Beginning in the late 1960s community activists, childcare workers, feminists and parents came together to create and improve childcare and early years education in London and beyond. Check out our website, produced in collaboration with oral history organisation On the Record, which begins to tell the little known story of this diverse movement.
Explore the map to see where and how people have started collective childcare projects, campaigned for childcare, organised for better working conditions or tried to make childcare more inclusive.
Many of the nurseries, co-ops, children’s centres, crèche and playgroups featured on this map have now closed or changed beyond recognition.
Governments have relied on the market to provide a growing expanded entitlement to ‘free’ childcare hours – and along with underfunding this has led to a chain-dominated early years sector, de-regulation, increased ratios, and worsening terms and conditions for early years workers. Remaining public, workplace and community nurseries are under threat across London.
We hope this map will inspire current ongoing campaigns - learning from how workers parents and carers have worked together in the the past – to demand a more just childcare system now.
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