Working Class Fantastic Spaces
Published on May 23, 2023 by lisa mckenzie
We want you to send us your stories of working class fantastic spaces - the spaces that working class people occupy, live, laugh and love in - the spaces that are too often misrepresented by middle class observers - the spaces that are the first to be demolished when a new block of student flats are needed. Your space may longer be there only in your memory - but send it to us so our artists can build a map - the first ever map in the world that celebrates working people and the places where we love.
send them to [email protected] or just answer this post xx
send them to [email protected] or just answer this post xx
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I've just spent a summer messed up by Covid. Having avoided personal infection for 3 years my partner and I relaxed our guard and got the dreaded disease, though at it tunrned out a non-life-threatening version but enough to mess up holiday plans and lose productive time on our projects. Now I'm just trying to get back into the daily work of the King's Cross project.
I woke up just now (at 0400h) finding myself in a King's Cross dream about 1975-90 when this part of London was, in effect, trashed by blight. From the point of view of capital it was not a place where any private money got invested. The government had run down investment in the railways, the streets which make up an important traffic intersection were stuck in a permanent temporary gyratory system and no public plans sketched any future. So this was an area with a decaying stock of buildings but at about the most accessible spot in central LOndon. It became a home for left wing, dissident organisations, some trades unions, sex work and a lot of workingclass residents, some in council housing built by the two boroughs Camden and Islington, in effect the only investments of the 20th century, others in private renting and squatting.
Much, but not all, of the life and population of those times has been extinguished and replaced by Luxury London - that's to say by buildings and services supporting luxury consumption in hotels, art galleries and restaurants, housing to match and, suddenly swooping in in the new century the HQs of Facebook, Google, Deep Mind and so on.
This transition has been a tremendous struggle, a part of which has been a class struggle, and our book aims to gather the voices of many who have taken part. We'll keep you posted and our eyes open for spaces and their users which might be part of your wonderful project. One nomination straight away could be the Somers Town People's Museum A Space for Us in Phoenix Road https://aspaceforus.club