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…
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…
In this country we would never let someone drive a car that was uninsured or dangerous. That’s why we have the MOT system and DVLA to keep records of car ownership. Yet we allow hundreds of owners to keep buildings and land irresponsibly, the Land Registry role is limited and non-regulatory, and the only fallback mechanism (Compulsory Purchase) is torturous, expensive and fraught with risk. It’s time to do something about it. First we need to know more about the scale of the problem. If you know about a building that matters to the local community but is disused or… Read more…
When it comes to dealing with derelict and disused buildings and land, Councils are in a practically impossible position (but that’s quite normal for local government!). They have a set of ‘powers’ that are theoretically available but technically complex. In my experience, councillors quickly learn a default position to say they won’t use them – too difficult, too expensive, too risky (the DER response). It’s important to remember that this is a cultural and political position and it can be changed. But once you get the ‘DER’ response, it can take years for a local community to campaign to get… Read more…
I was taken aback by the level of interest in the Bank Holiday launch of my Coops UK Fresh Ideas pamphlet ‘The People’s Piers’. Given the coverage – Guardian, Times, Mirror, Daily Mail, BBC News, ITN, etc – I should have put more care into clarifying the argument and also made sure I was in the country to explain it better. The pamphlet tells the story of Hastings Pier – which opened 141 years earlier, on Britain’s first ever Bank Holiday in 1872 – and of the long community campaign leading at last to its transfer from the shadowy Panamanian-registered… Read more…
I have been frustrated for many years by the impacts of irresponsible private ownership in the two places I’ve known best (Deptford and Hastings) and the many communities I have been privileged to work with all over the country. There are all kinds of examples, from rogue HMO landlords to dodgy scrapyards in residential areas. But the thing that makes my blood boil is when beautiful historic buildings of huge community interest are left to rot, abandoned by delinquent owners, or passed from one to the next, each making their packet out of speculative planning permissions and none taking the… Read more…
“The Great Society is not a resting place… a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us towards a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvellous products of our labor.” – Lindon Johnson Not a ‘finished work’ – no, certainly it isn’t. I have been telling the story of the Battle for Hastings Pier for many years. Since November 2012 when the Heritage Lottery Fund said YES! I have been telling it as a fairy-tale come true, a success against the odds. Two things occur to me now: 1. It’s not over. Not even to the extent that… Read more…
Pier Campaign – story version Last week a couple of trustees of the Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust were filmed for a BBC piece to be shown in the autumn which may turn into a longer documentary. It felt like we were auditioning to see if the story, and our telling of it, was up to scratch. There’s no doubt it’s a great story but is it a fable, a thriller or a soap opera? If you live inside it then it feels more like a soap – an endless series of multi-perspective tales. When you’re presenting to the… 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…
Welcome, and thank you for coming to wet the baby’s head. I’m going to revisit a speech I first gave in November 2010 which was the first time I used the Jericho Road quote. Goes to show you never know where an inspirational quote might take you! “On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make… Read more…
I was forwarded this by one of our community organisers. As I read it I kept thinking this cannot be true. I hope it is fake but I have a horrible feeling that it’s a true reflection of JobCentre/DWP culture in any case. 131781238-DWP-Whistleblower-Letter
I gave two speeches today. The first was at an event organised by Community Links in Canning Town. REGENERATION OF EAST LONDON [I’m going to see if you can multi-task! While I’m talking, sketch a little map of a bit of East London you know well – a patch, a piece of neighbourhood (a few roads around a junction, or maybe a block of flats, a scrap of land and a dead pub, or a parade of shops with space behind, or a high road with a tube station and shops). It doesn’t have to be accurate but it will… Read more…
Today’s second speech was at Respublica’s event to launch Julian Dobson’s excellent report “Responsible Recovery: A social contract for local growth”. Welfare reform and communities Jess Steele, Locality Innovation Director & Chair of CREATE Consortium I’ve worked for the past 12 years to get welfare and communities into the same sentence, onto the same platform. It’s hard to imagine now, but in 2001 there was so little talk about benefits in politics, in the news, on TV, in the public discourse, that if you mentioned it you were seen as some kind of policy nerd. People’s eyes really did glaze over…. Read more…
Sometimes when things work out well we can hardly believe it’s because of us. We want to feel the thunderbolt and praise Thor! I’m really pleased that tonight Hastings Pier was saved. This is how I felt when I knew: But you know what? It wasn’t Thor. I know for definite that it’s all down to the dogged persistence of local people. Tell the story one way and it’s a classic Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” but tell the true… Read more…
