Built On Blood moved like the ripples of a wave. It came crashing down at first and then slowly started to disperse across the ocean. It began with four first-year uni students putting up posters around our campus with the symbol of a bleeding rose. This image quickly became known across Rose Bruford Drama School as the symbol for an anonymous group of students, demanding reparations from an institution built on blood. 

This being their first action, the four students felt excited to begin their campaign journey and bring awareness to their demands. But these posters were met with unexpected backlash. Not only were they taken down, but the administration and teachers expressed concern. Who was Build on Blood? What did they want? And most crucially, what lengths would they go to get what they want? 

We hadn't expected it to be easy - Change never is. What we hadn't expected was to be identified as a threat so quickly - And to have to adapt so rapidly in response. It was at this time, after pushback from the administration, that we initially created our policy that no Global Majority organisers in Built On Blood should ever have to have communicate with a white member of staff alone. While sometimes hard to ensure, this attempt at self-defence and solidarity helped us become more stable and secure. 

How were we to shift our strategy then, to ensure we continued to be radical and subversive without getting shut down? We decided to focus on building connections with other students on campus, ensuring we built our base of support so that we couldn't be easily ignored - Or worse, destroyed.

For the first time, our four organisers became six, then seven, and then came Intervention 1. We had already began to tie ourselves more tightly to the student community. We had been mentored by former students, who spoke to us about the administration's approach to neutralising student activists. Our social media had become active, and people had reached out to us about getting involved via the Instagram and in person. 

Intervention 1 was a transformative moment for us. We shared food, music, books and conversation with dozens of students, staff, and one another. We came together, and in that moment of shared labour and shared celebration, it felt as though anything was possible. We learned that when people come together, we are the ones with the power, not the institutions.

Built On Blood's second academic year of organising was a blur. Our Campaign Officer had been elected DICE Officer, and we had the chance to suddenly run events celebrating our school's PoC community. We thought we'd be able to rely on Student Union support and finance, but we found ourselves once again having to organise alone and pull events together on no budget. 

We realised that relying on institutions was not going to work compared to us simply making things happen ourselves. Our series of DICE events slowly led to the Intervention II: The Lamorbey House Takeover, which represented the culmination of our work within the structure of the school, exhibiting art and history in the house on campus during Symposium. 

In all, we had uplifted our PoC community on campus, showcased our art, and built connections to other student groups. We were ready to take things up a notch.

We finally got our meeting with the Principal and Senior Leadership Team. We spent weeks preparing, writing a script outlining our five key demands going forwards. We assembled as many members of our organisation as we could, and we went in for the meeting. We won a retraction of an anti-Built On Blood statement made on the Rose Bruford library website, but it was unclear what was going to become of our other demands. In all, we had a healthy scepticism. In time, we'd learn we were right to be critical. 

When we returned after the summer, the new administration continually cancelled meetings with us. Despite this, we instituted a new structure for the group, and began work on the website, alongside gaining both new mentors and new members. This lead to the organisation existing in a new form, with weekly Core Team meetings - Which is how we still organise now.

In October the world changed, and so too did our approach to organising towards anti-imperialism. Israel had initiated a genocide, sharpening centuries of Apartheid and colonialism into something even more violent then we could have ever imagined. We knew we had to show our solidarity.

An opportunity arose when Ashtar Theatre put out a call for theatre companies across the world to stage their play The Gaza Monologues on International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. We sprung into action, and within a week we had pulled together a combined protest and performance on campus, showing our solidarity, making noise, and allowing room for people's grief and rage. We knew that this next year - and the rest of our lives - would be defined by the struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

After the Gaza Monologues, we began attending protests as the Built On Blood Bloc. We began to link up with other organisations, attending events held by Goldsmiths UCU and meeting members of Lewisham Muslim Voice at marches. We began to host weekly vigils on campus to hold space for grief and rage at the ongoing genocide. We also participated in the Divest Borders National Week of Action, engaging in subvertising around Sidcup. 

The culmination of these months of building connections was the Teach-Out For A Free Palestine, which involved BoB, RBC UCU, Divest Borders, and building connections with other outside activists. Bringing these disparate groups we had been organising together in physical space felt electric. We knew that this building of solidarity was going to be essential for us moving forwards.

Now, we are in the process of building the website you're currently reading. We're trying to create an accessible, engaging, and sustainable archive of our work. We also want to keep building connections with other groups across South London and use this digital space as a starting point.

We believe it is essential to document and archive our actions, thinking, struggles and work. By archiving, we are helping future activists learn from our successes and failures. This process has involved gathering together many of our original documents and photographs, structuring this website, and finding ways to display all this information clearly. In this time of rising fascist violence, when we are looking to the anti-fascist organising of the 1970s for guidance, we know preservation is itself resistance.

We want to keep organising in South London, both at Rose Bruford and now across the city. We want to build closer connections with other revolutionary groups in Lewisham, Peckham, Tooting, and everywhere that people are standing up. We know that the contradictions of capitalism and imperialism are heightening, and fascist and colonialist violence is only going to get worse. We know we need to prepare to defend ourselves and to defend the people of Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Yemen, Haiti, Kanaky, and the whole world. 

So the answer to what's next is - You! Join us, or if you're part of another group, contact us! We want to be part of building a broad front to resist state violence and the legacy of the British Empire. Meanwhile, students on campus at Bruford will continue to oppose the racism of the administration. Built On Blood has only just begun. Let's get organised.