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…
You and I and the other 95,000 Hastings inhabitants have no vote in the election that will happen tomorrow (17/2/20). Just 23 Labour councillors will choose the person who will lead our town for the next few years. Will we see puffs of white smoke coming from Muriel Matters House?! It bothers me that the character and loyalties of the individual chosen tomorrow will be so important. In reality the impact will be felt in structural terms: the balance of power between councillors and officers, what happens to the discredited ‘regeneration agency’ Seaspace and its progeny, how long the council… Read more…
The Lion and the Unicorn 1991 The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the Crown. The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the Town. Some gave them White Bread and some gave them Brown, And some gave them Plum-cake and chased them Out of Town. The Lion and the Unicorn were fighting for the Crown The Lion beat the Unicorn all around the Town. The Unicorn said “Fuck this, it isn’t you I hate” So they put their heads together and turned against the State. The Queen said “Oh, dearie me, we can’t be having this.” As the… 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…
(See also Part 1: Hastings Pier: How the Money Works) Until we as citizens understand ‘how the money works’ when it comes to developing land and buildings we will always be disadvantaged – land and buildings are where power is held. Without them the community sector will be forever undercapitalised. I am not an expert in property finance, not trained or qualified. But I have first-hand development experience, professional curiosity, and an insatiable desire to work out new ways to make things happen. As traditional regeneration approaches – which I would argue never really worked for communities in any case… 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…
After 19 crazy weeks of community mobilisation, commercial negotiation, late night bid-writing, endless spreadsheets, obsessive Crowdfunder checking, and the hard, hard work of keeping hope alive… this is me trying to make sense of what has happened, what has been achieved and the impact of our failure to protect something so precious that it makes grown-ups cry. I didn’t want to do any of this. When I heard that Hastings Pier Charity had gone into Administration in November 2017 I felt physically sick. A phone call with the Administrator in December sent me into a furious depression I haven’t experienced… Read more…
I was really pleased, honoured, and emotional to be at the celebration event on the Pier yesterday to mark the achievements of the Learning & Education Team which has been funded by Heritage Lottery Fund for the past 5 years. This is what I said: * * * I want to talk about three things: • The people • The achievement (specifically of the heritage & learning programme) • The future The people = so many people, so much love, so much uncertainty and dogged determination to win through regardless. Individuals should be recognised and valued but we must also… Read more…
“There are battles you think you’ve won, only to discover you need to fight them all over again” – Jonathan Freedland, Guardian 28/4/18 At first, when the Hastings Pier Charity was put into administration in November 2017, it seemed terrible and tragic and tipped me over the edge. Strangely, it now feels like an opportunity. It’s a bit like the Fire in 2010 – the worst thing imaginable but still, in the smouldering, a chance of renewal. Are we going round in circles or are we making progress towards some kind of destiny??! Maybe both! Friends of Hastings Pier was set up… Read more…
It was a fascinating day in Southampton at the Labour Party #NewEconomics conference on Saturday. What stuck with me the most was being presented with the evidence behind the complete and ongoing rip-off and harm done by the privatisation of water. The pictures below are all from the talk by Dr Kate Baylis (SOAS University of London). I really hope she doesn’t mind – I’m just so cross and worried about this – I need to get it out there! The amazing ‘denseness’ of the company structures. This web of companies is just one of the water conglomerates – Southern… 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 Friends of Hastings Pier (FOHP) has been re-established a decade after it handed the baton of the People’s Pier to the Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust which later set up the Hastings Pier Charity. The Friends are shareholders and supporters who want to be active and constructive in this second crisis for our pier. There are currently 150 signed-up members and 400 members of the facebook group, with many more joining all the time. We want to look forwards not backwards. Just as in the horrible days and weeks after the Fire of 2010 we refused to be drawn into blame… Read more…
I feel like a love-struck teenager. I’ve always been in love with places, and always attracted to the underdogs – my towns Deptford and Hastings and all the other-people’s-places that I fall in love with: Blackpool, Scarborough, Bradford, Greater Manchester, Liverpool 8. If I had more time I’d like to get to know Maryport, Jaywick, and the scruffy bit of Swindon! But I don’t need to leave town to find the most perfect example of a place that has been continuously stamped on by an outside elite for 200 years. A place with both acute and chronic poverty, but where that is only one of the… Read more…
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…