Manual Labours Manual #5 (Prototype 1)

The Global Stafroom

Download Prototype 1 of Manual Labours Manual #5 here

This is the first prototype of Manual Labours’ Manual 5: The Global Staffroom, which will be printed in three stages and expanded, adapted and modified, as Glasgow Women’s Library volunteers, staff and users interact with it.

This first stage of Manual Labours’ Manual #5: The Global Staffroom analyses contributions to the 17 Global Staffroom podcasts recorded between April and August 2020. Through listening to the many different voices we were joined by, we translate experiences of the formal and informal spaces for care and rest at work, which can tell us as much about the effect of the different power strategies and structures upon the working body, as attention to employment law.

Running through the manual are a series of exercises and provocations for continuing the process of the podcast, inviting your reflections on what a staffroom means to you, both physically and conceptually as well as what it feels like to care, be cared for and not be able to care/receive care at work, with an expanded understanding of work, whether paid, unpaid or paid poorly.

Through this method of reworking and editing we hope concerns about care in and as work, can be activated in new contexts, initiate collective discussions, and connect to wider social, political and cultural landscapes.

This first stage is distributed during the exhibition ‘Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism’ at the Glasgow Women’s Library (14th August – 16th October, 2021). Through workshops with staff and volunteers at the Glasgow Women’s Library we are able to understand better their staffroom experiences and inexperiences and this will feed into the second stage of the manual’s development and publishing.

If you would like to send us your reflection on the staffroom or contribute to this process please get in touch!

210 x 297mm 40 pages, colour, 2021
Published by Cultural Democracy Editions
Design Assistance and Layout by Saria Digregorio
Typeset in Domestic, designed by feminist architecture collective, Edit.
Printing by Stirland Paterson Group
ISBN: 978-0-9570282-6-5

To purchase a hard copy contact manual.labours@gmail.com
All future income from sales of the manual go back into the Manual Labours practice-based research.

Manual Labours: The Global Staffroom was initiated by Manual Labours and supported by the University of Edinburgh Art Collection. All episodes of the podcast are part of the art collection holdings for use in teaching and research.