This podcast episode explores the political production of urban space in Belfast through the lenses of housing justice, grassroots organising, insurgent planning, and collective rights to the city. Developed as part of the Change Stories Project, the discussion draws on the experiences of the Take Back the City campaign and the work of Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR), the discussion interrogates dominant narratives that frame Belfast primarily as a “divided city” defined by sectarian conflict. Instead, the conversation examines how colonial logics of spatial control, segregation, land governance, and infrastructural inequality continue to shape contemporary urban life, housing precarity, and exclusion.
Bringing together organisers, campaigners, and community activists, the episode reflects on how alternative forms of urban citizenship and solidarity are being built across communities in Belfast. Themes including mutual aid, Meitheal, collective stewardship, counter-mapping, solidarity sovereignty, spatial agency, and the kind economy are explored as practical and political frameworks for imagining more equitable urban futures. The discussion also situates Belfast within wider transnational struggles, drawing connections with anti-colonial and grassroots movements in places such as Palestine, South Africa, the Amazon, and other cities shaped by segregation, displacement, and structural violence.
This episode has been edited by Anne Goßler.
Editors note: Please excuse the audio file quality, it may at times sound very overexposed.
Additional Info/Links:
Change Stories is an international research partnership, based in University of Washington and working across Bogotá, Belo Horizonte and Belfast. The project aims to spark dialogue and learning through storytelling about urban changes that support sustainability, health, and wellbeing for all residents. In Belfast, the research project is led by Prof Geraint Ellis and Dr Agustina Martire and foregrounds the work of PPR and the Take Back the City campaign.
Take Back the City Campaign Website
This is the campaign’s main website, containing information about the coalition, the Mackie’s site masterplan, housing justice advocacy, and the “State of Belfast” mapping project. The campaign was formed by families experiencing housing need together with planners, architects, academics, and community activists to advocate for social housing and a more equitable Belfast.
Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR)
PPR is a Belfast-based human rights organisation founded by Inez McCormack. It works with communities experiencing housing insecurity, poverty, asylum issues, mental health inequalities, and other socio-economic rights concerns, using a human-rights-based approach to social change.
Guests:
Dessie Donnelly
Dessie is the former Director and one of the original staff members of Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR), a Belfast-based organisation founded by the late Inez McCormack. Dessie has played a central role in developing PPR’s human rights–based organising model, working on campaigns related to housing, welfare rights, unemployment, and social justice.
His work focuses on empowering marginalised communities to collectively challenge structural inequality and participate meaningfully in political decision-making. He is also co-founder of rabble.coop, an ethical technology cooperative supporting social movements and mutual aid networks.
Twasul Mohammed
Twasul is a community organiser and activist involved in the Take Back the City campaign and wider organising efforts connected to housing justice, migration, and collective rights to the city in Belfast.
Twasul’s activism draws on longstanding traditions of grassroots organising and revolutionary practice rooted in Sudan, bringing transnational perspectives on solidarity, resistance, and community leadership into local movement-building efforts in Belfast. Her work focuses on building inclusive urban citizenship and challenging structural violence, segregation, and exclusion through collective organising and mutual support.
Seán Mac Bradaigh
Seán is a community organiser with the Gairdín an Phobail (People’s Garden) project in Belfast and former organiser with PPR, where he worked on housing, migration, and unemployment campaigns. Seán has also worked as a trade union organiser with UNISON and has extensive experience in community organising within the Irish language movement in Belfast.
His work explores housing justice, urban regeneration, mutual aid, and transnational solidarity across anti-colonial and grassroots struggles.
Host (and Guest):
Azadeh Sobout
Azadeh Sobout is an interdisciplinary urbanist and researcher based in Belfast whose work explores the intersections of housing justice, colonial urbanism, displacement, and grassroots struggles for the right to the city. As a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Change Stories Project at Queen’s University Belfast, she draws on feminist, decolonial, and critical urban theory to examine how communities living through conflict, segregation, and spatial violence create alternative forms of political agency, solidarity, and collective futures.
Azadeh has been actively involved in housing justice and anti-racist organising in Belfast, including engagement with the Take Back the City campaign and community-led initiatives focused on land, memory, and collective stewardship.