Squatting blurs the boundaries between legal and illegal land use, challenging traditional notions of property rights and public space, making it a unique and contested realm for urban regeneration. Investigating how the squatting and ‘illicit’ occupation of the Friern Barnet Community Library, a treasured space for the local community, the project aims to shine a light on the broader socio-political conditions and potential outcomes of squatting as a practice and method toward Social Justice.

The case study aims to demonstrate how squatting can be deployed as a viable strategy for urban regeneration and positive change, offering an alternative to traditional redevelopment while preserving cultural spaces and fostering community bonds.

The two series of publications that constitute the output of the project highlight the relationship between squatting and knowledge circulation, together with the empowering potential of the suspension of both property and intellectual rights. Thus, the hand-bound, unlicensed re-publications are organised in two series: requested and unsolicited. All books contain an insert that documents the success and challenges of the library project in the form of a mini booklet, with the aim of telling the story of how the library was saved. Through a parasitic approach to republication and in response to the overall theme of multiples, these inserts, disguised within books of modern and classical literature, aim to address the untold narratives of activism. Inviting audiences to consider the connections between squatting as a spatial practice, property rights, copyright and knowledge circulation, this project provides a blueprint for communities facing similar challenges and an invitation to appropriation and bootlegging as modes of resistance.