Tag Archives: community

East London in Flux

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This post was contributed by Kevin Mullen, a student on Birkbeck’s BA History of Art.

East London in Flux - Stratford CentreIn the four years of coming to Birkbeck for classes, I had never been back to Stratford, I only experienced it on screen. Despite my Olympic scepticism and opposition to the London games, I was hypocritically an avid viewer. Prompted and encouraged to put prejudice against the games aside I went along to East London in Flux on Saturday 16 November, an initiative of Birkbeck’s History of Art department along with Fundamental Architectural Inclusion, to bring interested individuals, mainly long term residents to get together and reflect on and interrogate further what the redevelopment and Olympic experience meant for Stratford, and East London more generally.

Birkbeck in the ‘community’

Bloomsbury can feel a little bit out of synch with the regular time and space of the city around it. Popping up from one of the surrounding underground stations and strolling into what feels very much like a university enclave, situated next to, but separate from the shopping, consumption and entertainment of Soho and the West End, and bounded to the North by a major thoroughfare and the terminal stations of North London, it does not seem the like site of community, or at least not much of a resident community.  This statement is far from being true, the institutional presence and the prestigious post code can sometimes mask what ‘community’ is here, but the construction of a new building and a tie up with UEL to give Birkbeck a greater presence in Stratford does make it seem like the university has now got a base that is in a real or ‘authentic’ community.

Perhaps that is a broad brush statement, a look and feel assessment of two different urban environments that some of my lecturers may frown upon, demand more clarity and perhaps a little evidence along the way, but I think we carry these impressions and ideas with us, they shape the way we think about and experience the city, and we may not ever really take the time to interrogate them. They are reinforced as shared and socially understood divisions of space. The name Bloomsbury carries a great deal of meaning, and for most, travels further, picking up yet more associations in space and time than somewhere like Stratford. Well that may have been true, until Stratford had to get ready to host the Olympics, becoming the home of spectacle, on display around the world.

Boots-on-the-ground-3Boots on the ground

The event itself, led by Leslie Topp from Birkbeck and Nick Edwards from Fundamental Architectural Inclusion, was lightly styled as a focus group, and marketing speech aside it genuinely felt like a way of using the bricks and mortar investment to reach out to a group of people who may not otherwise enter the university, and find out what sort of future events they would want to attend. Providing a forum to speak about and share experience, learn more about what is happening in/to the area, and gather information to construct an ongoing adult education programme.

The day was a positive break with regular classroom experience, but seemed to fit well with the Birkbeck model of adult education, in many ways it was opening up a new strand of dialogue for Fundamental Architectural Inclusion who had in the run up to the games mostly engaged young people from the area in discussion about the changes happening around them. Being able to get to grips with the issues on the ground, and listen to experiences both positive and negative from the people living in the area was a refreshing change to more orthodox learning, mediated by the printed word or screen images.

The second part of the day was a walking tour of Stratford led by Nick from Fundamental, setting out from University Square through the 1970s Stratford Centre into what could now be described as the old town centre, then looping back around, through residential development old and new, to Westfield and the gateway to the Olympic park. This provided another opportunity to share recollections of the building phase, the arrival of the games and of what was there before. Also to witness up close the dramatic changes in architecture, although noting along the way that high rise dwellings of a previous era, seemed oddly forgotten as the new developments seem to multiply.

Transit

Stratford is now an East London transport hub, apparently with up to 200 trains an hour on the various lines that run through it. Getting the transport right was a key concern in the run up to the games and obviously now facilitates access to the shopping destination that is Westfield. It is also sold as the engine to drive future developments and to make the area attractive to investment. In some way though the transport that has put Stratford firmly on the map for more and more Londoners, was also seen by a number of participants as the same force that could destabilise the local community. You may well ask what I, and indeed they, mean by the use of the term community, and it is fair to say that I don’t exactly know, hopefully future events will also lead to some fruitful discussion of that idea. But there was a repeated concern that a “transitory” population was not conducive to their perceived sense of community. The area will no doubt continue to change, I think for the worse, I am unable to celebrate a Westfield-led vision of community, but it does seem like there can and should be more dialogue on how a shop or office worker commuting into Stratford is not just seen a body in transit, they are also part of the human makeup of the area.

