Empowerment for Surrender? A Response from The Artists, People’s Bureau & Our Reply to the People’s Bureau

Empowerment for Surrender? A Response from The Artists to Southwark Notes

 We would like to thank Southwark Notes on three counts:

1. For their serious engagement with the politics of the People’s Bureau (see our article ‘Empowerment For Surrender: People’s Bureau, Engaged Art & The Elephant’)
2. For raising a number of significant questions, and
3. For the opportunity to respond.

We share many of the concerns of the authors. In particular we:

• Acknowledge the tension between the ‘belief system’ of corporate capital, and the values of social capital and the global commons, which underpin the People’s Bureau.
• Recognize the risk that in co-operating with a developer such as Delancey (including by receiving funding) we are co-opted to their purposes.
• Suspect that Delancey is more concerned with creating the appearance of community engagement and consultation, than with its substance.

Indeed it is largely on the basis of such concerns that we have decided against accepting further funding from Delancey.

We agree with the authors that:

“For us this is less an argument about taking developer money for projects but more the thorny question of what you actually critically do and say from that money.”

We hoped that working with Delancey would present opportunities for influence. However, some of their more recent actions have caused us to question that position.

Where we respectfully disagree with the authors is in their depiction of the People’s Bureau as ‘Empowerment for Surrender’. They overlook the subversive content of the project, describing it in terms, which imply it is little more than a trivial distraction and ‘museumisation’:

Operating out of a customised traders’ mobile cart first given to them by Delancey, the artists began by organising fun and playful activities, as well as workshops and skills-exchange sessions (‘…sewing, knitting and crocheting, pedicure, massage, facials, gardening, baking, vegetable fermentation, light workshop, embroidery, dream-catchers making‘, etc). The aim was to collect local E&C knowledge and memories: stories, drawings and photos.

This analysis completely misses the point of the project, People’s Bureau is intended as a rallying cry against the crude and merciless logic of corporate capital. It is intended to distill and to highlight:

1) The role and function of public space and public commons.

2) The capacity of the community to self-organise.

3) Economic alternatives to cycles of consumption and destruction that, through emissions of greenhouse gases, now threaten the future of life on earth.

There is, of course, a battle to be fought for the Elephant & Castle in the here and now. We do not claim that the People’s Bureau is at the front line of that battle. What we hope, however, is that by reminding people of what is at stake and by focusing attention on the oasis of social capital that is under threat, we give others a vision of something worth fighting for.

We are artists and not experts in legal or planning processes. We would, however, welcome a discussion with the authors about how we might work together to promote greater understanding of these processes. If individuals and citizens platforms come together to make their voices heard, co-operating and exchanging skills, we can ensure there is no meek surrender to the forces of blind capital.

 

People’s Bureau,
December 2016

Note: We have worked to try and improve the online representation of our work at Elephant and Castle online by putting together peoplebureau.co.uk.  We hope the project is better evidenced here and clarifies our point of view more clearly.

Also we invite you to a public discussion on February 2 (venue to be confirmed), to converse about this matter and the wider issues around socially engaged arts practice.

 

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A Second Response from Southwark Notes to People’s Bureau

Southwark Notes would like to thank People’s Bureau for their response to our recent article ‘Empowerment For Surrender: People’s Bureau, Engaged Art & The Elephant’ and for the recognition that we are ‘raising a number of significant questions’. While we recognise the People’s Bureau’s willingness to engage in an exchange, we think that there are some fundamental issues that still need to be addressed. We’d therefore like to briefly respond in turn.

People’s Bureau: ‘we suspect that Delancey is more concerned with creating the appearance of community engagement and consultation, than with its substance’.

1.    Delancey DV4 is an aggressive multi-billion pound real estate investment company registered in a tax haven. Ourselves, many investigative journalists and local groups have been pointing this out for years:

35% Campaign on Delancey developments at Elephant
35% Campaign on Delancey Shopping Centre proposals
Private Eye on Delancey
Southwark Notes on Delancey and Shopping Centre
Gunnersbury Park Campaign on Delancey

Delancey, by nature of their business, are interested in one bottom line: how big a profit they can wring from the Shopping Centre redevelopment through the construction of private homes on the site. They have been set on demolition and displacement of local shops and community since they bought the Shopping Centre in December 2013. Two months later in February 2014, they announced ‘The first thing is that we are looking to demolish the centre and redevelop it’. People’s Bureau were then part of Delancey first public consultation in July 2015 where demolition was clearly signaled.

People’s Bureau state that they have moved from a position of thinking that they could accept Delancey’s money and have ‘opportunities for influence’ with them, to one of disillusionment with Delancey’s intentions. They state now that ‘some of their more recent actions have caused us to question that position’. Although we feel that trust in Delancey was always somewhat naïve for critical artists to have, we recognise the role of learning from experiences and criticism and we welcome People’s Bureau new-found realisation. We presume as demolition looms ever nearer that Delancey is now winding down it’s funding of local artists and other groups. What interests us now is: How has the Bureau communicated this let down to Delancey and how has their formal relationship changed? Making the details of their break with Delancey public would be very interesting not only for local campaigners but also to others in the artistic and creative community who might be faced with the same contradictions People’s Bureau have moved through.

So a vital question for us is how People’s Bureau will now use the special relationship they developed over the years with Delancey, to point out the phony nature of their consultation process? As Delancey’s Elephant Shopping Centre application has just been made public, this is a perfect moment to delegitimise the faux ‘community consultation’ and push for real and tangible community benefits alongside local campaigns.

2.    Our critique of People’s Bureau’s work comes from both an early engagement with a few of their events and a close observation of their later activities. Whilst we have not directly engaged with the workshops offered more recently around the People’s Bureau cart, we believe our participation and observation gives us enough understanding to analyse, reflect and comment upon their art practice.

We again question the use of some terms used to describe People’s Bureau’s practice. We fail to see how People’s Bureau’s work engages with debates about ‘the commons’. The Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre is a privately-owned commercial space, and doing workshops that are open to the public does not necessarily equate much with facilitating a deeper and practical reflection on the use of public space. It is a further leap to say the Bureau is visioning and working towards a ‘commons’ as if one stems from the other (assumed public space to commons). We fail to see how their work ‘highlights…the capacity of the community to self-organise’ when there is little evidence of such a constituency being built by them in a way that other local groups have been engaged in for years.

We understand community self-organisation as being an independent, non-commercial, critical and oppositional coming together in resistance to attacks on that community. The use of such terms seems to be more buzzwords rather than having a solid grounding in practice. They say that our criticisms are reductive of People’s Bureau work that is ‘intended as a rallying cry against the crude and merciless logic of corporate capital’ but, as we have said in our original text, we saw no evidence of any public disavowal of Delancey’s corporate plans for the Shopping Centre. Noting People’s Bureau self-description of the ‘subversive content of the project’, we would be interested in People’s Bureau further elaborating this subversion from within in relation to the engagement and organising they are claiming.

3.    What follows on from this would be that People’s Bureau up their critical stance and supports local self-organisation against Delancey’s plans by continuing to work as artists with the skills, knowledges and continuing desire for participation that they can input into opposition to Delancey and the Council’s plans. Opposition is the stance that many groups, community organisations and individuals have been taking at The Elephant for upwards of 15 years. Listening and learning from them is critical. Supporting them with time, energy, contacts and resources is now crucial.

It’s important to us that we respond to the notion that People’s Bureau ‘are artists and not experts in legal or planning processes’. Being ‘an artist’ does not absolve one of any responsibility or accountability nor provide some presumed neutrality for cover for all of one’s activities. Most of the people opposing Delancey (and other urban ‘regeneration’ projects in London and beyond) are not experts in law and planning and have had to learn fast as they go along. A fundamental part of this work is then to find, produce and share knowledge and demystify the smokescreen of legalistic lingo that developers and local authorities use to sugar-coat promises of ‘regeneration’ that are in fact gentrification and social cleansing.

