‘Alternate Currents’, held in Sheffield's Showroom Cinema in late November, set out to politicise architectural practice. Part of an AHRC-funded project on alternative architectural practices, it was convened by the University of Sheffield's Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till (whose introduction follows this report). The event was an invitation to go beyond the normative, specifically by dealing with architecture's economic, political and social dimensions. Although it was mixed in all respects, for me, trained in social anthropology, two issues emerged as particularly interesting.