Art studios to open in Wembley Park

Press release from Second Floor Studio and Arts

Second Floor Studios & Arts (SFSA) was established in 1997. It is a leading arts organisation providing affordable studio space for visual and fine artists' and craft and designer makers. 

Our core aim is providing best quality studios and facilities at monthly rental prices our members can afford and whom would otherwise struggle to find comparable studio workspace on the open commercial market.

 

SFSA will take over and run 6,500sq ft of collective affordable studio space – the first of its kind in Wembley Park. The deal has been delivered through a partnership with Quintain, the developers behind the Wembley Park regeneration, and supported by Brent Council, who are providing grant funding for the fit-out of the studios through the GLA’s New Homes Bonus funding programme. It will see 26 new high quality studios offered, providing long term affordable employment space for artists', makers and designers. SFSA will use one studio as an office initially and the first studios will be rented out and occupied from November 2017.

Wembley Park is fast becoming a hub for creativity and culture and last month announced Boxpark Wembley will be adding to this offer in 2018 with 29 independent food and beverage units and a 2,000 capacity events space.  Already home to two of the world’s best known venues for music, entertainment and sport, Wembley Park is now keen to focus on developing a wider cultural presence across the 85 acre site and becoming a cultural hot spot in London.

This deal marks the first venture for SFSA in North West London and aims to tackle the shortage of space available to the arts community at affordable rates, in well managed facilities and marks a major investment in the arts for Brent and the capital. 

As well as providing affordable studios Second Floor will also be delivering a range of educational and outreach programmes, including workshops and exhibitions, providing long-term partnerships and opportunities for the local community. This includes the time bank system where in exchange for the lower rents artists are being charged, they set aside one hour a month of their time which is then given to the community. More details on this will be announced early next year when further studios are released across Wembley Park with the aim to house over 100 practitioners on site in affordable studio workspace.

The new studios will be located on the ground floor of some of the new homes being built in Wembley Park which is seeing the fastest housing delivery of any site in the UK. There will be 3,000 homes under construction by the end of this year and in total planning permission has already been secured for 7,000 homes, of which a third will be affordable.  

Applications for the studio space have now opened and local residents, artists, makers and designers are being encouraged to submit their application to SFSA for the chance to become part of the growing community at Wembley Park.

https://www.secondfloor.co.uk/studios/wembley-park.aspx

Queensbury, Colin Road and London Road presentations at Planning Committee on Monday October 9th

There are three noteworthy pre-applications coming up at Brent Planning Committee on Monday October 9th (6pm).

There are fuller details on the new Queensbury Pub proposals, extensive proposals for the current industrial site bordered by Colin Road, Dudden Hill Lane and High Road, Willesden and proposals for the former Wembley Youth Centre and Dennis Jackson Centre at the top of London Road Wembley.

No decisions are made at this stage but the committee can ask questions and officers in their reports will provide a commentary and suggestions on what needs to be done to make the proposals acceptable.

The meeting is open to the public.

The London Road proposal may be controversial because the three 3-6 storey buildings planned are significantly higher than the terraced houses of London Road and it is adjacent to the Ark Elvin (formerly Copland) playing fields and the wildlife corridor bordering the Wembley Book.

It provides housing for homeless people on the Brent Council housing list, assisted living accommodation as well as privare housing and space for a community centre:

Full details HERE

Cabinet paper on  the London Road site HERE

Are Quintain's towers ruining Wembley?

The Ruin of London - Skyline Campaign from Barbara Weiss on Vimeo.

The video above is 2 years old but I thought it was worth posting as more towers are being thrown up by Quintain around Wembley Stadium. It is not just Central London that is affected.

100 years on from Balfour: What now for Palestine and Israel?

100 years on from Balfour: What now for Palestine and Israel?

Joint Brent Stop the War/Brent Palestine Solidarity Campaign Public Meeting

                                       Monday, October 9^th  7.30pm

Brent Mencap, 379-381 Willesden High Rd, London NW10 2JR

Bernard Regan  (author of The Balfour Declaration: Empire, Mandate and Resistance in Palestine’& Executive member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign)

Sahbi Benzid  (Hertfordshire NUT Membership Secretary and a recent visitor to Palestine)

A hundred years after its signing, Bernard Regan recasts the history of the Balfour Declaration as one of the major events in the story of the Middle East, which have polarised the region and the entire world. How can we help bring peace and justice to Palestine?

Israel is the only country in the world that systematically prosecutes children in military courts – between 500 and 700 each year.

