Several months ago, I stood in the driveway of our new building in Finsbury Park, then a building site, and heard a screech of brakes behind me. As I turned around, I saw a familiar face, sat leaning back on the saddle of his bike.
‘You never see community spaces in London opening up’ he said, as he looked the building up and down. ‘They are always closing down… You could do some great work here.’ Those words have stuck with me. They spoke to the keenly felt sense of absence I have internalised around the subject. I realised in that moment that you really never do hear about openings for community spaces – closures seem much more common.
This general malaise, this sense of discontented Britain, is felt by everyone but hard to describe. As James Robins wrote recently for New Republic in the build-up to the election: ‘There is mould in the walls and shit in the rivers, posh butter has anti-theft tags stuck to it, the trains run on schedule about half the time.’ The article goes on, but you get the jist. Robins likens the incoming prime minister to a caretaker trying to keep the lights on when all the copper has been taken out of the wiring.
The supporting evidence is damning, especially for communities and culture. According to a recent Unison report, more than two thirds of council-run youth community centres have closed since 2010. The museum sector is fairing little better. The Art Fund earlier this year reported that two thirds of museum directors surveyed nationally were concerned about funding shortfalls and needed a 10-20 per cent increase just to stabilise.
What is the future for the arts and communities in this climate? When public funding has dried up, the issue of nurturing a grassroots arts culture becomes more important to ensure its survival. To do this, grassroots arts organisations, artists and producers need two things: space and cash.
Space and cash
Accessing space is hard. Our own journey to find a building for the Museum of Homelessness, which took place between late 2020 and July 2023, was arduous. It was characterised by looking at unaffordable shop fronts offered by absent landlords at eye-watering prices. Then there were the community reuse outfits, offering spaces for social use advertised online.
These largely came to nothing or offered unsuitable terms. There was also the ‘meanwhile’ route, where community groups supplicate themselves to developers in the hope of getting space for a couple years – until the developers want it back. We avoided this. Even after getting potential access to a space from a council, we had many protracted years of discussion before anything materialised.
Supporting a grassroots future for the arts will involve addressing some of these considerable barriers to accessing space and direct questions need to be asked now. The signs are not encouraging from the government. Grassroots groups and communities often face exclusion from spaces, lengthy waits for council or owners’ decisions on bids, co-opting from developers and a general lack of available funds. This scarcity is uniquely modern. In the post-war environment, when the property speculation and financialisation that deprives communities of spaces today was much less of a reality, buildings made it into the hands of community groups.
When public funding has dried up, the issue of nurturing a grassroots arts culture becomes more important to ensure its survival
Has the new government addressed these issues in its pledges and announcements about the arts? Basically, no. In the run-up to the elections there were pledges to widen access to the arts, particularly in schools. The mainstream arts and culture sector has offered its own responses too, with the obvious calls for more funding and calls to maintain and protect the arts. Getting access to spaces, however, isn’t part of the conversation.
If lack of space hasn’t been addressed, what about the cash? Will the arts be prioritised for more funding? In the days since the election, we’ve already heard about plans to nationalise railways, boost defence spending and how the NHS is ‘wrecked’ – so it doesn’t seem likely.
Finding solutions
What can we do if the basic essentials for a grassroots future just aren’t there? The first answer to this question lies in the ‘problem’ itself. There have always been grassroots movements and there always will be. We have squatters to thank for many long-standing co-ops, grassroots organisers for homelessness NGOs that were set up in the 1960s, and more besides. Our organisation was set up in the austerity decade, alongside a number of other grassroots groups – many of which we still organise with. In fact, it was the Outside Project that accommodated many of us – Streets Kitchen, African Rainbow Family and a number of ‘save queer spaces’ campaigns – in Clerkenwell fire station for two years prior to the pandemic.
Grassroots solidarity and collaboration alone doesn’t ensure cash and space for beleaguered groups. There needs to be some practical action. It’s fairly evident that the UK hasn’t been great at sharing community buildings and spaces with the groups that need them. In a recent panel event, my co-director Jess was asked to comment on the incoming government’s proposed resurrection of a late-1990s rough sleeping taskforce policy. Jess suggested that what we actually need is an empty dwellings taskforce.
The legal mechanism that exists in the UK to make use of long-term empty homes – Empty Dwelling Management Orders (EDMOs) – has been watered down to such an extreme that very few are ever successfully completed. The same holds true for community asset transfers, which have also been largely under-used in their time, that would make non-residential buildings available. We would suggest that this empty dwelling taskforce include the arts – and that we also need sustained attention and campaigning around how we support communities and culture through better access to spaces over the coming years.
Looking for new campaigning at a time like this is a big ask. If it doesn’t happen there’s still hope. Since we all left the fire station at the request of the Mayor’s Office in 2021, both the Outside Project and Streets Kitchen have established new spaces of their own. African Rainbow Family has continued to grow and both ‘save queer spaces’ campaigns are still going strong – the Black Cap has even announced its return. All of these groups share a deep connection with the communities they serve, creative ingenuity and staying power. Those are the keys to a grassroots-led creative future.
