~20 minute read
From the demolition of cherished local spaces to opaque decision-making sidelining community needs, the use of space in our home town of Croydon is marked by missed opportunities and unlearnt lessons.
At the close of Croydon’s Borough of Culture year and the Desire Paths project, we (Croydon based arts charity Turf Projects) explore the spaces we’ve tried to use over the years and what’s become of them – as we ask whether communities truly have any power in how the spaces around us are used.
Through Turf’s 10 year lifespan existing in temporary locations, our story has become inextricably linked with space. Grown from and firmly based in Croydon, we’re keen to set down stable, permanent roots in our hometown. In Turf’s 2023 project Desire Paths, local artists explored the role of physical spaces and their stability in a community’s wellbeing, viability and cohesion. Rooted in practical considerations, space determines ability to provide reliable support, plan for the future, invest in infrastructure and accessibility, access more funding and create more stable models.
The barriers we’ve experienced trying to access spaces alongside Croydon’s ‘regeneration’ are numerous. The pervasive sway of corporate interests, combined with the Council’s travelator of bureaucracy, -and bankruptcy – has created systems where stated goals are unachievable. Communities are increasingly fragile under these systems, pitted against risk aversion, opaque agendas and economic power structures.
To evidence this, here we lay bare our attempts to use spaces in Croydon, what’s become of them, and the context behind it all. Come with us now on a journey through time and space…
Ruskin Square was a ‘brownfield’ [undeveloped] site empty for 15 years but for the treasured Warehouse Theatre – demolished in 2012 with promises of being rebuilt within the new development.
We’d been discussing an idea to put artist studios in shipping containers here… When we visited, the outline of the Warehouse Theatre’s skeleton was still visible in the ground, and we were somehow hopeful that support would be forthcoming.
The Warehouse was never rebuilt as promised, with developers Stanhope & Schroders reportedly paying the council a £4m infrastructure levy (a payment made by developers to support local services) to invest in culture ‘elsewhere’.
A Boxpark now stands on the site.
A locally listed [not of national historical or architectural importance but still of importance locally] former church and outbuildings, set on the edge of Wandle Park. Local folklore claims it once contained a stained glass window designed by artist Mary Cicely Barker of Flower Fairies fame. Long abandoned, we enquired about the building in 2015.
The local parish apparently wanted the building used ‘sensitively’ – but still sold to a developer. Supposedly before sale, a consultation was put out to establish community interest, but we never saw evidence of this.
The community tried hard to save this space. Peculiarly ‘notched out’ of the boundary of Old Town’s historic conservation area, the vote to approve demolishing for flats was pushed through by one vote by then-chair of the planning committee Paul Scott.
Albeit rather early in our lifespan, this was our first significant attempt to propose use of a space. A publicly owned former library empty since 2006, Asburton Park Library was put out to ‘tender’ [inviting proposals for the space] by Croydon Council via ‘property advisors’ Stiles Harold Williams who managed the process.
The building has been through at least 2 operators, and is now an events venue run by Better.
In a rare win, Socco Cheta is now an upgraded community space hosting South Norwood Community Kitchen, Domino Club, community garden and community support space.
This publicly owned 13,000 sq ft former school was put out to tender by Croydon Council via Stiles Harold Williams. As is often the case, we had no contact with Council officers.
In collaboration with Croydon Reuse Organisation we proposed using the building to house multiple organisations, including art studios, a community kitchen and community workshop space, and repurposing the vast car park as a community garden. A huge publicly owned building in the town centre, we suggested it was an opportunity to prioritise creative community space at a time when Croydon Council was claiming culture was ‘at the heart of regeneration’.
Now:
Tamworth Annex was leased to a church who we were told had demonstrated they could manage the building in a way viable to keep the building under public ownership.
The building is now on the Council’s asset disposal list [a list of public spaces they’re selling].
