Once the largest council estate in Europe, Leigh Park has a long tradition of chavness and could well be the origin of all Chavs upon this Earth. (were there any evidence that anyone’s moved out since 1959)

I don’t like the term “Chav” and the website goes on and becomes much nastier.

Leigh Park is the result of re housing families from the WW11 bombing of Portsmouth. 27,500 people live there and the reputation would have you believe that all 27,000 are out setting fire to vagrants on benches as happened a few years ago.

My 14 year old was playing a match against a local Leigh Park team and during his pre match training / warm up  I went on a run to explore Leigh Park. Yes the shopping parades are tad bleak in parts, and there is far too much litter, but there has clearly been significant investment in community facilities and there is no excuse for kids to be bored, with  great  facilities, play areas and wonderful wooded areas with streams to play in and den building opportunities a plenty. Yet the youth of Leigh Park have a terrible reputation amongst those that don’t live there.

Leigh Park

Anyhow I came back from my run, thinking that Leigh Park’s reputation as a “hell hole” was not deserved at all. Yes the 50s, 60s and 70s flats and  houses are mostly unattractive (with lots of grim pebbledash), but it certainly wasn’t threatening nor did it feel like it needed raising to the ground as so many people from outside the area often comment it should be!

However the football match clouded my view. In 19 years of watching my kids play football I have never seen anything like it. If some of the local kids’ foul language on the pitch wasn’t enough then the latent violence exuded from the parents and the blatant cheating from the local referee and linesman ( who cheered and clenched their fists when their team scored!) was very sad indeed. At times it felt like watching another species. All human decency and morals seemed to have been replaced by aggression, nastiness and a revelling in getting one over “the opposition” at all costs. It seemed sub human behaviour and left me numb and sad and wondering if there was any hope. What had made these these people become so disenfranchised? Whether it’s the equality gap, or just a breakdown in human values, as a society we had better sort it out!

I am not going to elaborate other than to say that I left thinking it may not matter how much money is invested by a council and support agencies in a deprived area, if the parents lead by bad example, the kids are likely to grow into equally nasty people.

Sad sad Sunday indeed.

Over the last few years we have begun to work with large corporate organisations, not to feed turnover, but because it has become increasingly clear that because of the scale and investment available, bold initiatives can be undertaken.

The likes of Greenpeace and WWF (and the legions of small activists) have done wonderful jobs in hounding and naming and shaming corporations who have failed to take the environment, sustainability and ethical trading seriously. Their tireless campaigning has made a significant section of the public aware and helped to build a business environment where it makes business sense to “care”.

Whatever the tipping point has been, my overwhelming experience is of corporate who now hold sustainability, the environment and ethical thinking at their core. They have set up corporate responsibility departments and whole segments of the business who are dedicated to this thinking. They have employed directors who are zealous and “dedicated to the cause”, directors who have significant budgets at their disposal. They now have the economies of scale to really start to make a difference.

The work we are doing with McDonalds (in collaboration with up cycling and re use  specialists Worn Again)  in terms of working out a system that allows the uniforms of their 88,000 UK staff to eventually be able to be made into new material to make new uniforms ad infinitum is bold, industry leading and takes considerable investment.

The project we have with Coca Cola promoting their move towards plastic bottles that have significant PET content  (in simple terms plastic derived from sugar cane and molasses) is forward thinking , helps to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and ultimately, makes financial sense.

We learnt a decade ago, when we started working with (Taylor) Wimpey Homes that sustainable  projects of scale that resonate far and wide are much easier to deliver by collaborating with those that have most to gain (and to lose).

So it’s time for people to stop raising their eyebrows and look surprised that designers like us are choosing to work with the kind of corporations that the campaigning bodies that we support once hounded. Big Corporations are not The Devil incarnate they have an ability to lever their tremendous resources and some are now leading the way.

