Church Street Regeneration – Cultural Infrastructure Project

Introduction 

We have been working with locals to understand, capture and protect the unique culture found in Church Street. This project aims to look beyond the buildings to capture the culture which local people identify as being most important to them. Culture brings people together in the street, in the market and in the local café. It makes people happy and improves health, wellbeing and resilience as well as developing skills and careers, the economy and the places where we live.  

The challenge

Church Street residents face many challenges such as deprivation, high unemployment and low life expectancy.  These challenges are particularly poignant when compared with the more positive outcomes in the Marylebone High Street Ward, only a short distance from Church Street. This is a complex challenge as we urgently seek to build a more balanced neighbourhood with space for creative talent and cultural infrastructure to grow. 

Despite the challenges that Church Street faces, it has many unique strengths. The area is extremely diverse, both physically and socially. Buildings are composed of a mix of Victorian and pre-war development as well as being an area with a rich and interesting history, with records dating back to the Roman age. Socially, there is an extremely varied demographic profile with a diverse population and culture. The Diversity Index scores the ethnic diversity of Church Street as 8.5 which is double that of Westminster as a whole. The area is home to a large population of people for whom English is not their first language including a large Arabic, Bangladeshi and Kurdish population.

It is our view that the culture of Church Street, that makes up its cultural infrastructure, is complex, diverse and ever-changing, particularly as the place is set to develop physically and socially. It encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in the Church Street community, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, customs, and habits that individuals and groups bring out in their everyday lives. Therefore, the culture of Church Street is not defined by its buildings and organisations alone but also the social interactions of the community that bind it together. 

The recognised high-end antiques quarter alongside the Cockpit Theatre, Lisson Gallery, Farrells, Red Bus Studio, Bell Street Book Shop, Westminster Adult Education Service and the Showroom are established fundamental features of Church Street and form the physical foundations of the creative sector in this area. Venues such as Greenside Community Centre, Church Street Schools and Nurseries, Penfold Community Hub, Church Street Library, Derry Hall and Hafs Academy host a variety of changing cultural activities that bring the community together. These include activities such as the Allday Iranian music, dancing and food weekly social event at the Greenside Community Centre, the weekend children’s Quranic Arabic classes at Hafs Academy and the elders Zumba classes at Penfold Hub. However, the cultural infrastructure of Church Street reaches deeper to include the undocumented Kurdish social gatherings of mothers in their homes, youth hang out spots at Orange Park and community gardening in local allotments and housing block courtyards. 

The solution

The Mayor of London’s Cultural Infrastructure Plan sets out the importance of culture, how London cultural infrastructure is at risk and what must be done to sustain it. It presents a pan-London approach to raising the profile of culture in our society. This is particularly poignant when we consider the huge amount of change being planned in Church Street and how the relevant actors can support and protect the culture through this process. 

Westminster City Councils Cultural Strategy Plan focuses on the development of four priorities: wider access and culture for all, creation of a healthier and happier city, providing unique opportunities and celebrating thriving and diverse communities. These priorities have fed into The Futures Plan and Church Street Masterplan. These plans set out a strategy to protect and enhance existing cultural assets within the area to create the Church Street Arts & Antiques Quarter.  

Collaboration with local businesses has already begun through developments such as the Antiques Anonymous event, which is now well-known in Church Street, increasing the wards profile. Plans have started for the creation of affordable workspace that allow expansion of creative enterprises and the development of a public art programme to reinforce the identity of the area in respect to culture and artists.  

Planned public realm and park improvement works have also been partly completed, all of which are designed to support the local culture through the discrete social interactions which are largely less quantifiable but which nevertheless play an vitally important role in the wellbeing of the community.    

The overriding objective is to identify the existing cultural infrastructure of Church Street Ward with a view to establishing a consensus drawn from the communities perspective which could be used as a guide to inform the design development of the place.  As outlined in Mayoral plan councils have a role to sustain culture.  To progress with this ambition the council recently engaged a local consultant the Showroom Gallery supported by architect Blanca Pujals to work with the local community to review the relevant people focus data. The aim was to understand the spaces and resulting social connections that are important to them.

The impact

As well as a literary review of the data, the Showroom produced a map which represents the cultural life in and around Church Street at a particular moment in time, and during the pandemic of 2020-21. The map was made in conjunction with residents and those working within and close to Church Street, or with active connections to the neighbourhood.  

The map provides an overall picture of how the local people view the cultural fabric, spaces and relationships that are important to them. It highlights existing cultural spaces and knowledge whilst building a picture of the new networks, reflecting on cooperative models for organising and production whilst exploring the need for shared collective spaces in Church Street.  

The aim was not to assume or impose a single definition of culture, and the project provided an important starting point to open this up for each person contributing to the process to discuss, share, reflect upon and therefore collectively and democratically author the terms of a meaningful, layered ‘cultural infrastructure’ map of the Church Street Ward.  

This initial project was brought about by working closely with members of the Church Street community, holding discussion groups focused on experiences in relation to the richness of the existing cultural life and infrastructure of the neighbourhood as well as seeking to highlight the gaps in cultural provision, currently felt urgencies, and suggestions for the future.  

The aim was to connect with spaces and groups who might be less visible, and not necessarily institutional, who contribute significantly to strengthening the cultural infrastructure and concomitant communities across Church Street.  

We also aimed to visualise how changes in the local cultural fabric might have an impact, either reducing or reinforcing the capacity to build cultural infrastructure and community.  

Generally people were energised and intrigued with the work and wanted to know if what they were sharing would be genuinely be listened to. The information helped to enlighten the council as to a different way of viewing culture and help to find ways whereby the work can continue to be supported. 

How is the new approach being sustained?

The council is considering the findings identified by the Showroom and have outlined a number of ways in which the information can be shared with the community whilst ensuring the work can continue to grow and be fed into the design development of Church Street. 

The future plans/next steps 

• Share findings with throughout the organisation to socialise our approach to gain feedback and create awareness 

• Set up cultural walks of Church Street with staff and locals using the interactive MAP to bring this to life and add to the information 

• Carryout further workshops where locals can view the findings through a visual exhibition and map. 

Lessons learned

The lessons learned thus far are summed up in a number of questions:

• What responsibility do we hold for the future communities and cultural life of Church Street?   

• Are cultural infrastructure mapping processes such as these surface-level interventions? Or how can they be carried forward for the long-term? How soon does this map become a historical document?   

• What support for cultural infrastructure in Church Street is available on an on-going basis? What are the structural conditions that withhold the possibility of long-term views and plans, knowledge being held and passed on residually? Staff turnover, fragmentation, central policy planning?  

• What does this cultural mapping process mean for the Church Street Ward? Something that represents past wishes and realities at a particular moment during the midst of the pandemic, or something that could inform decisions in the neighbourhood going forward?  

• If a large number of neighbours will be displaced in the coming years, what is the value of this cultural infrastructure mapping process at this point in time, which has been produced by and with locals who may be displaced?  

• The process of this collective map lacks something due to lockdown. Through the mapping workshop conversations people met online in small groups - to bring everyone together who took part would be beneficial.   

• What does it mean to have worked through this process in virtual space? It would be valuable to meet together in the future, to have maps printed locally and a larger map to interact, and a video edited from the workshops. However these actions require resources.  

Contact

Natalie Thomas, email: [email protected]