I recently went to visit an inspirational project near Hastings. A group of local people have come together to take ownership of a long term derelict wasteland, on the site of a former Power Station in the Ore Valley. Their mission - to disrupt the way regeneration works from the bottom up and build a new community made up of 60 affordable homes on the site.
This doesn't maybe sound very revolutionary but the process and the people absolutely are.
The derelict site in the Ore Valley
This isn't a nod to 'community-led' planning or design. It's real, chaotic, messy and human. I observe and listen as the local community organiser, Sam, helps to shape discussion on the real business of getting the transfer of the land over to the Community Land Trust. The group takes aim at local politics and spends a few minutes talking tactics to ensure local influencers pledge to do their bit to support the project at their next community event. Resident expert Jess Steele OBE pitches in offering experience and insight to the group about how to move forward and structure the events and process to make the most use of their limited resources and contacts.
People not profit
Members of the group talk about how the project, whilst still a derelict wasteland has already come to mean so much to them, improve their wellbeing and mental health. They tell me there's not much for them around here, but it's clear being involved in this project - picking up a hammer and tools to create an ad hoc stage for their upcoming event, searching for newt eggs in the pond like body of water, is giving everyone a great deal of hope, purpose and thirst for a different way of doing 'regeneration' and getting local voices at the centre of things. They talk with pride of local writer and socialist: Robert Tressell and point out graffiti scrawled messages on the side of the container 'People not profit' and 'Is this a wasteland?'. Fed up of rapidly rising rents threatening the long term affordability and diversity in the area, this project puts the action into activism in the most effective way.
Kids ride bikes and a trailer over the rocky, unpaved only road that leads through the site, free to play in the wild. Tania Charman, one of the Directors of the CLT tells me how she wants to make sure that everyone who ends up living in the new houses is committed to a new way of living in a community, being part of the CLT and respecting the values of the project. They want the houses to be designed in a way that ensures interaction, not having cars running through the middle but ensuring space for play and community. They're aware if you don't design these things in from the beginning the original vision of a place can easily be lost overtime.
Is this a wasteland?
The project is still in it's infancy but the plan is to use an Organisation Workshop approach to build the first and main building on site. This South American approach engages 100 long term unemployed local people to design and build a community building on the site - the experience of organising and building this gives everyone involved the skills needed to go on to build the other houses planned.
It's easy to get depressed in our modern times, hearing of large scale structural and systemic barriers to participation, social change and equality. But projects like the Heart of Hastings in the Ore Valley lift my spirits. Genuine, chaotic, community participation to test and create a whole new way of working to solve a whole host of nationwide problems. And all without a 'post-it' in sight.