Benidorm Postcard

I have just returned from a conference in Benidorm and am still in a state of shock. I was last in Benidorm in 1977 as a post O level, first foray aboard with my school mates. Even back then it had a reputation for English Pubs selling full English Breakfast and English beer (which as 16 year olds on our first holiday without parents we gorged on!).

Wayne aged 16, with dodgy perm in Benidorm

Benidorm 77

Over the next three decades Benidorm developed a “reputation” and became a byword for bad behaving Brits abroad culminating with a TV series that in many ways cemented this reputation.

In short the reputation is unfounded. It looks like the town has worked hard to create a resort that is certainly no basket case.

Benidorm has lovely clean beaches, lots of affordable Spanish restaurants and tapas bars, a well landscaped prom ideal for running and cycling , some great 5 star hotels and a wonderfully preserved mid century modern hotels at the western end of  Playa de Poniente.

What seemed initially like it was going to be a bit of a chore turned into a mini holiday, with runs and cycles down to a lovely warm 20deg C sea, mid  October highs of 29deg C, great modern takes on traditional tapas and great service in The Asia Gardens hotel.

I am going to go back!

Greetings from Benidorm

There are annual World’s Most Liveable City indices that are researched and published annually by the likes of Mercers, the Economist. Monocle Magazine and Business Week. The top towns and cities all have urban centres that have something for everyone at their heart. Take Melbourne, which comes out number one in the Economist list. Melbourne is a city with wonderful suburbs, access to the ocean and to wilderness yet everyone comes into the city centre to experience everything that is great about being human. The investment in uplifting architecture and public space in places like Federation Square, coupled with the nurturing of independent retail cheek to jowl with multiples, linked by pocket parks and beautifully maintained parks, full of serendipity for all ages and tastes make this a truly liveable city. Add to that the world’s largest tram system and a recent heavy investment in cycling facilities and hard not to love Melbourne’s city centre.

Closer to home, and with a population akin to that of Hull and Humber is Copenhagen. For my family (and according to Monocle magazine), Copenhagen comes very close to the top of most inspirational urban centres. When Copenhagen won Monocles Worlds Most Liveable City Award in 2008 they rightly made great play of their triumph. Copenhagen’s City Council has clearly had liveability (which to me means happiness) right at the forefront of their minds. With streets full of serendipity where you can find quirky start up businesses next to chain stores, Copenhagen has ensured it hasn’t drifted towards the “Clone Town” status bestowed upon most British towns and cities. Copenhagen has employed urban designers like Jens Gehl to ensure that the city is a joy to walk around and that cars are relegated to fourth place behind walking, cycling (what a great cycling infrastructure they have established) and public transport. Whilst Copenhagen has some fine modern architecture they have correctly realised that iconic buildings aren’t the be all and end all to a city’s attraction. They have realised that projects that add to liveability can be public spaces. Copenhagen now has a fine beach Amager Strand, a 1 ½ km long beach built from scratch. Amager Strand is a piece of public design unparalleled in the UK where greed over land values seems to have prevailed over the past decades leading to the building of crap “Buy to Let” property developments getting priority of great public infrastructure. Copenhagen has also been brave in dealing with Health and Safety issues. The much loved floating timber lidos at Brygge and Fisketorvet is a piece of placemaking that the city uses pictures of to promote itself to the international development community and uses to attract inward investment.

Vancouver is a city that boasts a wonderful natural setting but it doesn’t rely on its natural beauty for liveability. Its commitment to the “green agenda” and the serendipity of being able to find independent cafes, second-hand vinyl record stores and vintage clothes stores right next to the big brands gives the city an ambience that British cities have lost to the land value greed exerted by pension fund landlords and short sighted councils. Vancouver also clearly understands that modern thrusting, city centre living in high rise architecture can we attractive to families if space standards are decent, if there are 3 and 4 bed room apartments on offer, if the spaces in between are designed with family life in mind, and if there are neighbourhood schools. Outside of London and perhaps Edinburgh it’s difficult to identify a British large city where a city loving family can bring up a brood and enjoy sport, leisure and education without having to head out from the centre.