LegacyLegacy

I retain my scepticism of course, regeneration in London is only likely to benefit the majority of people accidentally if at all, and will mostly see profits for developers with little thought given to addressing income inequality. The Olympic park itself, clearly holds great potential for everyone in the area, although it currently seems largely unused. It has something of the character of a dreary suburban industrial estate but without the concomitant industry. Whatever vitality the empty Olympic venues possessed is dormant, and the main stadium is imprisoned behind a chain-link fence.

Having left our party in the shadow of the velodrome, that is sealed off to the young people on BMXs in the park, who were left to extract enjoyment and challenge from performing balancing tricks on the bicycle stands, I trudged back through what is still ostensibly an empty space. When the housing fills up and the planned office developments arrive it will morph into a new environment yet again, how that relates to what was there before, and what holds together the various communities of interest, both transitory and rooted in the area, seems bound to provide an ongoing appeal for future events in this timely series.

Kevin Mullen completed a Certificate of Higher Education in History of Art at Birkbeck and has subsequently moved on to the BA programme in the same department. He co-curates an informal screen studies group, The Screen Network, and is an editor with Minor Literature[s]. He tweets too frequently as @kevheadbone

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Post-War and Post-Olympics: East London, Architecture and Regeneration, Across the Generations

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This post was contributed by Dr Leslie Topp, Senior Lecturer in the History of Architecture in Birkbeck’s Department of History of Art and Screen Media.

What is regeneration? What builds community? And who defines and steers these processes? Architects, planners, politicians, the public? The cold post-Olympic winter, with the built and planned legacy of those games forming around us, seemed a good time to bring local people together to discuss these questions. The day workshop, which was held at the historic House Mill in Bromley-by-Bow on 23 February 2013, was a collaboration between Fundamental Architectural Inclusion, an architecture centre based in Newham, and Birkbeck’s Department of History of Art and Screen Media. Funding was generously provided by the Association of Art Historians Initiatives Fund.

The 10 participants were drawn from the first and second years of Birkbeck’s innovative Certificate in HE in Understanding Visual Arts, which is run out of the Rosetta Art Centre in Newham, and the group of young people which Fundamental works with in initiatives like the Architecture Crew and the Legacy Youth Panel, who are regularly consulted on regeneration plans around the Olympics and its legacy.  All local to East London (Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Waltham Forest), the workshop participants had experienced the current wave of regeneration first hand, and knew too the experience of living in the neighbourhoods and estates built in the post-war years.  They were also (the Birkbeck students) well versed in cultural history, and (the Fundamental participants) in architecture and planning, and the combination of life experience, knowledge and confidence in discussion made for a stimulating and compelling day.

We watched two films, both dealing with ambitious utopian plans for the rebuilding of large sections of Newham. One was made in 2008 by the Architecture Crew, a group of young people 13-19 years old, who Fundamental was working with. The other was made in 1948, by the then West Ham Borough’s Architecture and Planning Office, about the plans for rebuilding West Ham after the extensive destruction caused by the 1940-41 air raids.  One of the most striking differences between them, which emerged strongly through the subsequent discussions, was that while the first offered a ‘bottom up’ perspective, and was a critical enquiry by some of the people who’d be most strongly affected by the regeneration, the second was a piece of ‘top down’ propaganda, representing an ‘experts know best’ position. A lively debate broke out about the extent to which things had or had not changed in this respect since the post-war era. Some argued that while lip service is paid to community consultation, the ‘community’ has very little actual impact on the plans that are carried out. Nick Edwards, the director of Fundamental, and the young people who came along to the workshop, gave a nuanced sense of the particular ways in which people could have an impact on plans (though it was clear that to do this involved a considerable sustained effort over a long period of time.)

