Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Movement to reuse Hornsey Baths for the Community
Edited from a picture on Geograph by Julian Osley
It seems to be my day for posting about community use of redundant buildings. First there was there was the former All Pally Station building, now on to the Hornsey Baths.
In June Liz picked up on a group of locals organising to get the unused building in Hornsey High Street back into public use. As a result of that post, I got in touch with Bethany Wells who's leading the initiative and so have been copied in on the email communications between the group members.
The group held their first meeting the weekend before last and I'm attaching the full notes. To give to you a sense of what the group is after, here's an extract of what the group's aims are:
| Community-led re-opening of the Hornsey Public Baths to meet local needs, in partnership with the public sector, local residents, schools and businesses |
Viable To build a profit-making business model that would hopefully provide a precedent for community-led development. To provide employment – i.e. not fully staffed etc all voluntarily, it should be sustainable socially as well as economically. |
Connected To be a meeting and education point for everyone in Haringey interested in sustainability/transition/design/low energy lifestyles. Not to duplicate the activities of other sustainability groups, but to link, enhance and connect them with all Haringey, London, UK and worldwide initiatives, widening participation. |
Cultural To host visionary cultural projects that create a community of local action, creativity and local resilience, supporting social entrepreneurs and young people to develop their voice. |
And here's the current state of play at the baths:
To find out more or to get involved, contact Bethany Wells at studio@bethanywells.com
Tags for Forum Posts: hornsey baths
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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Call for volunteers:
I've stepped forward to offer help where I can and I encourage others to post here - people say that getting involved, meeting people, learning stuff, contributing and having fun doing all this is a valid reward - it is for me anyway.
I like art and broadband and want to make a creative, transition-led, community-directed, sustainable contribution, have some experience with business so expect to help with the money and have some web skills that can be employed. Also love simply talking about ideas but please don't hold that against me...
You could post here to signal your intent to offer help - I know Bethany is looking for people to make contact with local residents and give them a leaflet as a first step towards making this stuff happen, and we are working on more stuff than we yet have contributors for. There are roles for everyone because this will be what the group involved makes out of it - please join in, if only by posting a few encouraging words here.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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How did you gain access?
As far as I'm aware this building will disappear for the new Sainsbury's, no?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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If the access question is addressed to me, I didn't. It's a video from YouTube linked to in the meeting notes. Click through on the video to see the author.
RE Sainsbury's - that's my understanding (although hope springs eternal). I think the primary objective is interim use, keeping open the possibility of longer term use.
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I think there may be a chance to influence Sainsburys if they decide to build here - they may not, as they have a land bank and possibly easier hoops to jump elsewhere.
One approach is to attempt to enhance a national business's approach to local food provision, so it may be that stuff done here will be able to be used in future, even if we're not the ones using it.
For instance, Food from the Sky, by growing things on a supermarket roof in Crouch End that are sold in the store, may make it harder for a chain to resist selling locally-produced stuff in future as part of their 'social contract' - the 'price' of doing business locally. Who better than local people to influence what happens locally?
When it comes to creativity it's even more interesting to me - I'm glad there's a real appetite for cultural stuff here, but what works exactly? What draws people to a place like this in the High Street and what would make it worth the visit? Hope to be part of the response to finding out.
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