So what's included inside your

paid members digital portal?

Your membership portal is like a digital clubhouse, a space where we run events for members.

You'll be invited to all the upcoming online events as a member, and your membership access gives you an archive of recordings of past events, short films and workshops.

If you are just joining us, there is an absolute wealth of material for those interested in green issues, activism and art to explore.

Here's what you'll find inside right now :- 

SHORT DOCUMENTARIES AND WEBISODES

THE MAN WHO FORGED THE WIND

We travel to Stroud to meet up with ex traveller, biker, eco-activist and environmental entrepreneur Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity. A man with a clear vision on how to wean the UK from it's dependency on expensive fossil fuels.

BUILDING LOCAL MICRO GRIDS

A huge challenge to meaningful community energy are the legal obstacles in place around being able to trade electricity within your community. We speak with Mary Gillie from Energy Local who has come up with a great scheme to keep renewable electricity within the community - allowing a fairer price for excess generators and fairer bills for those using the energy. And it's as simple as switching supplier.  

POWER TO THE PEOPLE

We meet Steve Shaw from Power to the People to hear about his campaigning work, lobbying MPs to allow the creation of meaningful local Micro Grids - and how this could accelerate renewable energy in the UK by 2000%.  

COP OUT 26

We head up to Glasgow for COP26 to check out what's happening - and what isn't happening. Along the way we meet some brilliant people.

A SHORT FILM IN THE HEBRIDES

We visit a community owned island with it's own massive wind turbines - and hear about the issues they have with being legally required to sell their energy to the grid rather than directly to themselves, and how the grid infrastructure throttles the amount of energy they can generate.

WILL COTTRELL FROM BRIGHTON ENERGY

A chat with Will about his inspirational community project, who tells us the story of how he built one of the UKs leading Community Energy companies  - generating 6650 MWH annually.

FROM NEW DEAL TO GREEN NEW DEAL

The Power Station project is essentially an attempt to answer the question "What if we could enact a Green New Deal locally?" - In this film Hilary discusses the Green New Deal, examines the historical inspiration in FDR's New Deal and looks at how we can build our personal response to this. 

REWILDING AN URBAN STREET

Making manifest a midsummer solar celebration we began growing 1000s of sunflowers throughout the community in March 2023 - along the street (Lynmouth Road), in The Grange housing estate, at youth project Project Zero, at Frederic Street pre-school and local school Barn Croft Primary and in the surrounding area. We then came together with flowers and feasting at a solar celebration in July just after the first phase of solar panels were installed on the street.

WHAT IS SOLAR PUNK?

In the early days of Power Station we were very interested in and inspired in the Solar Punk movement. As per Wikipedia "Solarpunk is a literary genre and art movement that envisions how the future might look if humanity succeeded in solving major contemporary challenges with an emphasis on sustainability, human impact on the environment, and addressing climate change and pollution. It is a subgenre within science fiction, aligned with cyberpunk derivatives, and may borrow elements from utopian and fantasy genres."

In this short series of videos writers Andrew Dana Hudson and Jay Springett help decipher this fascinating genre for us.

MEET OUR LOCAL HEROES

A look at some of our inspirational local community organisations - who feature on the Greenback Art Currency that has been funding Power Station. True heroes and some real characters.

PLUS POWER WEBISODES

A series of short updates on the Power Station project over the years - the why and how and the highs and lows.

FULL LENGTH FEATURES AND EXTRAS

HOW TO RE-ESTABLISH A VODKA EMPIRE

How To Re-Establish A Vodka Empire was our first feature length film, and is where our attempts to combine film-making and social entrepreneurship really begin.

We look so young in this! 

BANK JOB

The seeds of both POWER and our models for community projects are sown in this award winning full length feature documentary in which we investigate and take on The Creditocracy. Extra Q&A sessions with panelists including ex shadow chancellor John McDonnell and economist Ann Pettifor are included, along with video readings from the Bank Job book

CHANNEL 4 SHORTS

A selection of 4 short films from Dan's time directing for Channel 4, where we meet different groups of eccentric characters each playfully subverting notions of "The City" in some way.

POWER STATION BOOK CLUBS

Over the course of Power Station we've run a series of Book Clubs for our members. We discuss the themes and ideas of a selected book, often with the author on hand to read selections and answer questions. Whilst we thoroughly recommend all the books featured, you don't have to have read them to get a tremendous amount from watching these sessions.

MARIANNA MAZZUCATO - MISSION ECONOMY

This is an amazing book, about bypassing petty accountancy to achieve amazing results in the world, using the moon landing as inspiration for elaborating Marianna's theories. A huge inspiration in the ambitious goals we set ourselves with our projects.

ROB HOPKINS - FROM WHAT IS TO WHAT IF

Co-founder of the Transition movement, Rob argues that we have the capability to effect dramatic change, but we're failing because we've largely allowed our most critical tool to languish: human imagination. In these times of deep division and deeper despair, if there is a consensus about anything in the world, it is that the future is going to be awful. But as Rob shows us, there is plenty of evidence that things can change, and cultures can change, rapidly, dramatically, and unexpectedly—for the better. He has seen it happen around the world and in his own town of Totnes, England, where the community is becoming its own housing developer, energy company, enterprise incubator, and local food network—with cascading benefits to the community that extend far beyond the projects themselves. Rob invites us to re-discover our imagination and the better futures that are built from within it.

ANN PETTIFOR - THE CASE FOR THE GREEN NEW DEAL

Our dear friend Ann helped create the Green New Deal movement - a ground zero of sorts for contemporary environmental campaigning - with this book. It's a direct inspiration for the work we are doing with Power Station and it's wonderful to be able to chat with her about her work here.

