This is just me trying to be an ally. I went to school just up the road, starting in 1980 so I was there for January 1981 and felt the pain. Years later I worked at 441 New Cross Road, next door to the house where it happened. I was a local historian so I read everything, found the pictures, felt the punch in the gut from the tragedy and injustice of it, and the punch in the fist of the Black People’s Day of Action, 2nd March 1981. It’s not for me to say much here but I want… Read more…
Today is my daughter’s 20th birthday. A decade ago she spent her 10th birthday in the shadow of the still-smouldering Hastings Pier fire. I had been up all night, watching from the White Rock Hotel while our beloved pier was eaten up by omnipotent flames. Not quite everything was lost (Picture By Nigel Bowles) Those were dark, difficult days for the town. I’m proud of the optimism and ambition that we showed against such challenging odds. I’m delighted that Hastings has the best condition pier in Britain. Community effort and funder support brought it back from the very brink of… Read more…
“Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation. Rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.” Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter, 2013 “Hope offers us clarity that, amid the uncertainty ahead, there will be conflicts worth joining and the possibility of winning some of them… It is too soon to know what will emerge from this emergency, but not too soon to start looking for chances to help decide it.” Rebecca Solnit, Guardian 7/4/20 What does this mean in Hastings? The word crisis comes from the Greek for ‘decision’. In… Read more…
I’m finding it hard to begin this but I want to share some thoughts and an update, so here goes: We are all reeling. We are what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick called ‘Paranoid Readers’, desperately searching for information and meaning across a digital landscape the equivalent of a massive rubbish tip, and anxiously fearing the worst. Olivia Laing’s excellent piece published last Saturday describes Sedgwick’s alternative – ‘Reparative Readers’ who are “fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment than identifying poison… This is not the same as being naïve or heedless, unaware of crisis or undamaged by oppression. Instead it’s about being… Read more…
The decision to sell the former power station site at Ore Valley to a private developer rather than to Heart of Hastings community land trust is finally sinking in for me, a fortnight after it was announced. This is how I felt about the place in February 2017… https://jesssteele.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/i-am-losing-my-heart-to-ore-valley/ Ore Valley has been let down from above over and over again. We were determined not to do that but to work through the Bottom Up Development team and with an approach led by talking to local people, on site, at events around the area, online, and on their doorsteps. Between… Read more…
Contracts have been exchanged for the purchase of the Observer Building in Hastings. Completion is expected on Weds 13th Feb 2019. The new owner is White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures (WRNV) (*1), a community-rooted developer owned by three socially-driven organisations, with voluntary covenants in the Shareholders Agreement to retain capped rents in perpetuity. Sounds really dull! Why does this matter? The Observer Building is a symbol of early 1920s optimism: a great big beautiful strong proclamatory edifice built out of pride to tell the stories of the town. Hard not to like… On the other hand, Robert Tressell’s name for the local… Read more…
STATEMENT FROM JESS STEELE REGARDING HASTINGS PIER February 2019 Since last summer there has been a disturbing level of polarisation within the town about the pier. I hope that this statement will help to tackle that and remind us of the positivity that was the hallmark of the campaign to save the pier. This statement comes from me as an individual and I’d like to lay out my involvement as clearly as I can. I was one of the local people who got together to try to save the pier in 2006 when it was closed for safety reasons due… Read more…
I gave this talk today (25/1/19) to 200+ students at Helenswood School, Hastings, as part of ‘Get Hastings Reading’ (see end of post for slides) Hello, thanks for having me. My daughter came to Helenswood. She’s doing her A-levels at Bexhill College now. So I was thinking about what I would have wanted her to hear when she was your age… I think it’s: try to get ready for a future you can’t see yet. My sister always wanted to be a doctor. Well at first she said she wanted to be “a nurse in Africa” but our Dad said… Read more…
I’m going to try to explain the financial package that Friends of Hastings Pier put together as simply as I can. This is both an exercise in extreme transparency and a practice run for some workshops I’m planning about how money works in land & building development (from a community perspective of course). I’m not going to name our commercial operator partner but detailed information about him and his support team was submitted to the Administrators and the estate agents on 14th June, along with the legal heads of terms of the agreement between us. First a quick rant… Those… Read more…
Here’s a link to the slides I showed yesterday at the Labour Party #NewEconomics conference in Southampton. Plus the narrative notes. Investing Upside Down – Jess Steele Investing Upside Down – narrative
The Story of the Battle for Hastings Pier – by Jess Steele It’s an exciting time for seaside towns and for piers. As we approach the opening of the newly renovated Hastings Pier, it feels important to remember the story of the Battle for Hastings Pier. The pier is a ‘totemic asset’ – something that feels like it belongs to everyone, something that draws people together. Here is our totem as it was… beautiful, derelict. It closed 10 years ago when it became obvious that the owners (an off-shore company called Ravenclaw, registered in Panama to avoid English company law)… Read more…
Jericho Road Solutions is 1,000 days old today, and I’m determined to carve out a little time to reflect on the experience and some of the lessons so far. It’s been an honour to work with ambitious, stubborn, creative leaders in communities across the country, to support them to take action on what matters to them. For me the focus is usually on buildings that are precious to local people but are for some reason ‘stuck’ – through delinquent ownership, unviable renovation costs, conflictual politics, dysfunctional land markets, or any combination of circumstances too risky for the market and too complex for… Read more…
Big congratulations to Jericho Road Solutions founder Jess Steele, who has been awarded an OBE for Services to Community Assets in the UK in the New Year’s Honours list. Read more here.
