This is where we’re documenting our research for Britain’s Got Tenants, our new show about the housing crisis and the history of social housing, which will tour in May and June 2016.
In this episode we talk to Merlin Fulcher, architectural journalist and poet, about the architecture of social housing, and discuss Berthold Lubetkin, a pioneer in Modernist Social architecture, with his biographer, John Allan from Avanti Architects. We also cover
Different Skies //// Mixed communities and mixed tenure //// The number of lavatories to have in a council house (another point of disagreement between Bevan and Macmillan) //// English pastoral life //// The Tecton Group //// Russian constructivist art //// Bevin Court //// Section 106 and the Dark Arts of viability //// The Red Road estate in Glasgow //// A new poem by Merlin
Guest artist: Merlin Fulcher
Sound technician and editor: Jon McLeod
Presented and produced by Sophie Winter and Ben Hadley
A massive thank you to everyone we interviewed during our research: Glyn Robbins, Paul Watt, Geraldine Dening, John Allan, Olly Wainwright, Beattie Orwell, Gerlinde Gniewosz, Doreen Massey, Mary van der Water, Aruna Ganesan, Harold Greatwood, Frank Foster, Jonathan Rosenberg, Diana Belshaw, Sally Taylor, Paul Burnham, Ayesha Taylor, Robin Grey, Kristian Scrace, Marc Francis, Katharine Sacks-Jones, Esmaa and Kawther Gvernaoui, Jennifer, Zlatka Doynova, Rejane Barbosa, Anna Kasperek, Liam, Cat Denby, Tom Cordell
We would also like to thank: Jen Kavanagh and Bill Lowry at the Museum of London, Pilgrim Tucker at Unite the Union, and all the campaigns and groups who shared their experience with us: Architects for Social Housing, Focus E15 Mums, Save Cressingham Gardens, Sweets Way Resists, Hands Off Knights Walk, West Ken and Gibbs Green, Westway23, the Radical Housing Network and Different Skies
Other sources used during our research:
Books
Cotters and Squatters, by Colin Ward
Estates, by Lynsey Hanley
Family and Kinship in East London, by Michael Young and Peter Wilmott
Ground Control, by Anna Minton
Private Island, by James Meek
The Blackest Streets by Sarah Wise
Websites
History of tenants rights
Tenants histories and struggles
The Radical Housing Network
Municipal Dreams
Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth report on social cleansing
Online Documentary Films
Behind the 1970s Rent Strike
Highbury Quadrant
I wouldn’t need a mansion (Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association film, made by Digital Works)
Market to Parkside
Not a Penny on the Rent
Rowley Way (made by Digital Works)
Squatters town – a short film about people squatting an army barracks after the war
St Hilda’s East (Digital Works)
The Great Estate
The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Their world, this time
Radio / podcasts
Cry Freehold: how land values / ownership are connected to the housing crisis
Archives
The Museum of London