We don’t much want this to turn into an online to-and-from between Southwark Notes and the Bureau although again we welcome a detailed reply. Outside of this exchange on ideas, the Bureau continues to be accountable to the local community (as is the work and actions of Southwark Notes). That community will be their final judges and critics, and they will base this on the Bureau’s actions, rather than their words.

SNAG
New Year’s Day, 2017

Southwark Notes continues to be written by local people opposed to the regeneration of the North Southwark area.  This exchange with People’s Bureau contains the thoughts and ideas of five of us!  *-)

Heygate Pyramid re-animated: Public Art Fights Back

Southwark Notes attention has been drawn by our international circle of art-loving friends to an article in Art Monthly, October 2014, entitled ‘Public Art Attack’ by writer and curator Andrew Hunt (here). The article writes in depth about the cancelled Pyramid for Heygate public artwork that we opposed and wrote about at length at the time. The article, amidst a heap of other artworks and references, makes a case that the dumping of the Pyramid through Council jitters from local hostility was a bad thing because the Pyramid as a symbol of top down ‘brutality’ would have been a perfect opportunity for ‘dialogue’ around processes of social cleansing.

The article also claims that local activists misread the artwork as ‘siding with gentrification and displacement’ thus enabling the council to cancel the project, ‘effectively gaggle local activists arguments’ and push the criticism onto ‘scapegoats’ Artangel and Nelson away from the Council. This is frankly pony and ill-informed as opposition was squarely aimed at the Council for colluding in the project and Artangel for its lack of sensitivity. In fact we didn’t ‘scapegoat’ Artangel, we directly blamed them for producing something on Heygate that would be used by the Council explicitly to sell and market the regeneration ‘opportunity area’, licking their lips at the massive cultural cred Nelson and Artangel would bring and their excitement to have this on Heygate site. Our early letter to Artangel from October 2013 makes a long point on this that Artangel sidelined in their eventual dismal reply: Artangel & Southwark Notes Emails

As for ‘gagging’ ourselves – local campaigns existed well before the proposed Pyramid and they still exist after. They did not need the blessing or supposed intervention from the art world to make their arguments public and accessible. In fact the protests around the Pyramid and its cancellation was part and parcel of the continuing making known of what was happening around Heygate Estate and North Southwark and found many sympathetic ears in others local campaigns.

Mike Nelson was never attacked directly because without access to Mike Nelson as the writer seems to have had, it was always impossible to judge the artists intentions at the time. When the Pyramid was going through the motions of being prepared for the Heygate site, there were no public statements from Mike Nelson on his intentions such as those now retrospectively revealed by this article. It is also somewhat hard to trust these revelations of a pointedly critical work against Southwark Council’s treatment of Heygate residents, when Artangel and Nelson had been looking for a site for such a demolition and re-construction since 2009. This in some ways undercuts the argument then made around Heygate being chosen as an artistic target.

It is somewhat fanciful to imagine that Nelson was trying to pull the wool over Southwark’s misty eyes with his assertion that ‘an artwork was needed that represented the same form of brutality’. Artangel might produce monumental artworks by artists but it does not seem to have a long history of going in for projects that would be such an attack (on Southwark Council in this instance) as the one Nelson desires. Anyhow we would be interested to know where this Nelson quote comes from and when. There is no source for the quote in the article.

The Art Monthly article attempts then a somewhat revisionist version of what local opponents were saying at the time in a way that attempts (once again) to re-establish the primacy of art as a neutral space for ‘dialogue’. For us, as vocal and public critics of the intended public artwork, we still think that focusing now on the artists intentions are missing the point. We were clear at the time that our criticisms were more levelled at both Artangel and The Council and much less at Mike Nelson precisely because we were unable to judge what he had in mind with this Pyramid. Also worth saying we appreciated that the piece was not a ‘socially engaged work’ (as modern descriptions have it of creative projects done with usually disadvantaged communities or folks and all the ‘orrible discontents liable to surface in such artistic engagements). The Pyramid remains committed to the older form of The artist makes Artwork and the rest is up to us. Either way, we find both forms inherently problematic and full of unpleasant contradictions that ‘Art’ is unable to either resolve or improve.

Maybe we can simply restate again our arguments and the feelings of some local residents including some of those who were displaced by the Heygate regeneration.

– Like the Council’s own imposition on Heygate residents of the regeneration scheme and it’s non-accountable resultant loss of 1000 public housing homes in favour of 1000’s of new private homes, the Artangel Pyramid also seemed a done deal foisted upon the remaining community. There was little attempt to ask local people and those who had been displaced what they thought about the art project. At Southwark Notes we offered numerous times to put Artangel in touch with local people and campaign groups so they could sound out local feeling. They ignored these offers in favour of later asking us for community contacts for engagement around the Pyramid only after it was built.

Artangel also entered into contracts for demolition, had access to the Heygate site and spent much time figuring out how the Pyramid would be built and so on even before their planning application has been up for decision. This seems to point to us that the Council had already reassured them that all would be fine. Our initial letter to Artangel makes our point clearly that this kind of behaviour is made on the basis of the power of privilege that exists for middle class art curators but not for Heygate residents to decide (once again) what happens to where you live and your community. Some of those who had been ‘decanted’ just did not want this art to be allowed to arrive at the site and all the insensitivity this implied.

– We made a concerted effort to criticise the Council and it’s desire for a triumphalist artwork on the Heygate site precisely because they wanted such a cultural capital-rich artwork to be instrumental in heralding the regeneration project. Being unable to ‘decipher’ much about any of the supposed artists intentions, they were happy to go along with it, whatever it was, alongside as it made headlines for them, as ‘Southwark’, for their regeneration project. It was only when local people made a fuss and promised a heated reception to the Pyramid that they then saw what an abyss of negative publicity opening up before their very beautiful regeneration scheme. Despite chummy assurances and helping Artangel prepare the site and scheme, they freaked out on Dec 20^th 2013 and pulled the plug leaving Artangel in the lurch and (as we understand it from F.O.I requests) contractually obliged to the demolition company who they had hired to do the preliminary deconstruction work on Cuddington block.

– It is clear to us from occasional conversations we find ourselves involved in that the idea that Pyramid would create a space, as Hunt says, ‘to reflect urgent political decisions and to engage in favourable dialogue with campaigners concerns’ still has some currency despite the campaign against the Pyramid and the very arguments on which it was resisted. Without an agreement or sensitivity to those locally who are the community about whether they want this artwork, bringing thousands of people to come into that community to see the Pyramid is disrespectful and also loaded with fantasies about how that audience will engage in this struggle not to be displaced from our homes. Art lovers or the curious might imagine they are entering into a dialogue or polemic about regeneration but, we suspect, that they are more likely to have an interesting day out at a site of social cleansing that is now only open to them as an artwork. For local campaigns who have spent years having their own public meetings, writing publications and websites, holding protests, anti-gentrification walks around the area and so on, there was little interest in having a Pyramid help them out especially one foisted upon them with zero attempts by the artist or Artangel to contact them beforehand.

For us, we remain committed to believing that such a public spectacle around the construction of a Pyramid out of one of the old Heygate housing blocks is of dubious use for any real actual political fighting against ongoing regeneration and social cleansing. Dubious because numerous art projects made on regenerating council estates up and down the U.K (including 2008’s Artangel-produced Seizure by Roger Hiorns on Harper Rd, another Southwark Council estate) have not resulted in a saving a single council home but have resulted in lots of concerned hot air, liberal hand wringing, pretentious art criticism and endless academic studies. Southwark Notes has met hundreds of people over the last 5 years with our optimistic willingness to explain our point of view to those who ask to meet us. Yet we would say 99% of those we meet will not give back from their art, writing or researches or put anything into the campaigns that they come and take from.

