Culture

The Right to Protest Exhibition

Team Ecohustler
6th September 2025
5 min read

A celebration of artwork that inspires action

The Right to Protest is an exhibition many decades in the making.

The exhibition is co-curated by the Museum of UnRest and Pro Radix and started life with discussions on the many ways art and design is failing to deal with the intersecting shitshow of modern crises – the climate crisis, the cost of living, lack of housing, access to education, inequality, the list goes on and on.

Historically social crises reach the mainstream via protest – which can take many forms – this helps the society to reevaluate and evolve, making it more understanding and tolerant. More caring. We should remember without protest we would not have a Welfare State (nor an NHS) – this happened because of protests like the hunger marches (with marchers making banners and posters to express their ideas).

Recently we have seen many ‘democracies’ openly suppressing protest – in the UK this is evident in recent protest laws passed by the previous government but also used by the present.

The Right to Protest exhibition uses our recent past (1960s to the current day) to remind the art and design community of its active role in protest. How it has given a voice to voiceless communities, helped explain complex issues and gone beyond commercial gain.

If ‘design’ is the conscious process of shaping and making our world, then the design the community must address and help to solve the most profound problems which we, and the planet, face. Yet much of the design world remains mesmerised by the glamour and glitter of consumerism, that is itself fuelling a crisis – the more we consume the more we produce, the more we produce the less there is for future and present generations. It is therefore imperative to draw attention to the history and contemporary contributions of design within debates about how issues can be addressed using both protest and imaginative design.

With Governments and corporations actively silencing voices they disagree with the need for artists and designers to be involved in protest is crucial.

“Branding is something you do to someone not with someone.” Clive Russell

The evolution of graphic design, from its craft based past into branding manuals and onto its data driven present, has left many designers feeling like a cog in a machine.

A desire for ‘predictable’ results has created a ubiquitous visual space driven by visual blanding – everyone is racing into the same middle ground. Everywhere is starting to look and feel the same. This ‘branding’ of culture promotes a singular view of what is ‘right’, what is ‘perfect’ and what is good (usually biased towards aesthetics, or ‘image’, and nothing else). This has been caffeinated by digital culture – AI now makes content using only existing content (writing, art, film etc etc) and filters it to fit within a smooth,’perfect’ and very prescribed universe – predictability of output has never been easier to control but where does that leave creativity and the joy of the uncertain, the truly new?

And it’s not just about graphic design, the questions are wider and applicable to all aspects of design practice and production - where is the design field’s moral and ethical compass? Can there be such a thing as ‘good design’ with negative environmental and social consequences?

Maybe design needs a new brief – one that isn’t about Production and Consumption and predictability?

These are the conversations the exhibition wants to fuel.

“Protest has always led cultural change, without protest society stagnates” John Phillips.

The Right to Protest Exhibition features iconic posters from two of the largest private collections in the UK, and new works by influential designers and artists, including kennardphillipps, Ackroyd & Harvey, Stuart Semple and Ocean Rebellion.

It couldn’t come at a better time. The fundamental right to protest is under increasing threat, from governments worldwide, including western democracies and in London itself.

This sits at odds with London being the self-proclaimed “design capital of the world,” since it has always had a radical edge.

Figures like Ken Garland penned manifestos warning of the creeping power of commercialism, while 1980s collectives including the Paddington Printshop – whose posters feature in the exhibition – empowered communities through visual activism:

“Among the most compelling burst of creative energy in the realm of the political poster post-1968, the body of work created by Paddington Printshop in the 1970s and 1980s is as fresh and relevant as it was 40 years ago.” Boo Horray, New York Art Book Fair, MOMA

Now, The Right to Protest brings that spirit into the present and reminds us how design and visual culture compels people to take a stand.

From 1970s street-level activism to today’s global protest movements, The Right to Protest is both an exhibition and an act of resistance.