MOSTYN presents Local 37, a three-part radio series developed in collaboration with LUMIN, an artist-run radio and publisher led by Sadia Pineda Hameed and Beau W Beakhouse.

The radio series will be broadcast weekly on 7th, 14th and 21st December 2020 at 6pm GMT and will be hosted here on MOSTYN’s website. The series includes contributions by Gantala Press, Jade Montserrat, Hanan Issa invited to respond by the Welsh Arts Anti Racist Union (WAARU), Josèfa Ntjam and Isola Tong.

Local 37 is a fictional underground radio station transmitting dialogue and strategies for the artist as worker. Inspired by the Filipino Labour Union founded in the US in 1933, later called ‘Local 37’, and Carlos Bulosan’s short text ‘The Writer as Worker’, this radio series inhabits the intersections of creation, transmission, and anti-colonial and working-class collectivisation. Local 37 is a manifesto for the artist, building ‘a world of mutual cooperation, mutual protection, mutual love.’

“But always art is in the hands of the dominant class— which wields its power to perpetuate its supremacy and existence. Since any social system is forced to change to another by concrete economic forces, its art changes also to be recharged, reshaped, and revitalized by the new conditions. Thus, if the writer has any significance, they should write about the world in which they live: interpret their time and envision the future through their knowledge of historical reality.”
Carlos Bulosan, ‘The Writer as Worker’, 1955

The first show (7th December), with Gantala Press responds to the role of the artist in local and migrant Filipino labour movements; The second show (14th December) reflects on recent actions towards equity in the arts with Jade Montserrat, and Hanan Issa invited to respond by the Welsh Arts Anti Racist Union. The show also includes contributions by PCS Tate United, IWW Cymru, Valleys Underground, and Adam Johannes / People's Assembly; The third show (21st December) with Josèfa Ntjam and Isola Tong, imagines futures of resistance and existence. 

This project was made possible through funding from the Arts Council of Wales’s National Lottery Fund.