Bex: We’re here to talk about unlocking space, from meanwhile use to community ownership. There are people around the country doing work to localise and democratise ownership and access to space, and we've started to weave a peer network of these ‘community asset developers’ – a different breed of developer. We'll share more about that soon, but first we will hear from some community asset developers and what they're doing in their places.
Kathryn: At Artspace, we call ourselves ‘creative placemakers’. We take on meanwhile spaces and look at different uses for them with the hope that they will become long-term creative venues. We currently operate five venues in Bristol, including this one [Ashton Court]. When the doors to Ashton Court closed in 2017, people were asking what the plan for this mansion was, and nobody had a clue. When I first came to Bristol in 2008, this was one of the first places I visited. We tried to come inside and people shooed us away as if we were not welcome. Ten years later, I was handed the keys and given a mansion to explore and create.
We're able to have young people come into this building and say what they want to see in the future. So, meanwhile use gives you fantastic opportunities to explore spaces that you may not otherwise be able to get into. And that's how Artspace started. It was created by the Invisible Circus who wanted to make shows in wonderful environments like this, but they soon saw the need to operate these buildings for longer-term meanwhile uses. And so they set up Artspace Lifespace.
People often ask us, how is your model so successful? A lot of that is down to opportunity. There were a lot of empty spaces in Bristol at the time, and a lot of the work that was possible was because people weren't paying rent; they were all coming together to make these spaces possible.
We became a registered charity in 2016, so there's now a lot more pressure on us as an organisation, but we still want to invest in these wonderful spaces and take risks, like we have done with taking on Ashton Court Mansion. We initially took it on for two years, but by the time our new lease term ends, we'll have been here for eight years.
There's still no long-term plan. Often what we have found, from the buildings that we operate, is that we're given the dregs of the assets, or as the council calls them, the liabilities. We really want to change that. It's great to be able to come into these places, to enjoy them and activate them, and to have low-cost rent to try out new things. But then what happens when the community comes to know and love these public spaces and how do we ensure that the communities aren't left behind? And that's where community ownership and these conversations are really important.
Juliet: I'm a community asset developer. I love that term. It's not something that I thought I'd do, and I think most of us are in this field because we're reacting to an immediate need within our communities, trying to make change that is sustaining for ourselves and for those around us. For me, growing up in East London as a migrant, with diverse communities and other marginalised groups, it was a self-organised community with civic infrastructures that sustained a self sense of identity and dignity. These ideas of community, resilience, and growth came from those self-organised civic infrastructures. It was a way to build bridges, have a place of sanctuary, cultural outputs, and exchange that really helped with all of our mental health, but also allowed us to build skills together.
John A. Powell, a professor at the Institute of Othering & Belonging at Berkeley, says that when our external environment changes drastically within a short period of time, it can do violence to our psychological wellbeing. I think a lot of communities feel like this when their areas change quickly due to gentrification. Over two decades, at least in East London and specifically Hackney Wick where I was living for a very long time, we saw assets and spaces disappear; you almost blink and they're gone.
So as part of Stour and collectives of people around Stour, we decided to take action and part of that was taking on empty spaces in Hackney Wick. They were cheap at that time, though we saw property prices move up astronomically. So we took a risk – we didn't have the funding for it, but we signed that lease and self built. It was 15,000 square feet of space. And we delivered what the community wanted. There wasn't necessarily a theory of change; there wasn't a business plan. It was us coming together to say, let's do something; let's take some action. And so it became 40 studios, a gallery space, a place for dance and culture, a space to be together.
And it was fun – that's the other part of it. It was exciting to have a sense of ownership, but also have a sense of power, the power to resist the regeneration that was coming across at pace, but also to understand how the system works. We created a cross-subsidy model where we would rent out the space for weddings and then keep everything else affordable or free. That was really part of the ethos: we didn't ever want to be playing with the market. We wanted to ensure that everyone felt that they belonged and everyone felt that the space was for them.
We started off as a meanwhile space. We took a lease for three years, and then another three, and so on. It was great to always renegotiate the extra three years. But as actors or leaders within that community, we felt there was an inevitability that these buildings would be redeveloped. So after nine years, we talked to the landlord and said, ‘We would like to have stewardship and ownership over these assets’. And they said, ‘Go ahead. This is the price, half a million – if you can raise it, you can have it’. We went through another stage of trying to understand who would invest in us, and how long it would take. Within 18 months, when we finally found an impact investor, the price had gone up to £1.2M.
The process of transitioning from meanwhile use to ownership and stewardship is not as simple as it seems.
So the process of transitioning from meanwhile use to ownership and stewardship is not as simple as it seems. We've registered that first asset as an asset of community value, but we never managed to acquire that particular one and that was frustrating after twelve years within the community. So we decided to take another step and find a developer who understood the value of community and of creativity, and after six years of negotiation and showcasing what's possible, we came to an agreement of an asset that would be sustained for the community and stewarded for the community at peppercorn rent for a thousand years.