Jericho Road had a fantastic time at the Locality 2015 Convention in Liverpool. We caught up with old friends and made new ones, discovered some great projects and sold a lot of tea towels! We heard from some inspiring speakers from neighbourhoods all over the world including a particularly captivating talk by Jason Roberts of Build a Better Block from Dallas who, along with his neighbours, transformed the neighbourhood they live in. All the things they wanted to do to change their neighbourhood were against the rules – so they did them anyway and attached copies of the rules to… Read more…
The first America Ground Pow Wow, held on 6th October, aimed to maintain and expand a local conversation which was kicked off by White Rock Trust earlier this year to ask the questions: is gentrification happening, if so is it a problem, if so is there anything we can do about it? This led to a project to establish a community land trust and a cross-sectoral project team is now taking this forwards. While the project team gets on with the detailed development work, the Pow Wow is a way to continue the wider dialogue with local residents, businesses and stakeholders. We talked about… Read more…
Change is underway… The Pier will reopen next spring. Local businesses will see footfall improve and new business are already opening up. After years in which the powers-that-be ignored our seafront in favour of ‘grade A’ offices and White Rock was just the gap between Hastings and St Leonards, now the great ‘legacy’ assets of the area (the pier, White Rock Baths, Bottle Alley, the Observer Building, Holy Trinity Church, and the White Rock Gardens) are being brought back to life. We can be proud of the passionate efforts of local people that have made this happen and excited about… Read more…
Spot the difference. The real difference between the circumstances – which were almost exactly four years apart – is very simple. The attitude of the council. In Hastings it took a long time and a lot of effort to persuade our council but once we did they were an active partner. At the end of 2008 our first HLF bid was rejected – mainly because the council were “luke-warm”. By the middle of 2010 they were on board and we were meeting fortnightly to progress the project. Looking back, with the benefit of hindsight, knowledge of other piers, and maybe… Read more…
I’ve ended up knowing much more than I ever expected to about piers! I’m still no expert in any particular aspect but I’ve come to know lots of facts, lots of specialisms, and have an understanding ranging from the technical to the historical to the emotional. And I believe that Colwyn Bay’s pier is next in line. Our emerging vision for the new HLF bid is here. If you can help please email colwyn@jerichoroad.co.uk (we’re particularly looking for specialists in emerging healthy living technologies such as wellbeing apps) Victoria Pier is one of just 31 surviving traditional (open-structure, iron-legged) piers. British… Read more…
My favourite definition of an entrepreneur is someone who sets out to do something without controlling the resources to do it. I’ve been an entrepreneur a long time. Since my dad got me to write a history of Deptford in the early 1990s and I realised I didn’t want to send it off to some publisher for it to come back covered in someone else’s red marks, so instead we set up a publishing company. I knew absolutely nothing about publishing (the file from those times is still on my shelves and it’s called ‘the mysterious world of publishing’). But… Read more…
White Rock Neighbourhood Ventures – a partnership of White Rock Trust, Meanwhile Space and Jericho Road Solutions – now owns the 9-storey office block at 49-51 Cambridge Road, Hastings, currently known as Rothermere House. The building has been more than half empty for years and the 25-year lease held by Grand Metropolitan expires at the end of September. We plan to convert four floors to residential co-housing, four floors to creative workspace and the top floor and roof terrace into community clubspace (to be managed initially by White Rock Trust and defined over time as ideas emerge). The first Viscount Rothermere was… Read more…
It’s been a roller-coaster week here in Hastings. Since handing over the pier project to Hastings Pier Charity, the White Rock Trust has been focusing on the wider neighbourhood and on the second most challenging building in town – the old Observer Building. We found out a week ago that the Observer Building was to go to auction this Friday (today!) and we have been trying to negotiate a private purchase in advance of that. Last week we asked the receiver what it would cost to take it out of auction and on Monday we matched that offer, including… Read more…