The template for the future of the failing town centres that Mary Portas seems to want to see bulldozed is there in towns and cities across Europe. The cornerstone of good town centre planning is common sense. Most of us want places that give us everything we need to fulfil our lives. Give us a town centre where we can live in an affordable home, walk, cycle or take easy public transport to employment, be able to go to the cinema, theatre, gallery, nightclub or gig, kick a ball in a park with our mates or our kids, read a book under a magnolia tree, maybe grow a bit of veg on an allotment, watch a bit of sport, while away the time at a cafe or a bar, shop at a cool independent stores and all those clever retail chains that make our multiple retailers the envy of the world. We have to develop places that people want to see and be seen in. Most of us love people watching, get a buzz from other human beings.

What is more, town centres that bring all of this together are sustainable in the true sense of the word. A town centre that becomes the focal point of a community can hit the three cornerstones of sustainability: economic, social and environmental sustainability.

But we can’t always wait for government to deliver this on a plate for us. There are examples of creative communities getting together and attempting to reuse empty spaces such as the Shed project on Gateshead High St where creative business have taken a large, former bed retailer (The Bed Shed!) and working with the council brought vibrancy back to this area of a town that was sinking fast. We have to “have a go” ourselves at making small shops work. We have to frequent galleries ,and cafe’s and we have to understand that drifting towards an American model of suburbanisation is plain wrong (ask most American planning scholars who are doing their utmost to reverse the errors of the past decades) We should learn from the mistakes of the US.

To give up on our town centres is to give up on life .

All are wonderfully liveable estates that have stood the test of time, been well maintained and are without doubt desirable.

They show how it is possible to do “social housing” and to avoid the pitfalls that result in vast sums being spent on regeneration. Housing providers and planners need to regularly visit these precedents to remind themselves to stop delivering the dross that has become commonplace over the past few decades.

It was heartening to hear that Kraft (the new American owners of Cadbury) have understood Cadbury’s heritage an decided to make its “global chocolate centre” at its historical home, Bournville.

Great decision and I am sure that the Cadbury employees are going to enjoy working in this environment that the founders of the brand left as a wonderful housing legacy…

For more information on Bournville click here
And here are some pics…

Like many British seaside resorts, Southport’s fortunes waned during the 80s and 90s. However a few years ago when I started to see pictures of the modern pavilion that had been built on the pier I felt this was the sign of a forward thinking council that understood the role that great design could play in regeneration. So Gerra and I took a detour and went to visit Southport. The new pier pavilion does in fact look cool

In our Land of Lost Content collection of 20^th century British memorabilia we have some great images showing Southport in its heyday .

This pic below shows the old pier pavilion

And this one shows the prom in the 30s

So imagine our horror when at the other end of the pier this carbuncle had been built on the prom …the last buildings before the lovely beach

I have nothing against a cinema, restaurant chains and a bowling alley being on the prom, BUT  having them housed in god-awful industrial boxes, surrounded by crap landscaping and totally turning their back on the prom (the entrances face inland with blank walls facing the sea… it creates an ugly, uninteresting face to the sea)  is just downright stupid and goes against common sense never mind good planning practice.

What were the planners thinking ?

They have just consigned Southport’s sea front to needing substantial regen money needing to be spent on it in the not too distant future and for what it’s worth, this family won’t be going back in a hurry !

I am sick of writing moans about bad planning… so I am going to end this on  a good note… enjoy this movie I took on our way back to the car… it cheered me up anyway!

Like many young couples owning a property was something that we felt was a must. We saw home ownership as a way to “stop wasting money” on renting, as a cheaper alternative to renting, and as a way to enjoy a bit creative home improvement.