And Stour Trust is modelling and scaling that across London. For us as an organisation, it's really about keeping our ethos and our values, democratising access to land and increasing racial and economic equality. We managed to ensure that we would not negotiate a lease that was less than 25 years, because sustaining that foothold in the community is really vital. Some of the challenges that we had were the fact that when you're a community of colour, it's quite difficult to navigate all the various systems, to be able to showcase your credibility, to be able to shapeshift and translate languages between your community to the local actors, to the policyholders. But we hold that space collectively really well. With the community asset developer network that we're developing, we're hoping to acquire more assets across London, but also build expertise to help and support others.
Andy: Makespace was set up about six years ago by a group of architects, artists, makers, and nonprofits who were being priced out of Oxford and struggling to access any kind of buildings in which to operate, let alone collaborate and co-locate. We've now developed a narrative around spatial justice as our guiding light. Essentially, we believe everyone has the right to secure, affordable, and beautiful spaces in which to live, work, and develop a sense of belonging. We're working with an amazing set of partners locally and nationally to try and unfold that vision.
We started with a two-year, meanwhile lease on a vacant college building. Oxford is synonymous with great wealth and prestige, but it's also one of the least affordable cities in the UK and one of the most unequal, and that's the same for the wider county. That means that you get extreme pockets of deprivation, neglect, and underinvestment alongside eye-watering wealth. And that's something that we're trying to tackle head-on. We've had the opportunity to develop and adapt a model that is about bringing lots of different organisations together on a tiered rental model, what we call fairer or affordable rent, based on an organisation's turnover and what they can afford rather than what the market suggests.
We were tasked with investing £1.7M to unlock vacant buildings across Oxfordshire. Led by local authority, we also worked with a group of partners to unlock 28 buildings – 35,000 square feet of space.
As part of a COVID recovery fund – Getting Building Fund – we’ve had some grant investment to develop a programme called Meanwhile in Oxfordshire that allowed us to expand the model countywide. We were tasked with investing £1.7M to unlock vacant buildings across the county. It was led by the local authority, and we worked with a group of partners to unlock 28 buildings, about 35,000 square feet of space. In the last couple of years, we have supported over 100 organisations creating more than 200 jobs, with a big priority on the living wage and a focus on purpose-driven startups, as well.
We’ve seen what happens when you put two problems together: the burgeoning number of vacant spaces because of underinvestment and cuts, alongside the desperate need for space from social and environmental justice-based organisations. Now we're doing what I'd call a ‘refounding’ process to move on from meanwhile use. All of the leases that we brokered were on a 12 months to ten year basis. The possibility in those kinds of liminal and temporary spaces is incredible, it generates fantastic energy, but how do you avoid becoming just another agent of gentrification and hyperinflation of asset prices? So how do we move from that to what some people in our space are calling ‘seven generation city thinking’, where we can be genuinely good ancestors? We’re moving towards community ownership, and also starting to think about how our more-than-human kin and living systems around us can be recognised for the inherent value that they have. It’s not just about how we can modify it and financialise it. That's really the first step on the next chapter of our journey.
Bex: As you can hear, it's long-term work and there's loads of joy and energy, but there's also some personal struggle. So acknowledging that, I'll mention a little bit more about the mycelial network that Platform Places and others are co-weaving. Other partners include Footwork Trust, Power to Change, some community asset developers like Melissa Mean from We Can Make in Bristol, Jess Steele from Hastings Commons, Jess Prendergast from Onion Collective – a whole network of people around the country. And I think the realisation from this group is that the strength is in collectivising. So between just ten community asset developers, they own over 70,000 square metres of assets for long-term community use – that's £25M in fixed assets. They've enabled over 2000 community organisations to access affordable space long-term, and they've leveraged over £175M for community-led regeneration. Individually, grappling with funders, with landlords, and with big powerful institutions is a struggle, but as a collective, there is much more ability to negotiate, to bring funders to the table, to bring pension funds in and to access larger, more patient repayable capital for the assets we need.
With the initial funding we’re focusing on redesigning the grant ecosystem so that we can have salaries rather than sacrifice for these people doing the work. We've raised the first £2.5M for this and the next step is to raise £2.5BN. So we're being ambitious and that's what we think is the scale of change that we need. What we've heard from the panel is: start where you are, with people who care, because that's a foothold. It's the first step on a pathway to longer-term work, and it builds confidence, connections, and credibility.
Now, it would be interesting to dig into the tactics a bit more. How do you go from scratch to having a two-year lease?
Kathryn: First of all, if you don't ask, you don't get. You can go to the land registry and find out who owns the building, but often you need that introduction, that way in. It took Artspace putting on shows through the Invisible Circus to reach the notice of the council who then said, you do need your own space.
And now we are trusted as an organisation proven to activate spaces safely and affordably. If you're starting out and you're trying to find your own space, partnerships are key. We partner on a project called Sparks Bristol with a sustainability organisation called Global Goals Centre. They didn't know how to really get into spaces. So, if you're not sure, partner – there are other people out there running buildings. Collectively, you can achieve your aims.
