Luton focus of ‘Changing Britain’, Channel 4 News

Luton was the focus of the Channel 4 News piece ‘Changing Britain‘ aired on Tuesday 23rd March.

On the streets of Luton and in the context of it’s pronounced industrial and migrant history, Jon Snow’s report examined crime, unemployment and the benefit’s trap, and inviting local perspectives on the upcoming elections.

The Snowblog ‘Hats off for Luton’, published prior to the broadcast, recognises Luton as “merely the tip of a very British reality, a snapshot of a country with vast social challenges extending far beyond what we mainly talk about – fixing the deficit.”

Glenn Jenkins (who extends the discussion in A view from the Marsh Farm estate) and other Marsh Farm Outreach members also feature in the programme. Spectacle have been working with the group for over 15 years, most recently on our Poverty and Participation in the Media project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, but also during the early community activism and outreach principles of the Exodus Collective (now Leviticus and MFO), about whom Spectacle produced two films Exodus Movement of Jah People and Exodus from Babylon.

Land is Ours

New to the Spectacle Archive

Land is Ours

In 1996 campaigners from ‘The Land is Ours’ occupied the river front site of an old distillery and oil depot on York Road, London SWl1, Wandsworth. Building a sustainable Eco village with gardens and public amenities.

Today, however on the site of the “Pure Genius” Land is Ours Eco Village stands Battersea Reach flats.

There is new footage of the site 15 years on, as well as the original film from 1996 now on the Spectacle Archive page:

Land is Ours Guiness site in 2010 – 2010

Land is Ours Wandsworth Bridge 1996 Pure Genius!!

England, N. Ireland, Scotland, Wales – Devolution and Disadvantage

Planning Map
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
have released a series of reports to mark 10 years of devolution. The reports look at the impact of devolved policies and recognise a need for the Westminster to continue to reserve certain powers in order to improve conditions across the board but picks up on a failure to communicate feedback and learning between central and devolved government policies.

While concluding that much of the improvement in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales stems from UK policy, the reports acknowledge promising results from devolved policies, especially in the areas of social housing and elderly care. Athough their impact so far has been limited in size these results should improve as the administrations stabilise and imbed.

A less positive equalising factor was raised by report author Jim McCormick, who warns –

“The scale of the projected cuts in public spending will cause some of the gains seen in the last 10 years to unravel.”

White elephant Olympic site on horizon

The Olympic site risks becoming a white elephant due a plan that “lacks detail” and a  budget which is “underdeveloped”. The London assembly’s economic development, culture, sport and tourism committee, stressed in a recent report “There is concern that, given the experience of other cities that planned long in advance of actually staging the games, we are missing the boat”.

The Guardian reported that the committee charged with overseeing spending on the £9.3bn game has concluded that the lack of a tenant for the main stadium means there are “serious doubts as to the future financial viability of the venue and hence attractiveness of the park site to business investment”. Aspirations to create between 9,000 and 10,000 jobs in the Olympic Park could be at risk without private funding, it warns.

In a letter to The Guardian on July 4th, an assembly member argued that the lack of affordable housing being created by the Olympics, particularly for families meant that the legacy was going to leave nothing but a concrete eyesore.

Source:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/01/olympics-london-assembly

Will the Olympics develop any of the promises it made to Londoners in the bid?

Given the destruction caused by the Olympics and the lack of solid plans for after the event, is it worth it?

To find out more about Spectacles Olympic project please visit our Project Page

URBZ MASHUP workshops hit 6 cities

Like the Urban Typhoon workshops in Tokyo (2006) and Mumbai (2008) , the URBZ MASHUP workshops, too will provide an opportunity to explore a city, connect with local residents, artists, architects, designers and musicians. This workshop aims at unleashing the global imagination and celebrating locality by producing photos, videos, interviews, drawings, renderings, writing (fiction & non-fiction), installations, performances in and about specific streets and places. The output of the workshops will be exhibited physically and virtually at the end of the workshop.

The URBZ MASHUP is a seven day event comprising 5 days of workshop and 2 days of seminar + exhibition. It will be held in the following cities:

Tokyo: July 1-5, 2009
Istanbul: August 2-9, 2009
Mumbai: Nov. 22-29, 2009
Rio: February 7-13, 2010
New York: April, 2010
Amsterdam: June, 2010

For information please visit www.urbz.net/mashup

Please visit our Links page for information on Urbanism

Neighbourly Encounter Video

Neighbourly Encounter: Missing Sculpture

Visit Silwood Video Group to view archive of local historian Tony McTurk and Artist’s model David Grist visit to the Silwood Estate in 2002 to find the missing sculpture Neighbourly Encounter by artist Uli Nimptsch.