Here is the presentation I gave to the #Locality12 convention 7th Nov 12. Jess Steele Self Renovating Neighbourhoods Locality12 Comments and further discussion welcome. The full essay is available here
It’s been annoying me so much not to be able to get a full list of government ministers anywhere on the net that I decided to nick this one from Conservative Home as soon as I found it! Cabinet Office Minister for the Cabinet Office, Paymaster General – Rt Hon Francis Maude MP Minister for Government Policy – Rt Hon Oliver Letwin MP Minister of State – Rt Hon David Laws MP (jointly with the Department for Education) Parliamentary Secretary – Nick Hurd MP Parliamentary Secretary – Chloe Smith MP Department for Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary of State for Business,… Read more…
I am at home in Hastings while the ashes of an old friend are being scattered from a bridge we helped to build. In memory of Pete Pope and in recompense for not being there today, I want to get the story of the Ha’penny Hatch online. I was researching Turning the Tide: the History of Everyday Deptford (published 1993) when I came across this most mysterious of pictures. On the reverse was the note “Edgar Wallace used to play here”. Steeped in Deptford’s historical topography, I knew that this little footbridge was attached to the south side of the… Read more…
I can hardly believe it’s taken me so long to write this. I suppose it’s cos I didn’t want my trip to the US to be truly over. But until it’s finished I can’t write anything else so… That last day in America I had almost no pages left in the notebook I’d been filling for 10 days. I didn’t think it would matter because it was Saturday, I had to leave for the airport at 4pm and I planned to wander the city and maybe see a museum. No more meetings left. But I went to Starbucks for breakfast… Read more…
Friday 18th November 2011 Jim Field (left), Director of Organizing at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, says he’s from the Alinsky generation and gives me a copy of the 1972 Playboy interview. He says lots of the first wave of organisers had taken vows of poverty and chastity which made the life easier. Jim was studying to be a Catholic priest but had been inspired by St Damian (who helped lepers) and took an internship at a school of nursing in 1968. That summer he dated an African American woman and the couple were stunned by the hostility everywhere… Read more…
This is my public apology for not yet having emailed to thank all the wonderful people I met in Chicago (I’ve started it on the train home tonight). The last two days of my trip (18/19th Nov) involved even more rushing around, but thankfully more of it on the brilliant El trains/subway rather than Shanks’ pony. First up, Phil Nyden at the Centre for Urban Research & Learning at Loyola University, one of those academics that makes you acutely grateful for education, for allowing people like him to be working collaboratively with communities like those I’ve glimpsed in Chicago. He’s… Read more…
I’m back in the UK now but determined to finish this blog account of my trip to the US to explore community organising. I ran 3.5k on a treadmill today and all the way I was thinking about my much more exciting (and exhausting) Thursday in Chicago A/D/J – Congress Plaza Hotel where I was staying. Hotel workers have been on strike since June 2003 B – Ogilvie Transporation Centre – where I met Ken Rolling from Community Learning Partnership at 9am C – Hull-House museum on South Halsted, a museum in the original building of one of the first… Read more…
Weds 16th November 2011 After a misleadingly warm day yesterday, now it’s sunny but cold like Chicago’s meant to be. Today’s dollops of inspiration come from Jeff Pinzino at National People’s Action (NPA) Joanna Brown, Logan Square Neighbourhood Association Malcolm Bush, formerly of Woodstock Institute, a contact through the world of community finance. Founded by legendary organizer Shel Trapp and neighbourhood activist Gail Cincotta, NPA is 40 years old. It emerged from the experience of ‘panic peddling’ (unscrupulous real estate agents frightening white people into selling their properties cheap in advance of black in-migration and then selling them to black… Read more…
Tues 15th November 2011 A beautiful sunny, warm day in ultra-civilised Chicago began with a wander in Grant Park. Everything takes just a bit longer than you expect because of waiting to cross the enormous roads. So then I hurried to the Metra to head southwards only to discover one of those things that everyone knows and no-one tells you: while the CTA El trains are superb and as frequent as London tubes, the Metra is a rarified form of transit for those people who don’t mind waiting 40 minutes for the next one! So I had to rush straight… Read more…
On my last day in Detroit I spent the morning exploring the regenerated riverfront. A lot of effort, good intentions and money has gone in and there are some lovely touches – the framed artworks, the bird-filled wetland area and especially the beautiful maps integrated into paving and shelters. But overall it was a typical example of physical regeneration that goes no way towards bringing back the life and soul of the place. The cafe, the information point and the carousel were all closed, despite the sign that gave opening hours and the other sign that said all profits from… Read more…