Juliet: Sometimes you don't have a choice; you just need to do it, and for us, that was the case. We were very fortunate that at that time there were many warehouses that had been abandoned. The first one we got had been empty for 20 years, so the landlord was pleased to have a conversation with us, and also pleased that he wouldn't have to do any bills. So we said, we'll just take it and we'll figure it out. The first post that we put out said, if you have skills, if you have time, come help us build. And there was a queue outside because people were curious about what was going on. We've collected quite a lot of data about what the community wanted, what they lacked. Hackney Wick and Fish Island at that time had one of the highest concentrations of artists, but many were moving abroad, so this was an opportunity for them to get a foothold back into a space, but one that was not governed by strict rules and structures. Most of the buildings and warehouses in Hackney Wick and Fish Island at that time were closed. We were able to open a public-facing building where people could come in. There was footfall. We could give information. We became the stopping spot for boaters; we had a relationship with Canal and River Trust. From then on, the local authority said they would like data about who actually lives in Hackney Wick and Fish Island. And because we knew the community, we could knock on doors and do that mapping work for them. So building that relationship was really the first step.
We didn't realise what would come next, but we figured it out. I think part of doing this work is not necessarily being an expert, but you're building every single month, and also challenging things – we ask questions, such as, why are contracts only three years and why is it that a local authority doesn't know the data? Because it's your community, you want to help shape that and therefore you become a key partner.
Andy: I agree 100 percent on the learning by doing, and bringing together a community of actors that have a passion. Makespace was built out of a group of activists of different kinds, from architects and makers who had been setting up workers co-operatives, to people interested in democratising land and buildings who were setting up housing co-ops, to those that were actively involved in squatting movements. There's a ton of luck involved but you only do that by having eyes and ears wide open, and being willing to speak to people who might not initially feel like they're on your side, but you might be able to find an inroad and a meeting of minds. There's a way to find mutual benefit through negotiations and being open to conversations, essentially. It’s also about patience – it took us at least two and a half years to find the first space – and recognising that the work runs on its own timeframe and its own trajectory. You just have to be ready for the opportunities as and when they come.
It’s also important to get people excited about the potential of a space. I love what some of the organisations in the ecosystem are talking about, particularly groups like Civic Square or Healing Justice Ldn, talking about building social infrastructures and physical infrastructures, but also building imagination infrastructures. I think that the imagination gap is one of the biggest challenges that we have to overcome. And that's the beauty of meanwhile: if you can be creative, you can take a lot more risks. But then you do have to shift gears and have a different set of infrastructures within your team to move to a thousand-year lease – there's an evolution of change that needs to happen in the form of either an organisation or partnerships.
Bex: I'm interested in that gear shift from meanwhile to longer-term community ownership. What mindsets, capacities, tactics do you go through as organisations and as individuals to make that happen?
Kathryn: In terms of the challenge of the long term, sometimes the building isn't necessarily what is needed. This building needs £40-60M pounds of investment. We're meanwhile space operators, but we're actively looking for our own long-term building. If we were given the keys and the responsibility to take it on – is this actually what the city needs, for us to stop doing the activation around community spaces to become a building preservation charity? Would another organisation be better placed? Just because you are given the opportunity of a space, it might not be the best space for you and your community. So it's really important not just to grab this long-term opportunity, just because you might be handed it, but to actually consider what it is that your community needs.
Juliet: For us, there are probably two things I can pick out from that. One is, starting out, we were individuals who had a passion, and then came the formalisation of governance structures, and ensuring that they would be democratic and serve the purpose of what we want to achieve. We grappled with becoming a limited company, a CIC – what would that mean for us? What does that mean for accountability because if you're going to apply for funding, there's a certain type of accountability that's needed. But also how you work on the ground is very collective and very democratic. So, there's tension there.
When you come from a very grassroots, self-organised space, where you have the freedom to deliver what you actually want to deliver – if we want to ensure that our foyer is a place for dance and freedom, and we want to ensure that we keep our studios open and as affordable as possible, if not free – then there's a tension with that if you want to scale. Let's say you do need investment because your rent is now so high and there are different expectations sometimes from particular funders who might say, actually, why don't you maximise the space to create more income and more profit? And if that isn't your value system, there can be tension there. We did say no to a lot of potential investors because it wasn’t going to serve us in the long term, because it would strip the community of what they need from this building and that would change our own value system, which is really ingrained in what we do.
Andy: I mentioned the mindset shift and I think that probably the biggest one is this idea of situating yourself over a multi-generational period. So we're doing a lot of looking back. About 800 years ago, about a third of the land was held in common. What if a third of our land and buildings were community owned today? How can we get back to where we were and what was the relationship that we had then? So as well as a mindset shift, it’s also about building relationships, and we need spaces and physical infrastructures to facilitate that.