Turning the Tide? Deptford regeneration event 25 April 2014, Deptford Town Hall, New Cross Road (#ttt21) To mark 21 years since ‘Turning the Tide‘ was published and to explore the history, experience and impact of ‘regeneration’ in Deptford (and further afield) in that period. Possibly part of the process of producing an Update to Turning the Tide. This event is being organised by the Centre for Urban and Community Research (CUCR) at Goldsmiths College as part of its twentieth anniversary celebrations. Programme: 3.30 – 5.30 Seminar: The changing face of “regeneration” in LondonShort initial interventions by: Alison Rooke, Michael Keith, Heidi Seetzen, Rob Imrie, Luna Glucksberg5.30 – 6.00 Screenings and sound intervention: Creative Responses to Urban… Read more…
It’s 21 years since I published Turning the Tide: The History of Everyday Deptford. At that point ‘the present’ was full of regeneration programmes. What was their impact? What did we learn? What should be done differently in future? On April 25th 2014, the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths is hosting a free event to explore the stories of Deptford’s “regeneration”. We will be looking back over the two decades since the publication of Turning The Tide which coincided with the start of CUCR’s evaluation of the Deptford City Challenge programme. Our aim is to discuss the recent changes in Deptford,… Read more…
And here is the Deptford Dockyard clock in situ in Thamesmead town centre. Source: Spinning Plates
The 18th century Deptford Dockyard clock on its way down river to its new home in Thamesmead, 1986. It was given to Thamesmead by the GLC as they faced abolition “as something to remember the GLC by” Source: Spinning Plates
After a good start with weekly blogs I seem to have fallen into Abeyance. It feels like a ditch I want to climb out of. It’s been a stunning couple of months – which is probably why I feel like a cartoon character seeing spinning stars. So I’ll just begin and hope there’s something of interest for everyone in this meze of odd experiences and learning. It started with a 24-hour residential to help redesign the Community Organisers training programme. As we approach the final year of the programme, our task is to consolidate everything we have learned to create… Read more…
So it’s been a month since launching Jericho Road Solutions and I’m in reflective mood. I chose to leave a good job at Locality and start out on my own because I want to be directly involved in local transformations as well as working at national level to shape policies, organisations and programmes that make local transformation easier. As with any new business there’s been a lot of practical stuff to sort out – bank, phones, accountant, insurance, filing, website, etc. Had a couple of launch parties in London and Manchester, with fliers, badges, bunting. And I’ve spent some time… Read more…
My biography always begins “Jess Steele bridges policy and practice to develop new intellectual territory, ventures and programmes…” I have always been interested in boundary-spanning – cross-sectoral, cross-community, inter-generational work; match-making between public, private and third sectors; travelling and translating between official and informal worlds. The danger of spinning plates for a living is that you move too fast to embed what went before. Sometimes I’ve spent an evening designing a database or drafting a report only to find a previous version when I go to save. As part of setting up Jericho Road Solutions I promised myself I would… Read more…
I think we just won a competition on the basis of a good pun. But my co-conspirators say it’s because what we’re doing is really important and worthwhile and brilliant. Could be both?! I’ve always been a believer in peer learning and that’s been reinforced by my pier experience. Inspiration is oxygen. Short-cuts, tips and warnings can make all the difference. The trust and mutual respect between equals (wherever they are on the journey) is crucial. And most important of all is the sense of solidarity in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust has… Read more…
I just had the second launch of Jericho Road Solutions – this time in Manchester. Another basement of another pub, this time very informal and no high-heeled speeches on wobbly tables. But with great people – community organisers from cohort 1 graduates to cohort 6 trainees, local activists from London Road Fire Station and Save Ancoats Dispensary, and the fabulous Tony Wright who doesn’t know it yet but is going to be a Guest at one of the first Social Salons! Of all the cities in England, Manchester is the place that seems to me to have enormous potential –… Read more…