News Shorts and Other Busyness

Hackney Community Under Threat

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pg. 15.

A community of artists in East London have created plans for an “urban village” to counter proposals for an industrial park in their area which would see them evicted and houses demolished.

London Fields, in Hackney, is made up of blocks of Victorian terraces home to hundreds of artists, musicians, sculptors and photographers. But despite several hundred letters of protest, Hackney Council is expected to approve a scheme to turn the area into industrial units.

A Hackney official, Kevin Surgrue, argued that most of the artists were squatters and short-term tenants who would object to any plans that deprived them of “free accommodation”. But The London Fields Renewal Partnership, a local pressure group, have hit back with alternative plans for an “urban village” of shared workshops and “live and work units”.

If Hackney councillors let this scheme go ahead, they’ll be driving out a huge creative resource and running totally counter to the council’s own plans for cultural regeneration of the area,” said Peter Snell, the Partnership’s secretary.

Some residents have also vowed to resist the bulldozers if demolition of the area is given the go ahead.