In conversation with Silu Pascoe, members of the 'Windrush Generation' share memories and experiences of how they overcame racial discrimination when finding somewhere to live in Bristol. In particular, Joyce Morris-Wisdom recalls the 'pardner-hand' system that enabled her parents to become home-owners. Guy Bailey talks of setting up United Housing Association which was the first Black-led housing association in 1980s Bristol.
Stefan Szczelkun will read from his book Plotlands of Shepperton - a unique artist’s book on a massively under-researched area of the history of housing, soon to be re-released in large format. Szczelkun's commentary on Britain's plotlands reveals the houses to be haunted by their radical history. Do they contain a key to the ‘housing problem’ that the establishment dare not countenance? Following his reading, Stefan will discuss this and more in conversation with BRHG's Paul Smith.
Paul Smith’s talk will draw on his research into the history of Hartcliffe, designed by planners in the 1940s on the garden city model, built as a housing estate in the 1950s. This tale of the steady removal of planned facilities and the reduction in the quality of homes presented huge challenges to a community of ‘pioneers’ exported to the outskirts of the city. The story of Hartcliffe was repeated across the country as estates were built on the edges of towns and cities. This story has […]
High-rise housing has been held up in the mainstream media as the tombstone of welfare state: a symbol of the failure of state-led reform. But does this map onto residential opinion on the ground – or, more accurately, up in the air? Based on years of historical research of grassroots struggles on a range of estates, this talk explores how multi-storey housing served as a crucible for the welfare state’s reimagination. It illustrates the resilience of investments in public housing: throughout […]
How a garden city became a housing estate, 1943-1963. A salutary lesson for current planners can be drawn from this detailed examination of the failure of an ambitious project in the immediate post-war environment to live up to its expectations. Houses were desperately needed: What principles should underpin a new ‘settlement’? Where should the houses go? Who were they for? And what provision should be made for the likely political and financial changes over the timescale of the project? […]
A walking tour as part of Bristol Radical History Festival Meet at the MShed front entrance at 4.00pm. Finish at the Louisiana around 5:30pm. Bristol’s city centre has been a focus for squatters making a political point: on housing need and homelessness, in solidarity with strikes, in solidarity with land struggles and in defence of the natural environment. This short tour includes five buildings squatted in the Harbourside, Old Town and Redcliffe in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and […]
During the summer of 1946, thousands of British families took the law into their own hands to temporarily solve their housing problems by "requisitioning" empty military camps. This mass-squatting movement was rapid, spontaneous and entirely working-class in character. While it was often driven at ground level by women, the movement soon developed a formal leadership structure dominated by ex-servicemen who had served as NCOs and warrant officers. Bristol, with particularly acute housing […]
