The Celebrate People’s History poster series has organized and curated by Josh MacPhee since 1998. The over 200 posters in the ongoing series are rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda, but detourned to embody principles of democracy, inclusion, and group participation in the writing and interpretation of history. Over more than 25 years, MacPhee has worked with hundreds of artists, designers, authors, students, activists, and organizers to find events, groups, and people who have moved forward the collective struggle of humanity to create a more equitable and just world, who in turn have generated a diverse set of posters that bring to life successful moments in the history of social justice struggles. The posters tell stories from the subjective position of the creators, and are often the stories of underdogs, those written out of history. The goal of this project is not to tell a definitive history, but to suggest a new relationship to the past, where all of us see the crafting of history as something we both can and should participate in.
A virtual presentation by Josh MacPhee, designer, artist, archivist, activist, and founding member of both Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative and Interference Archive