Another topic that kept cropping up was mobility. On the one hand, as one participant pointed out, East London has always been a place people move on from when they had the means to do so. Others wondered though whether that may now change – with the regeneration around the Olympics, East London had the potential now to be a place where people would want to stay, or come back to. But the new transport infrastructure, and the increased opportunities to move around, (including Birkbeck’s own courses, such as the Cert HE Understanding Visual Arts, that bring students out to East London and into Bloomsbury) mean that East London is now more connected than ever to the world beyond it. The parts of East London that had been very separate from each other, with some people never venturing much beyond their immediate neighbourhoods, had become more interconnected as well. The homogeneity and static, inward looking quality of the post-war estates (seen as the height of modernity in the 1948 film) were being directly challenged by the latest wave of regeneration.

An extra unexpected treat at lunchtime – enthusiastically taken up by all the workshop participants, despite the cold – was a tour around the Grade One listed 18th century House Mill. History in East London doesn’t begin with the Blitz!

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‘Riot From Wrong’ Film Screening

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This post was contributed by Fraser Alcorn, an LLB Law student and member of the Birkbeck Law Society.

The media coverage of the riots that swept through London last August may have decreased in the past few months, but the realities of many of the social injustices that brought them about are still being felt. ‘Riot from Wrong’ is a documentary film created by a group of 19 young people that intends to get to the underlying issues that led to the widespread social unrest and to challenge the perception and media representation of those involved. Birkbeck Law School and student Law Society hosted a screening of the film and a Q&A with the filmmakers at the Birkbeck Cinema on Saturday 24 November.

Primarily focusing on the local community in Tottenham where Mark Duggan’s shooting at the hands of police began four days of mass civil disobedience, but bringing in stories from across London, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, the documentary is unique in gathering perspectives from those involved in rioting and looting alongside interviews with politicians and journalists. The filmmakers have succeeded in producing a slick and insightful examination of the complex realities behind the riots, moving the focus away from the rhetoric of a ‘feral youth’ and onto the unfair and prejudiced treatment of whole communities. Citing the 75% cuts to Youth Services budget, police mistreatment and stereotyping of young people through ‘stop and search’ procedures, as well as tracing the Thatcherite obsession with the individual to the detriment of society, the film provides a strong condemnation of the short-minded policies that produced and continue to produce a young population with few opportunities. That BBC News had commissioned the young filmmakers to produce a piece for broadcast – the first time this has ever been done – should stand testament to the quality of their work.

L-R: Teddy Nygh, Alex Simpson, Kye Taliana, Philli Glenn, Eddis Ozcelik.

Four of the team involved in making the film kindly joined us for a Q&A after the screening; Alex Simpson, Kye Taliana, Eddis Ozcelik, and Philli Glenn, along with director Teddy Nygh. Feedback from the audience was resoundingly positive and the team proved to be an engaging and thoughtful bunch to talk with. Considering that they experienced the beginning of the riots first-hand while filming, and put the film together as blame was being piled upon an unfairly demonised youth, their level-headed and considered opinions were heartening. That’s not to say they shied away from demanding that the powers that be need to take responsibility for their actions, and with around 30 screenings under their collective belts, including one at the Houses of Parliament, their direct approach is making waves in the right places. Far from resting on their laurels though, they talked about their desire to get more young people motivated in their cause with their ‘Million Youth Movement’, together with plans to shoot a new film explaining how to get involved in local politics with the intention of giving more voice to young people in Britain.

The ‘Big Society’ is a horrible term that suggests that people need to be reminded to care about our own communities. It too easily takes ownership of the positive work of a few and claims it as proof of the value of a valueless government initiative, where in fact that work has happened despite the absence of state support. This film is the product of a group of young people coming together in the most positive way possible to create something truly informative and perceptive, and it would be quite wrong for it to be held up by government as an example of how the young ‘should’ behave; Britain’s youth should hold it up to government to demand to know why they are having to address and resolve issues they had no hand in creating.

The next public screening is at The Salisbury in Tottenham on Sun Dec 9th. For more information follow the team on Twitter @UKFullyFocused & @RiotFromWrong . Watch the trailer here.

Follow Birkbeck Law Society @BirkbeckLawSoc or contact us at birkbecklawsociety@gmail.com

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