A new build space at East Croydon station. We were approached by Outset alongside developer Stanhope, who as part of their ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ [commitments to supporting the wider community] were looking to fill 400 sq metres of ground floor space with community uses. After submitting proposals the decision was as follows;
“After lengthy debate, the decision was to proceed with an alternative proposal similar to Made in Hammersmith and Fulham working with the Council and Croydon BID”
Following the above decision, the space lay empty until 2022, when it became an Amazon Fresh.
“The uses within the building support the cultural ambitions for the area… flexible spaces that can support small retail and studios.”
At this point we had been allocated £40k funding to put towards a permanent space within the borough’s Creative Enterprise Zone bid – a GLA (Greater London Authority) sector development bid we helped the council develop in Jan 2018.
Following the GLA’s snap decision to allocate funding to 6 CEZs instead of 3, Turf’s funding in the budget (as well as Croydon FM’s) was cut by decision-makers at Croydon Council.
We found out our funding was cut in the celebratory meeting. Ta daa 
One of the spaces supporting the cultural ambitions for the area now hosts a Starbucks.
So all this leads us to Heathfield House – a Grade II listed manor house set in historic gardens, all publicly owned.
A gem in Croydon’s crown, Croydon Council have instead treated it like a thorn in its side, not really knowing what to do with Heathfield since Raymond ‘Pesky Riescy’ Riesco gifted it to the borough upon his death in 1964 (along with a pottery & ceramic collection, the partial sale of which lost the borough Museum’s accreditation in 2013).
Importantly, the building has a ‘covenant‘ – these are rules preventing its being sold and limiting what it can be used for to non-business use.
Most recently the building was let to a school, with no tender process we’re aware of. One failed planning application to fence off the building later, the building was left vacant, damaged and unsecured.
In Spring 2023, we sent a proposal for use of the building to Mayor Jason Perry;
No response was received.
In Autumn 2023, the building went up for rent via (you guessed it) Stiles Harold Williams. Since becoming vacant, no damage had been addressed and with broken windows and damaged roofing, the building was being ravaged by damp. We again offered our previous proposal, actively asked not to contact council officers.
In December 2023, the unsecured Heathfield was squatted, with original interior doors broken, electrics and fire safety equipment severely damaged, and Croydon Ecology Centre’s store room broken into and ransacked. The Council began paying for 24/7 security at public cost. We submitted an official rental offer.
We also applied to Architectural Heritage Fund’s Viability Grant (with the Council’s knowledge) – a fund which would allow us to explore the viability of uses of the building, generate public awareness and look into making the building more accessible, all work we offered to share with the council. We also had £3k of surveys committed by local construction industry partners.
In Feb 2024, the building was suddenly removed from the market, with SHW explaining;
We have been instructed to withdraw the property from the market while Croydon Council decide what they wish to do with the site
By this point used to council shenanigans, we were still surprised by an email in March asking if Turf would be interested in meanwhile use of the site. We met with council officers, sent our requirements for making the building fire and electrical safe and reiterated our nil cost proposals.
Around this time we got confirmation that our Architectural Heritage Fund application was successful. We informed the council. No response. We chased. No response. Alarm bells ringing. Finally, we got the response;
We have pursued tenancy with a guardian company at Heathfield house so we would not be able to explore further with Turf-projects [sic].
the Council has elected to pursue the re-provision of the Heathfield House with the intention of relocating the registrar team from the Town Hall to Heathfield house. To that end the use of Guardians best meets the needs of the Council rather than a third party tenant.
We pressed. Who was ‘the Council’ here? Were decisions subject to any scrutiny processes? How would it all conform to Heathfield’s infamous covenant? Why were guardian providers a better option than no-cost community use? [edited: landowners typically pay guardianship companies for their services, but we did an FOI and as of Dec 2024 Croydon Council claim they aren’t paying for this service at Heathfield].
Here are the responses;
This is a decision taken by the asset teams which sits within [Huw Rhys-Lewis‘] Directorate taken in consultation with the Mayor and Cabinet members.