It has been interested to see, after the Pyramid death, other London estates refusing to have art projects foisted upon them (Catherine Yass’s piano dropping art cancelled at the Balfron Tower, Canton St residents saying no to Performance Poplar on their estate). This is one way of assessing the strength and foresight of campaigns around social cleansing when art can be viewed not as a gift to fighting gentrification but suspiciously as a part of the very process of gentrification itself, a topic on which we have written perhaps too much!

Probably worth saying again that what we suggest as a good and strategic way of doing our politics in the struggle against regeneration and displacement demands that if we are to accept Art as a category then we must also demand that it is subject to scrutiny and that this scrutiny is used to understand where Art gives power and to who and thus where it takes power and from who.

 

ADDITION:
We heard today (16th Nov 2014) that the cancelling of the Pyramid via community campaigns described as a massive act of artistic censorship. With so much written by the campaigns about why they didn’t want the Pyramid artwork, you wonder what it takes to come up with that perspective and exactly what the persons stakes and investments in it are?! Once again, the Pyramid saga rolls on and on.

 

 

 

 

 

‘Should Art Be Used to Push London’s Rents Up?’

‘Syd Gale of local blog Southwark Notes told me, “I would think a better symbol of The Elephant is not one up on its hind legs but one shot in the head and it’s ivory tusks ripped out. The Council shot it and the developers poached the valuables. All day-to-day events in the regeneration safari.”

Yes, our great man Syd Gale breaks it down quite easily in answer to this question and the rather odd story of the Sam Keil artwork / not artwork proposed to and supported by the Council bigwigs but now denied by all. Luckily, we saved the PDF that no longer appears in public on Sam Keil’s website: not here!

PDF is here: Sam Keil PDF

Full story here at..er..Vice. Glad our researches keep gaining some ground wherever they are published. A truly bizarre story made even more bizarre by Hayden Vernon approaches to Sam and the Council. Nice one.

We like the bit in Vernon’s story when ‘I approached Fiona Colley and she told me that Keil’s comments were unwelcome and laughed off the proposal as silly and self-aggrandising‘. Here is a letter from October 2013 by Jon Abbot, Southwark Council’s Elephant and Castle Project Director to Chris Allen of Oakmayne, the former developer of Tribeca Sq, proposed site of Keil’s bronze elephant:

We can highlight this bit in that letter to break it down further:
“I managed to meet with both Cllr Fiona Colley and Eleanor Kelly and I wanted to inform you they were both very enthusiastic about the proposed Samatha Keil elephant sculpture and are very supportive. They think it would be well received locally and think it’s a strong idea from a place making point of view”.

Syd is available for further comments should the Council need him to explain what they are doing.

Regeneration Rip Off @ The Elephant Sat 19th July: Walk, Sound, Films

SATURDAY 19th JULY: All day Regeneration Rip-Off at The Elephant

ANTI-GENTRIFICATION WALK: 1pm at 56a Infoshop,
56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17. Leaves 1.30pm

• This will be another one of our local walks round the area looking at different sites, developments and characters around the local ‘regeneration’ of the area. We decided not to go over old ground too much (Strata, Heygate etc) but to focus the walk on the new sites – Shopping Centre, One The Elephant, Artworks Box Park, The Signal Building, Eileen House, Newington Causeway Peabody sites and many many more.

In this walk we will ask ‘who benefits?’. With this in mind, we will talk about that very issue – if the local community is not benefiting as promised, which companies and which individuals are benefiting. We will also be looking at how regeneration attempts to place itself on top of people’s local life and history and pretend it was never there.

Intended as a community conversation rather than just us lot going on about it all, please bring your stories, experiences, knowledge, gossip etc and share as we walk, stop and talk.

‘ELEPHANT ENDANGERED’: Outside 56a Infoshop,
56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17 from 4 -6pm

• “Elephant Endangered is a sonic investigation into community and gentrification in the London neighbourhood of Walworth.  The area has been subject to several contentious ‘regeneration’ schemes that have already caused the loss of 1100 socially rented homes of the Heygate Estate.  Elephant Endangered is made up of the many  sounds of the area which are overlaid with conversations had with neighbours, friends, and longstanding residents.  The work is set to continue with new sounds and voices being added through continued dialogues, events, and activities in the community”.

PUBLIC HOUSING UNDER THREAT FILMS:
56a Infoshop, 56 Crampton St, Walworth SE17 from 7pm

• We are pleased to be showing locally a stones throw from Heygate site, the excellent new film ‘Concrete Heart Land‘:
“Concrete Heart Land exposes the social cleansing of the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle, South London. It marks the moment that the estate was finally lost as social housing to make way for an unjust ‘regeneration’ scheme. Assembled from 12 years of archive materials the film charts the struggles of the local community to keep their homes, stay living in the area, and maintain communal benefits in the face of the advance of this now notorious ‘urban redevelopment programme’. Throughout the film we hear the community engaging in some of the crucial battles with elected officials, planners, and barristers in municipal planning meetings, public enquiries, and interviews”.

We will also be showing the new film about residents struggles to save their homes at Cressingham Gardens, “Homes under the Sledgehammer’:
“The film is directed by Sanda Kolar and includes several of the estate’s residents speaking about their experiences of life on the estate. The overwhelming  feeling the film projects is that of community spirit amongst the residents. Nicholas Greaves, Cressingham Gardens Residents’ Chair, said: “It seemed like a jewel in Lambeth’s crown of estates, so it seemed crazy to me that you would want to demolish it.”

Also up is ‘9 Stories In Brixton‘:
“9 Stories in Brixton is a tale about nine residents who live in and around The Guinness Trust estate in heart of Brixton. Earmarked for redevelopment for a number of years, the landlords are now proposing to demolish the estate and rebuild the blocks nine stories high, thereby increasing the capacity of the estate by 30%.  A group of concerned tenants, held meetings to discuss estate issues, and have subsequently endured attempts by the landlords to set up a rival tenants association”.

Plus other short films on housing and other topics that take our fancy. If you have any short films pertinent to the night’s screenings, please bring on USB stick!

See you there on the 19th!

Wanted: Almost Another 50 Questions on the Gentrification of Peckham

Due to the general thumbs up we had for our Almost 50 Questions on the Gentrification of Peckham post, we are now seeking your own wise help in adding another ‘almost’ 50 questions’ to the list. Got something to say in the form of a question about the gentrification of Peckham? Let us know! Many thanks.

Any question we use will remain anonymous.

Email here: elephantnotes (at) yahoo.co.uk

Almost 50 Questions on the Gentrification of Peckham

Here follows a set of questions based on the past, present and future of Peckham as it undergoes continuing pressures of regeneration and the accompanying gentrification. Like gentrification itself, this list contains numerous trick questions. There are questions that seek answers in historical fact but there are a whole lot more questions that are asked not for an answer but because the question itself says a whole lot more than any answer.

These questions are produced from a fatigue of long-term considering the question of art and gentrification and its willing and seemingly unwilling players.
In Peckham, as some artists slowly ponder any role they may have in its changes, it must be said that the story pre-dates their arrival although not the way they have been used to sell the area.

 Almost 50 Questions on the Gentrification of Peckham

• How many estates were regenerated or demolished in Peckham in the last 20 years? Can you name 2 or 3 of them?

• Why do you never see a lot of people in McDonalds on Rye Lane on laptops even though there is free wi-fi there?

