Image One: State Library of New South Wales, Image Two and Three: Posters State Library NSW Mitchell Library Special Collections, Image Four: State Library of New South Wales, Image Five: Fairfax Media via Getty Images, Image Six: Trove, Image Seven: Fairfax Media via Getty Images, Image Eight, Nine and Ten: Posters State Library NSW Mitchell Library Special Collections
What is GAE?
A Digital History of Community Organising in the 1970s and 1980s
Grassroots activists and community groups of the 1970s and 1980s were animated by a range of issues, operated in a variety of local, state and federal contexts, and worked from diverse political perspectives. By their nature, the kinds of groups active in the past can be elusive and fragmented in the public record, but large numbers have left traces, even if as small as a name in a list of submissions to a public enquiry or a newsletter.
The Grassroots Activism and Education website is an extensive, searchable database of individuals and groups and archival information about grassroots activism and education in the 1970s and 1980s in Australia, a crucial historical period of community organising. The groups included in this database were found through the lists of submissions to major federal and state education inquiries of the period and newsletters of community groups invested in education reform. We are interested in groups that might be considered ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’ and everything in between, and in their relationships with and against the bureaucratic state. Explore groups and policies below to find out more.