Our hopes and desires are mirrored by today’s young couples. A recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation report “Public Attitudes to Housing” shows that “ The importance of housing in relation to life stage is apparent from many studies that show that early career professionals may feel content to share and rent, but as they establish themselves in employment and reach their late 20s or early 30s, thoughts of forming partnerships, starting a family, career aspirations and buying a first home all come to the fore”.  This same survey found that 79% of people still see home ownership as a priority.

Yet that same home in Wembley, 20 odd years later would cost around £350,000 and require a minimum deposit of £35,000. If we look at the situation since 1990 average house prices have risen by 280% whilst wages have increased by an average of 175% pushing up the ratio between income and house prices from 3:1 to 4.2:1 and according to the National Housing Association putting the UK on a rapid trajectory to first time ownership being achievable at an average of 43 years old (without family help).

This all clearly points to a change of opportunity for new generations of Wayne & Gerardine Hemingway. Would we have been able to put down roots in London in today’s housing economic climate? Probably not. Would we have been content to rent until well into our 30’s? Probably not. Would we have considered buying and making a go of life in our home area of East Lancs? Quite possibly.

London has always had a gravitational pull for the creative industries and that has enabled it to become one of the leading (if not the preeminent) creative world capitals. For some this brain drain is seen as damaging, making the UK too reliant on its capital city. Others argue that London’s strength has a trickledown effect to the country as a whole.

Whatever it is quite conceivable that the housing affordability gap between London and the regions could have an enormous impact on future demographics and business start ups.

Could there be a reduction in the brain drain and a generation that becomes less mobile?

Could we see our regional cities becoming larger creative hotspots and benefiting the regional economies? Will London suffer as a result?

Will the financial institutions find a way to make home ownership more achievable for first time buyers?

Your guess is as good as mine.

We have to tackle this two speed society that surely can only lead to further unrest. Successive governments have failed to stem the widening gap between haves and have not’s.

We have to ensure that it’s not just middle class parents who find it easy to access sports clubs and activities for their kids (How many young people who were part of an organised football club or cricket club took part in the looting? I would say it would be very few)

We have to ensure that young people have more of an opportunity to fill their time with things that interest them. Yet significant cuts are being made that are resulting in the downgrading of many youth services.

I have been writing about these issues for a decade now and there has been little or no movement on these issues since these articles in 2005

http://waynehemingway.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/wayne-mouths-off-about-crap-play-spaces-2005/

http://waynehemingway.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/a-new-apartment-id-rather-live-in-hm-prison-strangeways-2005/

We have to ensure that education stimulates and engages and takes into account the fact that not every child loves the so called “core subjects”, Maths, English and Science and that in their early teens some young people need a more vocational education. Yet the government is pushing forward with plans that focus far too heavily on the core subjects. And  at a time like this don’t get me started on the threat to “Citizenship Studies”.

The media have been asking how the rioters can smash up their own communities and the looters grab from their neighbours. From where I am from it’s called “shitting on your own doorstep”. But the problem is that these people feel alienated from their communities, and don’t feel that they have a doorstep to call their own.  Whilst community is about people it helps if there are physical facilities at its core and it’s a worry how these are funded with the present “cut at all costs” attitude coming out of the treasury

At HemingwayDesign we have three significant regeneration projects on the go at the moment, all of them focus on breathing new life into troubled 60s and 70s estates. Gerardine and I constantly remind the team that these projects are not to be led by architectural intervention but rather by instilling a sense of community, hope and pride into every resident. The events of the last week just spur us on and make us realise how fortunate we are to not feel hopeless when watching the news but rather we can go to work next day and try to make a difference.

One thing we can start to do is to work out another way than just saying NO to young people.

This sign that I spotted in Minehead says so much about where we are at the moment and the work we all have to do

Club culture in the UK is now a multi-million-pound industry, with the likes of once-underground club Ministry of Sound appearing all over our tellies selling the distinctly non underground Running Trax CDs to the fitness community, while DJs and dance producers who have grown out of a clubbing background contribute to the UK’s balance of payments by performing and producing internationally.