• How much public money was paid by Southwark Council for the signs and bollards and lamp posts in Bellenden Rd as part of its artistic recreation?

• What was the name of business that used to be at 44 Choumert Rd before it was recreated as Café Viva?

• What was the name of business that used to be at 46 Choumert Rd before it was recreated as Southerden Pastry Store? Did that business describe itself as being in ‘Bellenden Village?’

• What was Pelican House on Peckham Rd called in the 1980’s before it’s later conversion from Council offices to shared ownership flats?

• Which Peckham 2009 art event press release began in this fashion: ‘’In deepest darkest Peckham all things are possible, even a clash between the Bun House Bandits, littlewhitehead and the contemporary titans of havos; Swarfega. As far as we can tell from eye-witness accounts gathered from traumatized locals, and a police report, the ‘dust-up’ occurred sometime after dark on Monday…”? How does this read to you?

• Which Peckham art gallery website has six staff featured, 5 of which are white and are arts managers. The 6th member of staff is black and is finance manager?

• Is Peckham the new Dalston? What would that mean?

• If people moved to Peckham to open studios and art spaces because they were priced out of East London and Peckham was cheap, what would be the future for those people? And why?

• Can you name the group behind one of the first ‘art squat’s that was at the old Co-op on Rye Lane about 2004? What happened to those people?

• How many council flats were on the now demolished Wood Dene Estate? Where is/was Wood Dene Estate? What is happening to it in the future?

• Which local businesses can you name around the proposed redevelopment near Peckham Rye Station who are threatened with eviction? How many of the ones you name are non-art, non-creative businesses?

• How much is a beer at Frank’s Café? How much does Franks Café make per year? How are the profits divided?

• What’s the difference between jollof rice, peas and mutton curry and seared rabbit loin, pithivier and wild mushrooms?

• Which local Peckham design outfit sells a Limited Edition print of the Peckham Wall, a spontaneous outpouring of personal messages on Post-It Notes in response to the 2011 riots, as a Limited Edition art object signed by ‘The Artists’? By what commissioning route did this come about?

• Have you ever used these words to describe Peckham: ‘vibrant’, ‘exotic’, ‘mini-Lagos’, ‘diverse’, ‘feisty’, colourful’, ‘cheap and cheerful’? Etc.

• Which lowlife Peckham artist tagged the living room wall of one of Southwark Notes’ flat well back in the day and justified as ‘well, it is a squat!’

• What was the verdict of our Chilean friend on returning from a party of the 78 Lyndhurst Way art squat in the mid-2000’s?

• Why when there used to be ‘art squat’s in Peckham but now there are galleries, self-organised artist spaces and arty cafes, are there no more ‘art squat’s?

• What is gentrification? What is the traditional role artists play in this? What are some other ways in which gentrification happens? Are artists always complicit in these other ways?

• Name three defences artists use to sidestep the claim that they are implicated in processes of local gentrification?

• In 2006, how much had property values increased in the Bellenden Rd ‘Conservation Area’ as a result of this designation and renovation?

• The Government funded partial demolition and renovation of the Five Estates in North Peckham from 1994 to 2008 resulted in the loss of how many council homes? How was this justified by the Council at the time?

• What is the significance of the arrival of the Overground to Peckham Rye and Queens Rd in relation to global capital?

• Which Peckham design outfit created ‘a surreal pun on two iconic forms, the block of flats rises majestically from the top of a classic chequered flat cap and contains its own miniature world where fashion icons and models rub shoulders with bin men, pigeons, and even a horse’?

• ‘Prices have risen as much as 45% in the last 12 months and well over 100% in the last five years. Rental rates are also beyond what even we could have imagined”, says who?

• What was the ‘Peckham Experiment’?

• Which part of Peckham was ranked 5,306 out of 32,482 in England (where 1 was the most deprived and 32,482 the least) in the latest Index of Multiple Deprivation? Which part of Peckham was ranked 17,702 out of 32,482 in England (where 1 was the most deprived and 32,482 the least) in the latest Index of Multiple Deprivation?

• In 1977 Paul Willis wrote a book called ‘Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs’? Peckham’s Harris Academy school is proud of their vocational resources and they are ‘unparalleled by any other school in Britain’. Is there something to be said of the former in relation to the latter’s ‘catering suite, hairdressing salon and motor mechanic garage’?

• What was Sokari Douglas Camp CBE’s influence on the Bellenden Rd Conservation Area? Where in Peckham can you find one of her sculptures? How did this come to be part of the accompanying housing development?

• Former ‘‘art squat’’ 78 Lyndhurst Way was last sold for £600,000 in 2006. How much is it worth now?

• If you are writing a puff piece about the Peckham art scene, is it better to write about Only Fools And Horses and how Del Boy and all was actually never shot in Peckham or is it better to mention how William Blake had visions as a young boy on Peckham Rye?

• What year was this description of Peckham’s art spots written: ’I’d be hard-pushed to find most of the galleries and spaces we visit: they’re tucked away down back-streets, on industrial estates or under railway arches; and, in one case, in the back-room of a pub’? Why is this different now?

• Can you be a successful and engaged artist in Peckham by producing art with local people about the dogs they own, their own ‘street knowledge’, the aesthetics of the council estates where they live, the recipes they know from their ethnic pasts, what trainers they like to wear, their memories, their desires, their problems and so on?

• Is ‘pop-up’ or ‘temporary art space’ a different way to describe the idea and function of ‘property guardianship’?

• What percentage of Peckham’s population come from West Africa? What percentage of Peckham’s population graduated art school? What percentage of Peckham’s population who graduated art school are white? What percentage of Peckham’s population who graduated art school and have set up studios, art cafes and galleries are white?

• What was the battle that began in 1996 over the public art piece by Lilian Lin and then the later International Carpet of Flowers, designed by Anne Wiles in Moncrieff Place that was part of the Peckham Partnership regeneration scheme?

• How long before the first arty café, foodie deli or gallery space opens up on Rye Lane and not just in the Georgian or Victorian side streets running from Bellenden Rd to Rye Lane?

• Quote: ‘Yes, people love Peckham. And why not? True, it still has its tricky patches, fried chicken joints, and the high street ain’t all that. But it’s got another side: adorable streets’. How do you decode this statement?

• Is Almumno Developments renovation of the old Council Town Hall on Peckham Rd as student flats a good thing for Peckham? In what light can the history of the Hotel Elephant art space’s involvements with the regeneration of The Elephant, and who intend to run a café from the new development, be viewed?

• Can you go from squatted building in Peckham Rd to a Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation funded to a tune of £50,000 a year and negotiate to site yourself in a space free of charge by Argent, the company overseeing the large scale Kings Cross redevelopment?• What’s the historical difference between community bookshop The Bookplace that was on Peckham Rd from the 1970’s up until the late 1990’s and Review, the bookshop on Bellenden Rd that opened around the end of the 2010’s?

• Can you programme work on the radical content and history of various radical communist struggles whilst being part of a global art world based on private property and investments?

• As a curator, would you like to be the first to discover a radical black group in Peckham from the 1970’s who were involved in building community self-defence and much antagonism against the police to then programme a series of visual art ‘conversations’ around this between young artists and local school children? As an artist would you work on this and then put your name on this ‘conversation’ on your CV as the ‘artist’?

• What’s the difference between the New Gallery art café and bar at the base of Pelican House and the current Peckham Pelican art café and bar?

• Were you surprised when Network Rail’s plans for the area around Peckham Rye station included a range of new build housing blocks that would lead to the eviction of most of the areas creative businesses?

• In Peckham, does to insist on ‘heritage’ sidestep the deeper question of any actual history of local buildings and the social relationships that were part and parcel of their actual building, use and disuse?