Given the use of Guardians is interim use, the Council is not restricted by any covenant in what it can or cannot do.
Having Guardians in place would allow the Council to access the property quicker and more effectively than have to go through the protracted process of removing a tenant
You will also be aware that the Council has embarked on a property disposals programme to sell off non-operational and non-essential properties to reduce its £1.3billion debt position [this is the reason used to justify all manner of Council behaviour since Croydon’s bankruptcy in 2020]. Tranche 1&2 of the disposals programme were approved by Cabinet in May and December 2023. The consequence of these actions is that the Council is not in position to offer properties to third parties to rent [Couldn’t work out how this followed, spending public money on a guardianship company is fine though..]. Should your organisation wish to purchase any sites [ha!] then I enclose copies of those tranches approved for sale – which are being marketed by Saville’s and SHW [hello darkness my old friend]. Any expressions of interest should be directed to said agents.
There are some familiar spaces on this list to be sold.
These include Tamworth Annex , the home of mental health support organisation Mind in Croydon, and Turnaround Centre which provide services for at-risk youth.
Our experience with Heathfield is emblematic of our attempts to use space for noncommercial means in Croydon. Despite pouring all the time and resources we could into chasing these spaces, there was always a ‘bigger picture’ beneath the surface which the community was not part of, sidelined for or exploited in service of.
Such decisions are often heralded by those in power as solutions to cultural and economic challenges. However, in Croydon this has rarely, if ever delivered on promises and in many cases exacerbated the problems they claimed to solve.
Almost all opportunities presented to us were ultimately reoriented to serve more corporate interests and the big visions of a select few. Heathfield is now being gleefully promoted for rental by guardianship company Lowe Group, a private guardianship company profiting from a space that could – and should – be benefiting the wider community.
In 2022 long-empty Croydon department store Allders was poised for takeover by ‘LOST’, a project from the founder of Secret Cinema – controversial recipients of close to £1m in public funding, subsequently sold for a reported £88m. LOST was simultaneously described as a theatrical experience, studio complex, production facility and ‘community hub’. Promising a crossover of art and activism, LOST could have started with recent history of their own space, from which local businesses were evicted overnight by their own local authority, acting in the interests of developers Croydon Partnership to clear the way for plans unknown and still unfulfilled. The project never materialised.
Stuck in a cycle where the rich get richer and the rest of us get to watch them do it, bigger organisations like LOST and Lowe are “granted a substantially bigger slice of the pie” by virtue of their already larger resources and louder voices, not just in financial terms but in finite attention and support.
These inequities within who is allowed to take up space are exasperating whilst local organisations and initiatives struggle for support or just to survive. The Warehouse Theatre is demolished and makes way for ‘temporary’ Boxpark who receive incentive in the form of a public loan, and many argue draw audiences away from town centre businesses. Poverty tourist Banksy pops up for a bit to fanfare rarely afforded for local artists. Whilst spaces like the disabled-run Cherry Orchard Garden Centre are forced to close, Heathfield is left empty and damaged as a result of chaotic council processes, and then handed to profit-makers. A void of vacant spaces haunts Croydon, with 1 in 7 shops laying empty nationally in 2022, many owned by large landlords like URW and the Whitgift Foundation. Meanwhile, sales of publicly owned spaces are pitched as essential whilst community need soars.
It’s also worth noting that what support there is frequently takes the form of temporary and short-term box ticking. Commonly this consists of the instrumentalisation of locally focused activity by those with no interest in the area or its inhabitants beyond profit, as with LOST. This is something our friends at Conditions explored in their Art Monthly article ‘High Streets For All?‘.
‘Keeping the seat warm for who [a space] truly belongs to’ – with all the precarity and restrictions that lie therein – is at real risk of becoming the norm for non-profits & creatives alike. This epidemic of shoehorned ‘pop ups’ and ‘interim uses’ is a facade-like simulation of community and culture – the implication of ‘things happening’ without anything made or meant to last, a mural on the wall of a building about to be knocked down and replaced with luxury apartments.
