” and less of the “Radical” and “Educations”. We’ve been pulled into doing more traditional sort of youth work (deeply important but not what we set out to or are best placed to do).
We’ve received feedback (and observed for ourselves) that the RYSE attempting to do so many things at once has resulted in us falling short of meeting our other commitments as well as we could. We can’t continue to run Redz without sacrificing other aspects of our work that people are relying on us for. It’s been challenging coming to understand the limits of what we’re able to do, but we have accountabilities and responsibilities to people that we want to honour, and we’re excited to be able to redirect our focus onto them now. These include work with PRALER, other internationalist projects, and a radical education network.
The RYSE has had commitments to local, national and international work. But with so much focus on Redz, we’ve become hyper locally and somewhat isolated from radical change work across the country and the world. This has stifled our ability to do Glocal (= Global+Local) organising, or serve a greater role in wider revolutionary change. It’s been hard for us to prioritise anything further afield when local struggles are literally knocking on our door. We think the RYSE can serve the world better by re-grounding into our wider family of resistance and focusing on our purpose of youth-led, internationalist political education.
£45k (3 years rent at Redz) is so much money to give straight to a landlord, and a lot to commit to a building that although lovely, isn’t fulfilling its potential, and isn’t fully suited to the work we are trying to do (e.g. not having space for beds or a bigger & better equipped kitchen that would allow us to host proper educational residentials). We want to use the money we have in line with our values, and think there are a lot more exciting and valuable possibilities for that in the future.
We have tried and failed to share the responsibility and labour for running Redz with a wider crew of people. We have many reflections on this: our split focus not leaving enough room for mentoring/ proper upskilling; youth flight from Stroud; the difficulties and contradictions of funding; the vagueness of the ‘youth hub’ label; the transient nature of our team; struggling to find people able and willing to take up responsibility; the general challenges of local community organising under capitalism. Especially once Mutiny folded, the RYSE was the only organised group taking responsibility for Redz. There’s a lot to learn from this, but the long and short of it is that Redz has been run largely by a small number of (quite tired!) individuals (almost entirely volunteers) which has not been sustainable, or felt like the best use of people's time!
Finally, we have ambitions for potential future spaces. Redz was actually our second choice for a building when we began renting, and a number of the practical drawbacks of the building also factored into this decision. This way we can focus on other options looking forwards.
Of course, this decision was super tricky, because we have such a beautiful community of people who use and contribute to this space, and we’ve run some seriously powerful days / events here. We really believe in the importance of youth space and local organising, and also know that these things take time and hard work to build. We really hope that the seeds Redz has planted can continue to grow and spark more in its place.
It was also a hard decision to leave because it’s easier to stick with something decent than twist and risk the unknown. But we are trying to be brave and make the choices that these times demand of us - these is much to do, many experiements to make - this one has been amazing and set us up so well for the future, now for the next one!
So what does the next 6 months look like??
Over the Autumn it’s business as usual at Redz, with open sessions, events, distributing DOPE magazines and hatching plans. In December we’ll host a big fat celebration and closing event (details tbc but 11th December!). In the meantime we’ll be working with the crew here at Redz to support everyone to keep building on their projects and keep the Stroud radical youth energy going. In Jan and Feb we’ll pack down and shut the doors at Redz.
We will also be collecting our learning in more details to share with y’all about this whole experiment. Let us know if there’s specific questions you have, sure there’ll be a zine or two in the works! Along with the challenges, Redz has been an incredible space for us to grow as a project, strengthen our organising, practice running our own space and connect us more deeply with our Stroud Community.
The RYSE will continue its work as a youth led internationalist political education project, and currently are working on peoples to people’s internationalist diplomacy; a radical education network; and ongoing Glocal organising.
We will take this opportunity to get perspective and strengthen our analysis on how we can best be in service to revolutionary change. As the Redz doors close, new ones open up and we reaffirm our commitment as the RYSE to planet repairs action learning. We're happy we took this decision with the best values, strategy and advice we had access to, and are excited to move forwards to build stronger from here!!
Love and Power as always, The RYSE Team!
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