As we enter the final decade of the first 100 years of British club culture, I thought we should celebrate the contribution that this culture has made to our lives, at the Vintage at Southbank Centre festival at the end of this month, and attempt to assemble the most complete collection of seminal DJs ever.

When I was growing up in Morecambe in the early 1960s, with my mum working for the telephone exchange, my nan a cleaner, and my pop tending his strawberries in the garden and making toys for me in his shed, I had no idea that I was growing up surrounded by clubbers and ex clubbers.

Only as I became an adult and started to go through the boxes of family pictures and talk to my family about their youth did I realise that my years spent in Northern Soul, disco, punk, New Romantic and acid-house clubs in the 1970s and 80s were only following on from a British club culture that has its origins in the 1920s. Some of the most recognisable venue names of recent times were all nightclubs in the 1920s – The Trocadero, Cafe de Paris, The Embassy, Kit-Kat Club – where a post war, pre-Depression youth would take advantage of new late-night licensing laws and dance the shimmy, heebie-jeebie, and job-rot until the police did their obligatory “raid”. Public smoking, drinking and the freedom to indulge in casual relationships were the activities of choice for feisty females during the decade, alongside which went a desire to look fashionably fabulous. By the end of the 1920s there were more than 50 licensed nightclubs in London.

The “Bright Young Things” who frequented clubs were written about disparagingly, but it wasn’t an outraged press that calmed the wild clubs of the time down, it was the outbreak of the Second World War.

Yet it didn’t take long before the dancing started again as jazz and swing bands, often featuring exiled West Indian musicians, got Britain jitterbugging and lindy-hopping in the kind of numbers that would only fit in large town halls and the ballrooms of the big hotels.

The DIY ethic of gravy browning to create faux stocking seams, coupled with the proto-”up-cycling” of old clothes and furnishings into dance dresses, could be seen as nascent punk. Even that bastion of punk, London’s 100 Club, was operating in the 1940s as an underground “dive”.

I have it on good authority from my mum that going to clubs was an integral part of life in the 1950s. Club culture had even come to little old, isolated Morecambe, in the form of Brubeck’s (named after beatnik music god Dave Brubeck).

The jazz clubs frequented by beatniks, the jukebox caffs, and Mecca dance-halls frequented by Teds, are enduring and much documented images of the 1950s. Teddy boys and rock’n'roll brought a much wider working-class swagger to youth culture, and an extreme style that was to influence their children almost two decades later when glam, and then punk, made club culture such an exciting place to be for me and my peers.

But, before that, the 1960s sowed the seeds of so much of today’s club culture. Modernists (“mods” to you and me), with their understated yet recognisable and almost nerdy attention to detail, popularised black American soul music (making Motown more popular in Britain than it was in the US), Jamaican ska, and the negative, drug-taking, side of club culture, with their predilection for popping purple hearts and amphetamines to keep dancing at all-nighters at clubs like The Flamingo.

Discothèques proliferated in the 1960s ,with even George Best opening the infamous Slack Alice’s in Manchester. It was the 1970s, though, that really made Britain the centre of the club-culture universe, and is the decade that has left us with a legacy that lives on today in the clubs of east London, Manchester’s Northern Quarter and, arguably, New York’s Lower East Side and Berlin’s Mitte district.

As a teenager growing up in the 1970s, long before ID cards were needed to get into clubs, there were seemingly no age restrictions (well at least not for this teenager, who could sport bum fluff above his lip that a cat could probably have licked off). I didn’t know where to turn. After seeing David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane tour at Blackburn King Georges Hall in 1973 I wanted more of this wonderful eye candy, this infectious music, and I wanted to dress up. I got it soon after, at the amazing Pips in Manchester, and the Lodestar (just outside Blackburn) and the plastic-palm-tree-adorned Blackburn Mecca. A club where you would glam up to the nines and then be able to choose Roxy/Bowie, punk, soul, funk, disco or pop rooms, Pips is one of the main inspirations for our Vintage at Southbank Centre Festival.