With lessons seemingly not learnt from ‘culture at the heart of regeneration’, we aren’t convinced that beneath the glossy, conveniently temporary outcomes, Borough of Culture has caused a shift towards genuine action to carve out space and resources for community and culture to thrive long term.
In the month following Borough of Culture’s completion, those at the top could have opted to use a space like Heathfield to provide a large space for community and cultural benefit at no cost, within a building given to and owned by the people of Croydon. Instead a terrifyingly small group make their decision based coldly on who is easiest to evict when the plans made for us come to fruition.
Our local authority’s inner culture is disconnected from not only its community’s needs but its own professed aims. With ready acceptance of corporate systems, public spaces become a machine of business. At the top, paternalistic, antiquated and atomistic processes continue to decide the future of public space. Lower down the chain, intent meets the wall of feasibility, with council officers’ genuine attempts to address barriers and solve problems thwarted by policy, systems and pressure from the top – a chasm between what is expected of them and what they can actually do.
Communities are set up to fail and made to feel audacious for asking; as if we shouldn’t expect those in power to deign to take such risks on the little guy over the big boys during such difficult times for us all. That these processes exclude and waste the limited resources of the marginalised communities who dare to try and tackle them seems lost on those at the helm.
We wonder what the likelihood is of Heathfield, like Allders, St Edmunds, Ruskin Square, Ashburton Library before it, now laying empty but for a few guardians for two years or more?
Covid exposed deep gaps in care spaces like ours and many others fill, beneath the radar of those whose attention is otherwise engaged. But for organisations to be truly rooted in our communities and vice versa, connections need to be cultivated over longer periods than our temporary spaces allow. Turf’s current space was only meant to last 6 months to a year before demolition. That was in September 2017. Not knowing if circumstances will permit your organisation to exist in Croydon in a year’s time means not knowing whether you’re pissing money into the wind spending £6k on a disabled toilet, or £20k fixing your unit’s knackered electrics.
How can we ever hope to cultivate and retain homegrown successes in circumstances such as this? When rent and rates are high, funding is cut? When we are expected to match what we can pay against huge companies and there are no resources to ensure developers meet planning conditions? When those at the controls at times appear to be working in service of these systems instead of the communities who need their support?
When the very ground underneath you is unstable and spaces close, often meaningful long-term community connections are damaged, especially within spaces where those with different experiences of the world can meet.
Those holding the keys have continued to keep making the same mistakes. It is absolutely no surprise to find these frustrations embodied in organisations like Reclaim Croydon taking direct action and taking the keys off them.
Land is finite, and these spaces once lost are lost for good. We believe that Heathfield represents a rare example of where we do have power as a community. As a space gifted to the borough, with a covenant restricting both its sale and the manner of its use, and set within public grounds, it is arguably one of the spaces the Croydon public own ‘the most’.
With such spaces disappearing at alarming rates and Councils under legislative and financial pressures to sell them, now is the time to insist we truly co-author spaces that are responsive to our different communities, at least in those few public spaces we still own.
We are not just waiting to be the slate that’s wiped clean, to make way for rebuilding from the ground up with no grassroots to be found. We will keep fighting for genuinely community-led, collaborative decision-making processes about spaces around us that can fundamentally shape and alter our lives.
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Est 2013, Turf is Croydon’s homegrown art space; free exhibitions & workshops, studios & collectives run by creatives for creatives.
Find more about us here ( ･ิ ͜ʖ ･ิ)
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46-47 Trinity Court, Whitgift Centre, Croydon CR01UQ. For detailed visitor info, click here.
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Wednesday | 11:00 — 17:00 |
| Thursday | 11:00 — 17:00 |
| Friday | 11:00 — 17:00 |
| Saturday | 11:00 — 17:00 |
| Sunday | Closed |
| 21 Aug | Closed |
info@turf-projects.com
07519 072116
