Student Solidarity Festival occupy Samuel Alexander building

The Student Solidarity Festival, which plans to hold a week of events and educational sessions for students, has occupied the Samuel Alexander building.

The Student Solidarity Festival hang their signs out of the window in the Samuel Alexander building. Credit: Rosie Goffe @ The Mancunion.

On Monday 9 February at around 9pm, @studentsolidarityfestival on Instagram announced that the building had been taken over until the end of the festival on Saturday 14 February.

The occupation has been defined as "open", meaning all students are free to enter and exit whenever they like. However, three rooms inside the building have been taken over and are being used to host the events of the festival.

The Samuel Alexander building is part of the School of Arts, Languages and Culture and sits in a central position on the University of Manchester campus, in close proximity to the Students' Union and the Main Library.

The statue of Samuel Alexander draped with a Palestinian keffiyeh, a traditional symbol of resistance against Israeli violence. Credit: Rosie Goffe @ The Mancunion

The festival have released a schedule of events for each day via their Instagram, with the opening day focusing on Palestine and decolonial struggles. The days are then split into covering climate and land justice, feminism and gender-based violence, Manchester and students, and finally, "What’s next for the student movement?".

Sessions planned for Thursday 12 February centre predominantly around the upcoming Reclaim the Night march, an annual campaign against sexual harassment and gender-based violence, that is due to take place that evening, beginning outside the Manchester Students’ Union.

The sessions are being run in partnership with other prominent student groups, such as Action for Palestine, Young Greens and the Manchester Student Renters’ Union. Free community meals are also available every day at 6pm as part of the festival.

When asked to clarify their demands, representatives from the festival explained that they are "trying to create a space inside the University to do political education and build student power", adding that the way the University of Manchester currently runs their educational programmes is in a very ‘"transactional and colonial manner."

The representatives clarified that the open occupation is designed to "give space back to students so they can take it and use it as they want, with the main goal to educate students resisting imperialism today and to look at how universities are implicated in different types of oppression".

The festival has not made any specific demands of their own but have made it clear that they will continue to put "pressure on the University to end its partnership with Tel Aviv University’, though they re-asserted that this is not the main goal of the occupation.

An occupied lecture theatre in the Samuel Alexander building. Credit: Rosie Goffe @ The Mancunion.

The representatives confirmed that the University had visited to deliver a letter confirming that the occupation was unauthorised, but that they accept and respect the right to protest. A member of the University's security team is present on site.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: "We are aware of a student occupation in Samuel Alexander Building which began on Monday evening, and Campus Support and Security are in attendance. The wellbeing of staff and students is our priority, and we will continue to monitor the situation."