In 2024 we celebrated thirty years working together without structures or formal organization – and to celebrate we effectively deleted the Zentire website and started again. What you see here is the result.
One of the forces behind our formation in 1994 was the arrival of the ‘new media’ – computers, the Internet, and low-cost independent media production. This offered so much potential for small campaign and activist groups, working horizontally together, sharing resources and information. At the time there was little support to spread the ideas and skills required to make these technologies available to all, and so The Network developed them cooperatively via local campaigns.
Much of our early work was related to spreading these skills; and much of that work, at the time, produced some really good results; though at the same time we were mindful of the problems which this technology could also present to civil society.
Thirty years later we find that this technological tail has started to wag to the dog of civil society – effectively removing the organizing agency of the public (e.g., if the Internet was turned-off, what would you do?) As a result we are ‘reorganizing’ to advocate a radically different approach, based around a highly critical view of our relationship to technology, and a much greater emphasis on off-line organizing beyond the influence of social media, AI, and corporate surveillance.
This process has been underway for some years: via the content of our Eexhibitions; and the articles in the W‘WEIRD’ Journal. Over the next few years our work will cover this agenda in more, and more practical detail. In particular, the practical difference between a world where technological systems, run for the interest of a new oligarch class; and a world where we consciously decide the depth of our involvement with technology, and collaboratively develop the alternatives.
It is our view, the future of grassroots organizing will be based around the critical use of technology, and in particular, taking key parts of organizing ‘off-line’ to work around the increasing ideological and political blocks being erected in virtual spaces. Just as importantly, that future relies on the grassroots creating it own, unique resources and culture – beyond the mediation and control of digital corporations and censorious governments.
The results of that work will be published on the ZFree Range Activism Website, and distributed via the Network’s real-world events, Cfor all to share.
Recent updates to the Free Range Network site in reverse chronological order:
Free Range Exhibition, 12th August 2025:
Parliament has become unrepresentative of the diversity of views in Britain. This is not a flaw or an oversight, it is by design – the result of decisions taken progressively over the last fifty years. This infographic uses elections data from the last century to show the reasons why.
Free Range Exhibition, 12th August 2025:
From the media debate it may seem obvious what ‘renewable’ energy is. When the Government describe how they are meeting their targets, however, what they’re talking about is a collection of very different sources and technologies.
Free Range Exhibition, 12th August 2025:
Allegedly, ‘what gets measured gets managed’. In Britain agencies produce statistics about energy and the environment, but the substance of those statistics are largely ignored when that conflicts with the Neoliberal ideology that dominates public life today.
Free Range Network, 29th July 2025:
In the mid-2010s, in-part to support UK anti-fracking campaigns, we created an activist’s legal resource to support direct action. As the laws around public protest and dissent in Britain have changed so quickly and extensively over the last three years it became out-of-date faster than we could maintain it. This update explains why, and what happens next.
Free Range Network, 25th July 2025:
The Free Range Network is a ‘dysorganization’ of activists and researchers… What does that mean? This page updates our previous exploration of how we work, and how our ‘means’ reflects the ‘ends’ we wish to achieve.
Free Range Network, 23rd July 2025:
The Free Range Network began work in late 1994, and was one of the early activist groups in England & Wales that supported grassroots organizing using the Internet. With our experience in the interim, today we advocate a deeply critical view of how people work collectively within the ‘fully networked world’.