What is Punk Days?
Written and performed by Hassan Mahamdallie
Directed by Stef O’Driscoll
Summer 1977. I was 16. The Labour government was on the rocks. The Nazi National Front was on the rise. Life in London was like an old black and white film – stuttering. Washed out. Bleak.
Then Punk Rock exploded on the scene. Everything changed. My life changed. Forever.
Part documentary, part musical journey and part coming of age tale, Punk Days is the story of a mixed race, working-class kid growing up in 1970’s London, plagued by racism, poverty and social conformity who finds hope, freedom and identity in the noise and rebellion of Punk Rock and the fight against fascism.
There is no future
In England’s dreaming
Don’t be told what you want to want to
And don’t be told what you want to need.
There’s no future, no future
No future for you.
Performances
Performances will take place on Friday 26 June and Saturday 27 June. Both shows begin at 7:30pm and run for approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Additional Activities
Friday 26 June
PUNK DAYS, followed by post show discussion with representatives of Stand Up to Racism and the Creative Team.
Saturday 27 June
3pm – 4.30pm Archive sharing
An extensive archive, re-discovered in 2025 in the attic of the family home of writer/performer Hassan Mahamdallie, has fuelled the development of PUNK DAYS – an autobiographical story of a mixed-race kid growing up in 70’s London, plagued by extreme racism, finding liberation in Punk Rock.
Join Hassan, together with Coventry based archivist Hardish Virk, in this interactive session and which provides a unique history of late 70’s politics, discovery of Punk & resistance in the Rock Against Racism movement.
Bring along and share your own objects and memorabilia and stories
Hassan’s archive will eventually be housed at the Bishopsgate Institute
https://www.bishopsgate.org.uk/archives/
Hassan Mahamdallie: is a playwright, director, dramaturg and actor. He started out in Theatre-in-Education and radical Community theatre in the 1980s. A specialist in diversity and the arts, he authored Arts Council England’s Creative Case for Diversity. He is Director of the Muslim Institute and Senior Editor of its journal Critical Muslim. He is a published author and commentator. Books he has contributed to include: Tell It Like It Is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children, Say It Loud: Marxism and the Fight Against the Racism, and British Muslims: New Directions in Islamic Thought, Creativity and Activism. He authored a political biography of radical Victorian artist William Morris, a series of educational monographs on Black British Rebels and edited the book Defending Multiculturalism.
Hardish Virk: For over 30 years Hardish has been working to create positive change in the arts. In 2021, with Coventry Artspace, he set up a Coventry based South Asian heritage project, ‘Stories That Made Us’, commissioning short films, recording oral stories, exhibitions, workshops, tours and talks and cataloguing objects found in the ‘Stories That Made Us’.
In 2025, Hardish’s critically acclaimed ‘Stories That Made Us – Roots, Resilience, Representation’ exhibition, opened at Coventry’s Herbert Gallery & Museum. His aim is to tour the exhibition and build a living museum of Coventry’s South Asian stories.
Further information Stories That Made Us – Roots, Resilience, Representation