ANDREAS MALM - HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE

In this lyrical manifesto, noted climate scholar (and saboteur of SUV tires and coal mines) Andreas Malm makes an impassioned call for the climate movement to escalate its tactics in the face of ecological collapse. We need, he argues, to force fossil fuel extraction to stop—with our actions, with our bodies, and by defusing and destroying its tools. We need - he argues - in short, to start blowing up some oil pipelines. A challenging and controversial choice for the Book Club - see how we got on with it!

ASHLEY DAWSON - PEOPLE'S POWER

The science is conclusive: to avoid irreversible climate collapse, the burning of all fossil fuels will have to end in the next decade. In this concise and highly readable intervention, Ashley Dawson sets out what is required to make this momentous shift: Simply replacing coal-fired power plants with for-profit solar energy farms will only maintain the toxic illusion that it is possible to sustain relentlessly expanding energy consumption. We can no longer think of energy as a commodity. Instead we must see it as part of the global commons, a vital element in the great stock of air, water, plants, and cultural forms like language and art that are the inheritance of humanity as a whole.

SARAH CORBETT - HOW TO BE A CRAFTIVIST

Sarah shows us a world of gentle, kind activism that encourages those who may not think of themselves as activists to participate in creating real change - and talks us through some of the successes this approach has led to. 

WILLIAM MORRIS - USEFUL WORK VS USELESS TOIL

One of our inspirations, Morris' ideas on purposeful dignified work seem more relevant than ever and sit comfortably along more recent works such as David Graebers wonderful "Bullshit Jobs".

DAVID M. HUGHES - WHO OWNS THE WIND

David discusses the need for renewable energy sources to be seen as a natural resource collectively owned by humanity, and shares his thoughts on challenging aesthetic narratives on wind energy. 

JEREMY WILLIAMS - CLIMATE CHANGE IS RACIST

Jeremy discusses the global imbalance between those who are arguably most responsible for climate change and those suffering the earliest / worst ramifications of it. He also challenges ideas of which demographics might actually be at the forefront of global environmentalism and the reasons why this is so.

TIMOTHY MITCHELL - CARBON DEMOCRACY

Timothy Discusses the shift in power structures from coal to oil, how oil undermines democracy, and our ability to address the environmental crisis.

E.F. SCHUMACHER - SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL

Hailed as an "eco-bible" by Time magazine, E.F. Schumacher's riveting, richly researched statement on sustainability has become more relevant and vital with each year since its initial groundbreaking publication during the 1973 energy crisis. A landmark statement against "bigger is better" industrialism, Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful paved the way for twenty-first century books on environmentalism and economics.

AMBER MASSIE-BLOMFIELD - ACTS OF RESISTANCE

Amber discusses her book Acts of Resistance, in which she explores the artists who have treated the protest site as their canvas and contributed to movements that have transformed history – from the musicians in Auschwitz to the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, from the to ACT UP’s 1989 invasion of the New York Stock Exchange, to the Niger Delta and indigenous communities in Bolivia. 

POWER STATION FILM CLUBS

At Power Film Club we provide a film to stream, and then the director and other key creatives join us to discuss the film and the issues raised with members. For licencing reasons the films themselves are not archived in the membership (though links are provided), but the Q&A sessions are there in all of their glory. 

FINITE: THE CLIMATE OF CHANGE

An insider’s view of the world of direct action; a raw, authentic and emotional insight into the David and Goliath battle between frontline communities, activists and fossil fuel corporations.

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In Germany, concerned citizens step forward to save an ancient forest from one of Europe’s largest coal mines. They form an unlikely alliance with a frustrated community in rural England who are forced into action to protect their homes from a new opencast coal mine.

But can they succeed? Are these fights worth having? How far should we go in defence of the world and our future?

And how can a newt stop a climate crime in progress?

OFFSHORE

Offshore is an independent documentary Directed by Hazel Falck that brings together varying perspectives on working in offshore oil and gas and renewable energy - and explores what the coming energy transition means for workers and communities around the UK North Sea.

The film looks at how communities and regions have been impacted by past industrial
decline, the risks workers face in an increasingly precarious industry and how they can
organise for the future.

THE OIL MACHINE

The film reveals the hidden infrastructure of oil from the offshore rigs and the buried pipelines to its flow through the stock markets of London. As the North Sea industry struggles to meet the need to cut carbon emissions, oil workers see their livelihoods under threat, and investors seek to protect their assets. Meanwhile a younger generation of climate activists are catalysed by the signs of impending chaos, and the very real threat of global sea level rises. THE OIL MACHINE explores the complexities of transitioning away from oil and gas as a society and considers how quickly we can do it.

GAZA

Gaza brings us into a unique place beyond the reach of television news reports to reveal a world rich with eloquent and resilient characters, offering us a cinematic and enriching portrait of a people attempting to lead meaningful lives against the rubble of perennial conflict.

MY EXTINCTION

What does it take for us to act on the climate crisis – especially if we’re the kind of person who should already be acting?

In this funny, relatable portrait, a concerned yet ineffectual dad finds the first step is letting those unbearable feelings of climate anxiety in, instead of pushing them aside.

But as he meets others like him, he discovers how oil-backed propagandists funded our denial and paralysis. He sets out to unmask the vested interests responsible, helping raise a generation’s leading authors in a vibrant chorus.

MY EXTINCTION is a revealingly honest account of how to feel your feelings, act on your privilege, and get active when threatened with extinction.

BONUS

Dan chats about film making and politics with writer / director Rich Peppiatt (Kneecap, One Rogue Reporter)

How we have helped our local school to save up to £250,000 over the next 25 years on their energy bills.

When we came down from the roof after 23 nights - we launched a bid for the Christmas no 1 to get solar for our children's school  - there's a short film below about why we did that - and then the music video underneath that!