• Is being a newly emergent local area of creative economy enough to sustain you against the power and desires of property developers keen to cash in on the buzz and a compliant Council in this respect?

• When artists or institutions host workshops on art and regeneration, do you ever get the feeling that what is always being discussed is more the art than the regeneration side of things? Is there a way through this impasse?

Southwark Dump Heygate Pyramid, Feel Relieved

FALL OF THE GREAT HEYGATE PYRAMID
Today is the longest day of the year but it witnesses the shortest campaign in Southwark for a long time. Dismay, outrage, scorn and disbelief had greeted the art commissioner’s Artangel’s plans to build a pyramid from the material structure of one of the now empty blocks on Heygate Estate. Artangel were working with ‘famous’ artist Mike Nelson to bring this public art to the finally emptied and fenced off Heygate Estate. They had been searching for a site for nearly three years and were looking for a post-war site of some social significance that was in a transitory moment. After some false starts, they thought they had there dream ticket to art success when they found Heygate. The Council seemed up for it and also Lend Lease (kind of).

As soon as this idea was made public there was a quick response to it on various websites and networking places roundly condemning Artangel’s ignorance and insensitivity in thinking that the Heygate site was a good site for a monumental piece of ‘public art’. We ourselves at Southwark Notes were pretty furious at the plan and contacted Artangel with a long letter outlining our dismay at their project (see below). We even met up with Artangel at a cafe in the Shopping Centre and spent an hour and a half politely but firmly pointing out how live, raw and pointed the decant and the subsequent social cleansing of that site remains.

We also spoke of how local people had been arguing and also putting into practice temporary community benefits on the site regardless of Council threats and occasional police hassle. What made Artangel so special that after the Council had finally cleared the site that they could then have access for a monstrous spectacle? Not only this but what gave them the privileged position to invite an art audience into the site of one of the most poorly executed decant programmes in housing history and a site of massive gentrification? In the end, despite our offers to put Artangel in touch personally with the numerous housing and amenity campaigns active locally in The Elephant, they chose to go for planning permission and tough it out. After some prompting they finally sent us a weakly argued letter of justification that brushed all our concerns to one side entirely. That was the red rag really.

COUNCIL STUFFS THE GREAT HEYGATE PYRAMID SIDEWAYS
To cut this longish story short, in the last few weeks, the growing opposition to the Artangel Heygate Pyramid was becoming more public especially when The Guardian published a great article on local people’s feeling of betrayal and outrage. There was also a good Open Letter To Artangel published late last week. There was also the new Twitter site Artangel Go Home: Pyramid A Go Go that was ramping up opposition slowly. Anyhow, by Friday 20th December, the Council pulled the plan and sent the Pyramid packing. This was a shrewd move as at Southwark Notes we know there was a large and international campaign being established by all sorts of ex-Heygate residents, housing groups, academics, artists and local people that was feverishly but quietly being worked on to launch in the New Year. Now those people can have a bit more of a chilled New Year and enjoy the non-Pyramid.

At Southwark Notes mansions, we presume that the Council had started to see that they were staring into an abyss of a massive negative publicity drive where the Pyramid project would only be the starting point for a load of facts, truths, personal histories about the Heygate and the Elephant regeneration to come again to public attention. Maybe they realised that nothing that good could really come out of the Pyramid and that any hopes they had of using such a prestigious public art piece by Artangel as a PR puff for the regeneration scheme were never going to be realised under these circumstances. Maybe even Lend Lease were on the blower to Tooley St. We just don’t know the real story yet. If you do, then drop us a line at our email address: elephantnotes@yahoo.co.uk

PYRAMID SENT PACKING
It was Artangel who actually let the cat out of the bag when they somewhat discretely but pointedly released a terse Press Statement on their website on Friday 2oth Dec:

ARTANGEL Statement on Southwark Council’s decision regarding Mike Nelson’s proposed project on the Heygate Estate

20 December 2013

“Artangel’s proposal for a major new artwork by Turner Prize nominee Mike Nelson on the Heygate Estate is a thoughtfully conceived project that would have created a powerful and challenging free public artwork.

London is one of the world’s great cultural centres with a long history of presenting elegaic and thought-provoking public sculptures – from Edwin Lutyens’ Cenotaph to Rachel Whiteread’s House, produced by Artangel 20 years ago.

Over the past few months, we have had productive conversations with Southwark councillors, officers, and different interest groups in the borough. We are very disappointed by Southwark Council’s decision to stop Mike Nelson’s proposal progressing. We feel a great opportunity has been lost.”

Artangel Co-Directors James Lingwood and Michael Morris

We were somewhat surprised when we came across this today almost by accident. Still, ‘result’ as we might say. Well done to all who were working on spreading the discontent and the intent to not let this pyramid pish be built. Of course, this is small fare considering how few battles have been won against the regeneration / gentrification of the North Southwark area. But it does stand as a useful reference point for what can be done and how when people started talking to each other and then get inspired to act together. It is also a testament to the power of refusal rather than polite dialogues. Many many people were adamant that this dodgy Pyramid scheme should not be allowed to happen at all. It was simply a case of not accepting Art’s liberal plea that art is ‘thought-provoking’. Whose thoughts? Whose provocation? As ex-Heygate resident John Colfer said in The Guardian piece: ‘We were the first people in, at the start of 1974. My father made the home a home, fitted new floors, everything. My parents never planned to leave the estate. So when you’re talking about using those same materials to make a pyramid, you just think: what is there to show that this was a well-loved home? These are our memories being turned into an artwork.”

Artangel say ‘We feel a great opportunity has been lost‘. Opportunity really for who? That is a very interesting question.

We feel obliged to post here our entire communications to Artangel. It contains our letter that caused them to meet with us, their eventual reply and a short series of back and forths going nowhere:

Southwark Notes – Artangel Communications PDF

We have a lot more to say on this matter but it’s Xmas and we have better things to do right now than write all that stuff up. We are sure you can wait if you are interested. Well done all! Forward to the mince pies and some sherry in celebration!

Heygate Estate, Artangel, Mike Nelson = Pyramid, No Thanks

We will be writing more on this gross insensitivity from the desks of art commissioners Artangel and artist Mike Nelson soon. For now if you missed it, here is the link to our first public words on the serious matter at hand that were published in an article in The Guardian:

Heygate pyramid: London estate’s evicted residents damn art plan

We’ve written a lot in our time doing this site on the dodgy nature of any joint working that comes from artists, Councils and developers scheming together to furnish local communities with art works. You can read our long critical chronicle here on Art and Regeneration in North Southwark.

Regeneration Seeks Amnesia (1): The Artworks

SUMMARY: Public park taken away then given back under false pretences in the guise of community use – Southwark Council, The Artworks, Lend Lease.

Yes, it’s another long post ahead!

Here at Southwark Notes mansions, we have been following the unbelievable saga of the planned The Artworks ‘arts and creative enterprise community‘ for Walworth with er….disbelief. Long before the large yellow and green ex-shipping containers arrived at the old Shell Garage site in front of Swanbourne block of Heygate Estate, long before before the invention of the Flat White coffee and probably long before even Picasso died. Well it does seem that long to us as Artworks has been rumoured, planned, delivered, amended, delayed and now hoping to move to a new site.

