Welcome, but not the kind they mean

This is not polite hospitality. This is radical hospitality. It’s not about being nice.

It’s about making space. Real space. For people who’ve been pushed out, shut down, ignored, or criminalised.

We offer tea, chairs, warmth, print, and presence.Not to impress, but to interrupt. Not to smooth things over, but to say: we see you. We’re doing this inside a building that was never meant for us.

That’s part of the point.

The Depot was built to protect power

We’re based in Weedon Depot, Northamptonshire. It was built in 1803 to protect the monarchy from Napoleon.

It’s the furthest point from the sea. A backup bunker for kings. It stored ammunition, preserved hierarchy, and sheltered the British empire. It wasn’t made for the community. It was made for control. That history still echoes in the bricks. And we are not pretending otherwise.

Who got protected?

Ask it plainly: who was this place built to protect?

The powerful. The white. The ruling class. The names are carved in plaques. The money was made from war, slavery, and resource theft. That wealth is still alive. That silence is still enforced. We refuse to forget.

Heritage is a trap

You’re told to admire the brickwork. The gates. The history. But heritage without truth is propaganda. It protects the lie. The lie that empire was glorious, that order was neutral, that preservation is apolitical. This building has been scrubbed, tour-guided, and filtered into nostalgia. But the harm that funded it hasn’t gone. We’re not restoring heritage. We’re repurposing it.

We’re printing over it.

Why we build

My great-grandad survived the Somme. He returned with one arm, relearned how to write, and became a builder. Not of monuments; of community centres. For working-class people trying to rebuild their lives after impossible loss. He didn’t build for glory. He built for connection, survival, and healing. That’s the legacy I honour. I’m building for the people left behind: with zines, Riso, chairs, tea, colour, and space.

Hospitality > Heritage

Heritage preserves buildings. Hospitality holds people. We offer refreshments, grounding, warmth, print, and space. Not as a performance but as a practice. In a country that criminalises asylum, that surveils grief, that polices joy - offering a welcome is a radical act.

Refuge, not refugee tourism

Just down the road, a hotel houses people seeking asylum. Survivors of war, displacement, and violent systems. We don’t know their stories. We’re not asking for them. We just want to say: that if you’re seeking rest: You’re welcome here. We offer space, print, solitude, and refreshments. Without spotlight.

No performance. No pressure. Just presence.

This page is left blank

This page is for the voices not printed. The stories that haven’t been shared. The grief that didn’t fit in a text box. The rest wasn’t permitted. This space is not empty. It’s held.

We Don’t Look Away

We’re making prints while people are dying. We’re setting up tables while Gaza is bombed. We’re opening doors while people are deported. We’re creating joy while grieving genocide.

We hold this space in memory of George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Brianna Ghey. Shireen Abu Akleh. Sarah Everard. Mahsa Amini. Chris Kaba. Jack Merritt. Saskia Jones. Belly Mujinga. In memory of the 72 people killed at Grenfell Tower. Not by fire, but by neglect. By policy. By racism. By greed.

For disabled people left to die during COVID. Black and Brown communities being targeted by police and immigration raids. Trans people denied healthcare, housing, and safety. Asylum seekers criminalised for surviving.

We know this list is incomplete. It always will be.

Because the violence didn’t stop, it continues as you read this. More names. More grief. More silence. But this page is not just grief. It’s a refusal to look away. A refusal to forget. A refusal to carry it quietly, or alone.

We believe in mutual aid. In collective resistance. In showing up for each other — even when it’s messy, even when it’s hard. In grief that connects us, not isolates us. In rest. In tenderness. In actions that grow from mourning.

This isn’t neutrality. It’s a quiet, furious act of care. And we offer it — freely, and in solidarity.

Where I’m writing from

I’m a white, queer, trans person. Today I am mostly read as male. I was assumed female at birth. I’m disabled. I live with Neurodiversity and complex trauma running through my core. I am held. Every day. By my partner Billy and my support dog Porkchop. I’ve been harmed by systems meant to help. I’ve been gaslit, dismissed, and told to be grateful for care that doesn’t exist. I’ve lived through services that erase survival and punish honesty.

And still, I hold privilege.

I have whiteness. I’m read as male. I hold a passport that protects me while others are detained, deported, or disappeared. That passport was born out of the British Empire. And the empire isn’t gone, it’s just changed shape.

It’s in the walls of this building. It’s in immigration law and healthcare gatekeeping. It’s in unconscious bias, inherited wealth, and “neutral” institutions. It shaped the world I grew up in. I’m not passive about that.

I am vehemently unlearning it.

Every day. In every room, I’m in.

This text isn’t about guilt. It’s about responsibility. It’s about naming what holds me up, and who it pushes down. Hospitality won’t dismantle the empire. But it can interrupt it. It can offer a chair. A page. A pause. A welcome that remembers. That’s what I’m trying to build.

Legacy, unearned

My ancestor was Sir Charles Hercules Read. He worked for the British Museum. In 1897, he wrote to the British government to push for the Benin Expedition: A violent military invasion that burned Benin City to the ground, killed civilians, and looted thousands of sacred artefacts.

That theft was not incidental. It was planned. Justified. Carried out in the name of “civilisation.”

The Benin Bronzes; objects of profound cultural and spiritual importance, were taken. Sold. Displayed. Hoarded. Many still sit behind glass in the very museum he served.

His name is recorded in the archives. Mine is printed here. I don’t share this for shock. I share it because this is what an empire looks like; not just in battlefields, but in paper trails, job titles, and legacies passed on without consent. I didn’t choose this history. But I choose what I do with it. I do not honour him. I do not excuse him. I name him, and I build something else.

This studio. This text. This welcome.

None of it erases what he did. But all of it refuses to repeat it.

Inheritance

Sir Charles Hercules Read was my ancestor. He looted culture in the name of empire. He pressured governments to go to war to fill museum shelves. He wore a brilliant moustache. And I hope that’s the only thing I inherit. I do not honour him. I do not protect his name. I break the silence; because I will not carry this legacy forward. The line ends here.

And something else begins.

Let’s Riso Together

These walls were not built for us. They were built through insipid imperial gain. We use them anyway. We offer radical hospitality in the face of The British Empire’s remnants; institutionalised, inherited, and ingrained.

We welcome people with no prerequisites and no apology.