»The time has come when we have got to do something ourselves«

Abstract

Around 1970, the impression of being ignored by the authorities was widespread in London’s Nothing Hill area. Therefore, actors from different fields decided that it was time to make a change and to take things into their own hands. This paper argues that practices of staging played a crucial role in initiating social change. According to the overall concept of the collaborative research centre, the practices of staging are understood as representations since they both revealed the actors’ conceptions of their being-in-the world and challenged the social order. In order to analyse these practices of staging and their effects, this paper starts with a short overview of the grievances that were identified by Nothing Hill’s inhabitants around 1970 before presenting two different initiatives which were intended to solve these grievances: Firstly, the struggle for more and better playspace; and secondly, the Afro-Caribbeans’ fight against the police and for equality during as well as after the so-called Mangrove demonstration.