These clubs fuelled my appetite for clubbing, and even a lad living in Blackburn was blessed with an embarrassment of riches. In the years leading up to the punk revolution of 1976 and 1977, the Highland Room at Blackpool Mecca was a symbol of Britain’s enduring ability to discover and popularise the great dance music of black America. After the Highland Room played its last track every Saturday night, many of us would hot-foot it over to the all-nighter at Wigan Casino (a scruffy ballroom, long since demolished, but with a Northern Soul legacy that year by year grows in stature and seems to inspire a movie or play every couple of years) and then onto the Ritz Ballroom in Manchester for an all-dayer.

When punk came along, The Russell Club, a scruffy club in Manchester’s yet-to-be regenerated Moss Side, created an urban hardcore club aesthetic where the likes of Slaughter and the Dogs, Buzzcocks and Warsaw (to become Joy Division) put Manchester music on the map.

The world was looking at Britain as its youth pogoed and danced. Soul boys became punks and punks danced to disco and reggae. In London, an often outrageously dressed cool soul crowd descended on Ilford and Canvey Island to clubs like Lacy Lady’s and inspired kids from the suburbs to experiment and, in turn, go up to town to the likes of The Roxy and The Vortex, two short-lived clubs now marked down forever in history as seminal.

I met my wife Gerardine at a Northern Soul night at Angels, Burnley, in 1980 and we were soon shacked up in London in the halcyon days of London Club Culture. What a ride it was.

The iconic Blitz Club, and then Club for Heroes, presented by Rusty Egan and Steve Strange, spawned New Romantic. Our favourite club ever was Le Beat Route (made famous in the first Spandau Ballet hit “Chant No 1″) where Boy George was on the door picking out those with the coolest hair and coolest clothes (and, yes, I had hair then, and I did get in every week). The eclectic dress-sense of the crowd, from lasses dressed as Little Bo Peep to lads with psychobilly hair piled a foot high, matched the hugely eclectic music-policy of Latino funk, rockabilly, and disco. The Wag Club opened in 1981 with host Chris Sullivan welcoming a colourful designer crowd, including Jean Paul Gaultier and John Galliano getting down to rare-groove and the likes of Tom Tom Club.

The centre of gravity was spinning across to Kings Cross where warehouse parties suited the “hard times” aesthetic being championed by now-sadly-missed The Face magazine. The DIY attitude to partying was at its peak and summed up this time of young folk “having a go” at starting magazines, starting designer labels in Kensington Market and selling second-hand clothes in Camden. London was moving at a rapid pace and experimentation reached perhaps both its nadir and zenith in the mid-1980s with the drug-addled Taboo Club.

Taboo was a bit too hedonistic for Gerardine and me. We were drawn to the “new disco” that was acid-house. Shoom, Trip at The Astoria, and The Hacienda again showed how British club culture could take black dance music and make it its own.

Then for too long things went all “superclub” and corporate, but something now is in the air. The DIY attitude is back and, as live bands become ever more expensive and festivals seem to roll out the same headline acts, the cooler kids are again becoming club kids. Drawing on Britain’s wonderful club and music heritage, and working with closed social networks, the likes of Low Life, Love Fever and Electric Minds are hosting word-of-mouth events in galleries, loft spaces, dingy basements and venues like Corsica Studios in London. You can’t hold British club culture down for long.

See full article in The Independent here

I for one hope that Habitat rises like a phoenix from the ashes. Here’s a taster of classic Habitat…

Habitat Scoop chair & plastic coffee tables

1974 Stun seating Habitat

1974 Habitat pendant lamps

1973 Habitat flop chair sofaHabitat Stop in Sofa and Sturs chair 1974