We have a lot of things to say on this proposed Lego-land labyrinth of creative types and market-as-theme park for urban adventuring amongst the, by-now everywhere, ‘Pop-Up’ Street Food places. (A fellow traveler of ours describes these places as ‘Throw-Up shops’!). We are also wondering whether Artworks are renting the land from the Council and on what sort of lease? However, we are gonna set those opinions aside as we prefer to begin our first exploration of what we are calling Regeneration Seeks Amnesia.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN WALWORTH and ELEPHANT RD’s
When the Heygate Estate was almost finally cleared of residents, some local people began muttering about how the site itself should not be just put behind hoardings for years and years. As the land is still publicly owned those trees and garden areas are still considered ours, so the public spaces within and some of the buildings should be use for temporary benefits to continue to offer something to local residents rather than being a walled off non-space that waits on the developers profits.

There was even a day long gathering organised by Elephant Amenity Network of local folks to discuss and plan what sort of interim uses they wanted to push The Council and developers for. A large report of the days wishes and desires was published with an emphasis on people being able to still both enjoy the green spaces of the estate and also to focus on future gardening, food growing, space for community gatherings, space for creative endeavours, space for sports and recreation and even a call to maintain short life housing within the estate if the flats were to be empty for another 2 or three or more years.

It must be said that despite this engaged and positive forward thinking, the battle with The Council and Lend Lease for temporary uses has not resulted in many real gains. There is the Mobile Gardeners project on Wansey St and there is also the giving over of the old Doctors Surgery on Heygate to Reuben Powell, a local artist.  The battle for continued access to the lovely Rose Garden is still a sore point and the new fencing-off of the estate has meant access to the community pond, poly-tunnel, allotments, occasional Heygate cinema and growing areas has been stopped.

HAS THE WORD ‘ART’ IN IT SO MUST BE GOOD FOR YOU
The proposed Artworks container park scheme was the 3rd item of ‘give’ that Lend Lease had finally committed itself too. Between September 2011 and June 2012 various small meetings and consultations were held to generate interest and discussion on the scheme. It was suggested that the soon to be empty site where the old Shell Garage was on Walworth Rd would be a suitable site for what was dubbed the ‘box park’ (after the trendy container ‘pop-up’ mall in Shoreditch). In May 2012 the Council sought tenders for the scheme and by March 2013 Artworks became the ‘preferred partner‘ to run the scheme at the ex-Shell site. In late March Artworks presented their proposals at a Lend Lease-run Community Forum.

Although such a project needs planning permission and has to be subject to many and varied considerations and conditions stemming from Southwark Planning policies, strangely enough Artworks were able to deliver 48 containers to the site.

You can contrast this un-permitted dumping with the recent flurry of warning notices to named businesses on Walworth Rd who use the pavement for a couple of chairs outside their caff or to display a few wares or two. Bearing in mind the desperate retail crisis facing those traders and the truly independent nature of those small businesses, you’d think the Council would try and support them out rather than getting all heavy and pedantic!

It was a month later when Artworks applied for permission for the ‘Erection of 48 modular units to accommodate business/workspace, retail, markets, cafe/restaurant, gallery, community, and stay-work uses (Use Classes B1, A1 to A5 inclusive, and D1) together with ancillary structures and the change of use of the existing former petrol filling station kiosk to cafe for a temporary period of 5 years’.

The planning application was very loose and free with many of the requirements for such a large development. Artworks argued that as it would be a temporary development community benefit contributions should not be applicable. They were also light in detail on how the Southwark Plan that requires ‘training, employment, childcare facilities, public realm improvements for those with disabilities‘,  and sustainability would be fulfilled as planning obligations as part of their scheme. Submitting a later Addendum to this Planning App, they attempted to flesh out their original plan based on its numerous oversights, missing fulfillments and vagueness. Restating a desire to have the benefits overlooked as their scheme brought no ‘adverse impacts‘ they wrote:

‘The Development provides a number of key temporary benefits to the local community to off-set the need for any planning obligations’.

“This Development provides an opportunity for the regeneration benefits of the wider Heygate Masterplan scheme to be delivered at an early stage in one of the early, and visible, interim uses on the Site”.

Here it is still not actually clear what ‘benefits‘ they are being to the area with this unexpanded statements. Answers on  postcard once again please!

COMMUNITY IS WHATEVER THEY WANT IT TO MEAN REALLY
Around the time of the dumping of the containers, it was clear that the notion of community interim use was slipping slowly away as rumours of the containers becoming ‘Live / Work’ units with rents of £200 per week were starting to be heard locally. The ‘Live / Work’ units were then mutated into Artworks specially invented ‘Stay / Work’ units when they realised that residential studios would trigger an affordable housing requirement of them. Then the whole ‘live in a box and create art’ schtick began to slowly disappear from their promotions in favour again of non-residential studio, retail and market space.

In April 2013, some very switched-on local artists, journalist Paul Coleman and some of Southwark Notes who happened to be passing by, were able to see the containers close up as the developers were inspecting their investment. Keen to show folks around, both the artists and we lot were hardly impressed that a metal box could be a ‘live / work‘ unit for £200 per week despite it having a ‘kitchenette‘. The whole stacking of the containers created a weird and unappealing dingy inner space that didn’t seem conducive to public hanging out or a sense of retail headspace or an inviting market. Also strange was that the mysterious developers who were unwilling to provide any details of who they were beyond names seemed entirely clueless about artists needs space-wise, about the area itself or the history of the Heygate. (See very below for who they are)

The artists were on that day conducting their own cheerful consultation with tea and cakes on what local people thought about the containers and getting them to fill out the official consultation form. Have to say that overall out of about 100 conversations most passersby thought the scheme was a bit useless and also unworkable both as a site and with those rental rates. Paul Coleman wrote a nice piece about this spontaneous site visit.

FROM COMMUNITY USES TO BUSINESS USES
Months later, in September 2013, with nothing happening at the site and still no planning permission yet granted and with very little fanfare other than a dismal Twitter campaign (“Happy Friday people! What’s everyone got planned for tonight?‘ or ‘Good morning people of twitter! We hope you have a great week!!‘*) and some fading A3 posters in a few of the containers, there was an Artworks Tweet bombshell. The whole thing had suddenly gone interstellar.

Yes, the game was well and truly upped when Artworks announced that due to the fire at Cuming Museum next door to their planned site, they would be moving to a new site at Elephant Rd instead to ‘facilitate repairs to the Town Hall that was seriously damaged in the fire‘. This is a somewhat disingenuous statement. Garland Court TRA in Wansey St although not against the scheme had objected to their planning application on the basis of possible noise and lack of proper consideration of public toilets, impact on local views, parking and litter among other things. Lend Lease had also announced a change of the phasing of the Heygate development that meant that the Shell site and environs would no longer be vacant for 5 years. Any road up, the new project now ups the number of containers to 56.

WE DON’T FORGET WHAT WE ALREADY LIVED
Anyhow, after this long starter, we get to the main meal of our disgruntlement which is that we live here, we know what’s going on, we haven’t forgotten what’s happened so far and so we won’t be taken in by the Spin.

What is it about regeneration and in particular, ‘regeneration’ at The Elephant, that attempts to erase what is both in front of our very eyes and what is a trusted series of memories in our heads?

With this attempted amnesia in mind, we say again that the proposed Artworks site at Elephant Rd was the well-used open space that contained a large expanse of grass, large mature trees and a small kids playground. On Sundays, it hosted football between different local Latin American teams. In February 2011, the well-used site was hastily fenced off by Southwark Council without any consultation to enable Oakmayne, the then developers of this long empty site, to function as a extra site compound for the development. This public land was then unaccountably enclosed to facilitate the future building of a private development (that funnily enough contains no social housing). Particularly galling was then how nothing happened and nothing is happening at that site with the proposed Tribeca Sq development. That space, those trees, that football, that community resource has been denied local people for two and half years now at the whims of a arrogant Council and a non-developing developer. No wonder we continue to question when the benefits for all of this regeneration will see something for us long term locals.

So it is even more upsetting and rage-inducing when, once again, with no public further consultation (other than a paper one that is statutory for planning applications), Artworks now seeks to open up a public space that was taken away from us to run what is essentially a private business that then pretends to provide or will provide minimal community uses. Planned rental costs will be: £180 per week  for a 320sq ft container workshop / retail space. Electricity not included. £180 per week, including all bills, except electricity.  Or smaller retail units at £80 per week (64 sq ft). There are also ‘hot desks‘ for £35 a week ‘for businesses whether it be a small company starting out or a large corporation on the go‘. Large corporations are probably about as far away from community interim use as we can imagine it. Will Artworks be renting a few hot desks to junior Lend Lease executives?

So these are not cheap units really ‘predicated on affordability and aimed at business start-ups and incubator units‘ as was set out in their planning application. Comparable space in well-established studio buildings made of bricks and with actual large windows costs considerably less. Long term reputable studio companies such as Space or Acme are offering spaces well cheaper than Artworks (£720 approx) with studios for £300 or £400 a month (although it is not easy to get these). Commercial (non-metal) studios are also available for £500 a month for about 300 sq ft.

ADDING INSULT TO INJURY QUITE NICELY
The fenced-in box park scheme will provide ‘open space within the Development for use by the general public, other than when it may be used for specific and occasional private events‘ so public access remains provisional to the management’s decisions. However, there is one more insult to add to the utter absurdity of the situation. Contained within the new planning application for Artworks at Elephant Rd is the proposal to use the once-public land now turned into a hollowed out community interim use for the siting of a marketing pavilion for Lend Lease:

“7.19    The Development seeks temporary planning permission for 2 modular units to be used as a ‘pavilion’ to house an information centre and marketing suite (Use Class Sui Generis) for Lend Lease.

7.20    The pavilion will be used by Lend Lease to provide a early presence on the wider Heygate Masterplan development site in Elephant and Castle during the initial demolition and construction phases, and a facility for the public to find out further details of the wider Heygate Regeneration and information on the new residential units that are for sale as part of Lend Lease’s Heygate Masterplan, Trafalgar Place, and One The Elephant developments…

7.22    The information centre and marketing suite will have a separate entrance and opening hours to the rest of the Artworks Development and will be managed by Lend Lease.”

Here Lend Lease gains a nice marketing suite to market their new buildings to the undoubtedly investment-happy Buy To Let landlords and the numerous overseas investors that will be snapping up places in Trafalgar Place and One The Elephant. How do you negotiate that one under the notion of community use?

AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS AND OTHER TALES
Here at Southwark Notes palaces we are endlessly critical of the ‘regeneration‘ that we are suffering at The Elephant but it is tiring to feel like we have to do our best to document these abuses and downright cynical behaviour from The Council and developers.We document it in the hope that at some point The Council and the developers might take seriously the fact that local people have a long and deep knowledge of the history of this shameful regeneration project. We have an acute and critical eye for detail when the hype and lies they spread tries to erase from the public mind the losses of council homes, public space and valued communities.

However, in this instance, we base our argument not solely on slagging off how this regeneration is being run or how it is being sold to us as if we have no memory or anything to say on what is plain to see before our eyes. These rip-offs are so blatant yet the Council just spins it’s vile fairy tales in the press as if nothing was wrong or no-one was saying anything other. We also base our concerns on the roots that are local people who have come together repeatedly and put in their precious time to seek that genuine community benefits come to the area. They have put forward serious considered proposals for creative uses, employment chances, health matters and maintaining public spaces. But most of this has been ignored except where it suits the needs or a developer that can easily use a few small and heavily sanctioned projects to talk up it’s own accountability and working with the locals. Yet the battle of the local community with Lend Lease has been one long hard fight to gain very little. If the very first things you finally see getting built from the Lend Lease Masterplan is One The Elephant (starting price £325,000) and some wonky overpriced pseudo-trendy designer retail outlets in a metal box, you probably are wondering where you fit in to all this regeneration lark.

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CONTAINER PEOPLE MEETS MARKETS PEOPLE DOWNTOWN: ARTWORKS – WHO THEY ARE
We couldn’t resist a bit off simple detective work to understand this seemingly shonky outfit that can get away with no planning permission for the arrival of 48 containers, cannot update it’s own website to say that the project is no longer on Walworth Rd and is able to make deals with The Council to get a new and much better site in the infamous enclosed Elephant Rd Park. All this from essentially a quite small scale and risky business plan.

As we learnt from our long years doing this, business like this (i.e not Lend Lease or St Modwens) is a fairly boring and everyday affair of people knowing other people who can set you up with something or sort you out, go into partnership with etc. Here at Artworks, the Sam Minionis side is a kind of shipping container enthusiast with business connections to a property developing family who have a vague connection to some Oakymayne property thing from way back. He is a big part of the company My Space Pod that seeks to containerise building developments with a passion for re-using shipping boxes. Charlie Fulford is the markets side of things and also more of a property developer with a father who is both a serious market developer (establishing Camden Lock market in 1971 amongst others) and a Professor of Philosophy. What a carry on!

Regeneration Seeks Amnesia Part Two Coming Soon!
Heygate Vacant Possession Secured, Comes With Major Public Art Spectacle

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* Our favourite Tweet from Artworks:

We remember how Henry Kissinger signed the orders for the illegal bombing of Cambodia in 1969, a policy that led to an estimated half million civilian deaths. He also had a large hand in the legitimating via US foreign policy of military coups, death squads, disappearances and repression in several Latin American countries. A perfect and creative act and especially sensitive to the Elephant Rd Latin-American community.

If Someone Gave You £100,000, Would You Keep An Eye On It? The Curious Case of Regeneration, Section 106, Strata Tower and Public Art

Way back in the day of 2006, our tired eyes at Southwark Notes perked up when, on reading the very exciting Section 106 Agreement between Southwark Council and Castle House Developers Ltd, we spotted the following clause:

“8 – PUBLIC ART
8.1: Prior to Occupation, the Developer will commission and install within the Development the Public Art. The value of the Public Art (including the cost of installation) shall be approximately £100,000

Strata Section 106 Agreement PUBLIC ART (definition): A work of art to be installed within the entrance area of the Development predominantly of glass unless otherwise agreed. ”

As you probably know Section 106 (S106) agreements are more commonly known as ‘planning gain’ or ‘community benefits’. An S106 agreement between a developer and a Council usually acts as some kind of payback from the profits the developer will make on their new building towards local good. Examples from a S106 agreement could be that money is negotiated for the renovation of a local children’s playground or that monies are given over to the funding of a community health centre or that cash is given up to supplement the construction of ‘affordable’ housing units.

In this instance, the Strata developers Brookfield Multiplex, as part of their S106 Agreement with the Council, had gone down the  well-trodden ‘Public Art as Community Benefit garden path’ and promised to us locals that £100,000 pounds of their profits would bring us some culture. Now, Southwark Notes loves as much Public Art as the next person (see here for our appreciation) but we immediately sniffed out that there was something well iffy about this one!

First and foremost there is the question of what is public art and what isn’t? The original intention of Brookfield was to install something arty ‘within the entrance area of the Development predominantly of glass‘.  Something sculptural made of glass put in the actual public realm of The Elephant isn’t going to last the half hour so we can only read this line as meaning spending £100,000 on a fancy glass thing in the foyer of your building. That’s having your glass cake and eating it. In the end, the fabled thing ‘predominantly of glass‘ bit the dust and by 2010, the Public Art had turned into a much more slippery and dubious affair.

Screenshot from Brookfield’s now offline StrataLondonArt.com site, 2010

WHOSE ART IS IT ANYWAY?
With some fanfare typical of developers, by April 2010, the Public Art had mutated into a whole new bag of tricks. With the intention of adding the usual ‘vibrancy‘ to the local area and ‘support and developing local talent‘, Brookfield announced that the public art at Strata would now come from a competition held amongst students at Camberwell College of Art. They announced that the art would now be fixed up on ‘either side of the main entrance doors to Strata‘ and that the art would be housed on ‘two large glass panels enclosing the foyer area‘. Such art would be ‘integral to the development but accessible to the public eye at all times‘ as ‘these panels formed the ideal palette for the Public Art‘.

Essentially this is another version of the ‘predominantly‘ glass thing that never was. Southwark Notes would argue that any art ‘integral‘ to the development i.e constructed as part of the entrance is not a genuinely public piece of art regardless of whether it can be seen by the public. We would call that a design feature of Strata that benefits residents and potential buyers of the flats. If everyone at Southwark Notes painted their front door’s green with yellow spots, we would not argue that this was done for the public benefit. Any public enjoyment of our yellow spots is purely secondary.

WHOSE S106 MONEY IS IT ANYWAY?
36 Camberwell students submitted works to the competition on the theme of what Brookfield told us was ‘’community and sustainable leaving’. Surely a Freudian slip if ever there was one! On 19 May 2010, ‘a panel of four judges shortlisted 13 pieces as finalists to be created and then the finished artworks were judged and on 24 June 2010 six bursaries were awarded to the winning students‘. Over the course of the next year, four artworks were displayed on the glass panels on either side of the entrance foyer.

On July 1st 2010, at the official launch of Strata Tower as an investment and housing option, all the finalist works were exhibited in the empty commercial space at Strata ground floor. Brookfield reported that ‘all finalists’ work…was then auctioned. All monies raised from the action went back to the community and the Camberwell College of Arts‘. Here and subsequently as you will see, it has not been possible to find out how and also how much money went back into the community.

Curious as we were with this strange tale, we decided to submit a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to Southwark Council to ask them details of how £100,000 of S106 money negiotiated for local benefit was spent. We couldn’t see how four panels displayed throughout one year could add up to such a large figure. We were also concerned that the public art was not really public at all.

THE LONG WAIT FOR WHAT WE ALREADY KNEW
On 1st Febraury 2012, we sent off our simple FOI request:

“Can the Council show a breakdown of total expenditure so far for the Strata Tower S106 contribution of £100,000 towards a public art commission“.

On March 20th 2012 we received a detailed reply that told us that ‘The Council can confirm that Clause 8.1 of the section 106 agreement has now been fully complied with“. The Council reckoned that the ‘set up cost and judging panel for this public art programme included bursaries; artwork reproduction; exhibition set up cost and consultant fees‘ added up to £100,000 well spent. The Council even stated that ‘the installation costs, the public art programme and the value of the artwork itself together can be attributed a value which is in excess of the £100.000 required by the S106 agreement‘. Firstly we wondered whether the undefinable value of an artwork can be considered as part of a financial contribution to the local community. We also thought that it didn’t sound like £100,000 had been spent for the local community. As S106 is serious financial agreement between parties, we wrote again asking that the Council provides a breakdown of expenditure for this S106 contribution. We wanted figures for how much each bursary was, how much consultants were paid, costs of installation and production of artworks etc.

Alina Petrenko’s winning design up on Strata 2010

To try and cut a very long story short, we wrote again for this expenditure on March 8th 2o12. The Council said they didn’t have the information and maybe DP9 had it. DP9 is a partner planning consultant on Strata development. We asked for names at DP9 to write to but got no reply. By May 2012, we requested an Internal Review on this matter as no further information on the expenditure had come our way from The Council. We wrote that the request for an “internal review is based upon asking whether the Council, after securing £100,000 Section 6 money for public art, is able to then account for the expenditure of this money“.

In June 2012, the Council assured us that ‘this obligation was monitored in the same way it would be for any other non-payment s106 obligation and is satisfied the obligation in the provision of the public art worth £100,000 has been provided. We have requested further information from the development and will pass that on in due course‘. Nothing was heard so in August 2012, we requested another Internal Review.

GOING NOWHERE FAST
Dodging the request for the Review, the Council replied in September 2012 that
‘with regard to the process for confirming the S106 condition for public art at the Strata Tower, I can confirm that upon investigation the confirmation of the fulfilled condition was undertaken by the then S106 officer. This process involved receiving confirmation from the developer that the funds had been transferred together with confirmation from the college that the funds had been received. The college also confirmed how the funds were spent, which was provided in the original response to your request. The council confirms that in this instance a site visit from an officer did not take place and on reflection, a site visit should have been conducted, but due to resource constraints and the fact both the college and developer confirmed the fulfilment of this obligation, the council was satisfied that this met the condition as set out in the S106 agreement‘.

We can summarise this as Council S106 Officer asks developer if they done what they supposed to do and developer says ‘Hell yeah!‘. Council Officer says ‘should do a site visit but couldn’t be bothered‘. Council says ‘yeah, we should have done a site visit but we didn’t‘. In light of this fact, the Council says “In order to complete the council records in relation to this agreement, I can confirm that the S106 manager is still seeking this information” which seems like an admission that some major slackness is taking place.

As no actual expenditure figures have been received despite what the Council reply says, we wrote again in November 2012 asking for another Internal Review and then we heard nothing. In February 2013 we wrote again ‘Happy Birthday! We are 1 year old today! Do you think you will ever be able to answer my request for a proper breakdown of all expenditure relating to the S106 Public Art at Strata Building that I submitted on 1st Feb 2012?’

I.C.O – A-GO-GO!
In March 2013, we took the next step after the failure to gain an Internal Review and wrote about this case to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the folks who are ‘the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals‘.

In May 2013, prompted by the weak boot of the ICO, the Council finally sends us a reply in which they pointlessly re-send to us the original reply they made to us in March 2012 saying again that this provides the info they have. They then write what we knew all along that:

‘I can confirm the council conducted a search of its records at the time of the first request and established that a full breakdown of the information was not held by the council…As a final response, the council is able to confirm we do not hold a breakdown of the information that has been requested and all information held in relation to this request has now been provided’.

Which is a brilliant way of saying ‘we have supplied you with the information that we do not have’!

We replied with an leaving salvo:

“Dear Regeneration & Neighbourhoods,
Thank you for the update and the letter from DP9 both of which confirm that the Council does not know how £100,000 of Section 106 money was spent. As S106 monies are negotiated by councils from developers profits to be used to benefit the local community, it is vital that such money can be accounted for if local people are to have any trust that the council is looking after their interest”.

IF WE GAVE YOU £100,00, WOULD YOU KEEP AN EYE ON IT?
As we write this, the overall winner of the competition Julie Bennett still has her panel displayed at the front of the Strata Tower despite her expectation that it would be displayed only ‘until 30th June 2011‘. We found out that the bursaries to the four winning students were only £1000 quid each. Here, as we scratch our weary heads, we can’t see that this is a genuinely spent £100,000 of community benefit!

We also wonder if the publicised Brookfield Trust that the developer was to set up at Camberwell from money raised at the Strate Official Launch auction to provide more bursaries ever materialised. We were certainly unable to see this in action when we asked and searched around. The website Stratalondonart.com which featured this claim and all the winning designs and promotional guff for Brookfield’s heavy interest in art was only online for one year from June 2010 to Sept 2011 before getting the boot. We also question the dubious practice of getting students involved in the dodgy regeneration practice of designing decorative panels that act as an asset to developments whilst pretending to be pieces of public art.

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The whole sorry saga can be found here in the form of letters from us to the Council and the letters from the Council to us.

August 2018: Nothing exists of any public art at Strata now begging the question where did the money go?