Sahbi Benzid will report back on his recent visit, during which he visited several schools in Palestine and saw first-hand the effects of Israeli policies.

http://www.brentpsc.blogspot.co.uk/

brent2harrowpsc@outlook.com

Brent Mencap:  https://brentmencap.org.uk/about-us/how-to-find-us

Brent council housing now back in-house

Brent council housing officially came back in house yesterday making the demise of the arms length organisation Brent Housing Partnership.

Brent Council yesterday published the following information for tenants and leaseholders:

The council housing management services, previously provided by Brent Housing Partnership (BHP), have transferred back to Brent Council today.

The move follows a 12 week consultation with tenants and leaseholders earlier this year and a raft of improvements to council housing are planned over the next year including:

• More investment in up-to-date technology, such as a new smartphone app for simple transactions
• More joined up approach between housing and other council services, to provide a better customer experience for tenants and leaseholders
• A more responsive and flexible repairs service
• More and better targeted investment in estates, blocks and houses
• Review of service standards, to ensure we are delivering what residents want
• Better engagement of residents in decision-making about their homes and estates.

Tenancies are already held by the council so residents do not need to do anything differently and will still receive all the services they had access to under BHP. However, council tenants and leaseholders will notice a change of branding back to Brent Council which will appear on all official items including estate signage, website, social media, letters and ID cards of staff and contractors.

Councillor Harbi Farah, Lead Member for Housing at Brent Council said: “Housing is one of our most important services so it’s great that we’ve been able to bring it back in-house. Our tenants and residents can be sure that we’re committed to building on BHP’s good work and will know that we’re determined to deliver an excellent service across the board.”

Anyone who would like to help shape the new housing service can get involved by:

1. Taking part in a survey – to help with the new Customer Strategy. Surveys can be completed via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/HousingCustomerStrategy  
2. Attending a workshop – to ensure that information about Service Standards is clear, useful and complete
3. Taking part in some testing – of designs for a new smartphone app

Please visit the housing website for dates of workshops, app testing and further information.

October 18th deadline for comments on huge Cricklewood rail freight super hub

Reposted from  the NW2 Residents Association website LINK with their permission. Thank you.

Artist's impression of the proposed hub

Barnet Council plan to have a huge rail yard on the land behind Lidl, opposite the Cricklewood Bus Depot, at 400 Edgware Road. Planning permission has been applied for, and the public consultation ends on 18th October.

The land is owned by National Rail, and the freight company DB Cargo has a 125-year lease, due to expire in 2121. Their ambition is to make Cricklewood one of just three rail freight super-hubs in London, according to evidence given to a House of Lords transport select committee.

Freight trains will bring aggregate and other building materials to the yard at night. This will be offloaded and moved to storage areas. During the day lorries will deliver it to building sites all over London. The spoil from building sites will also be brought in by lorry and taken away by train.

The site footprint is approximately four times the size of Donoghues, and the application refers to an average of 452, rising to 800 HGVs per day. The site would operate Monday-Friday 7am to 7pm and on Saturday 7am to 2pm.

Local residents have raised enough environmental objections for the planning committee to delay a decision on a smaller temporary operation on the site; but the council posted the application for the permanent site the very next morning.

The main worries are:

• volume of traffic in an already congested and highly polluted area. Barnet has designated the A5 from Staples Corner to Cricklewood Lane as a focus area in need of air quality improvement. This will make it worse!
• effect of more HGVs on narrow roads such as Cricklewood Lane and Walm Lane, side roads and bus routes
• proximity of dirty industry to a conservation area, schools, the bus depot, supermarket, new flats at Fellows Square, housing in Brent
• pollution from irritant dust from the aggregate (aggregate is sand, gravel, crushed stone and rubble from demolitions, and so forth)
• noise of the operation and operating hours
• history of poor enforcement when regulations are broken
• possible effect on houses of vibration from heavy trains and lorries (the nearest houses are 19th-century, many others in the area are also 100 years old or more)
• possible effect on local water table
• general blight on residential areas.

The planning application is here; its reference number is 17/5761/EIA. You can add your comments and objections online there, or email the case officer Chloe.Thomson@barnet.gov.uk. The full site name is “Cricklewood Railway Yard, the land at rear of 400 Edgware Road NW2 6ND”. The deadline is 18 October 2017.

You could also copy local councillors in. Council elections are in May.
Barnet – Childs Hill ward
cllr.p.zinkin@barnet.gov.uk
cllr.j.cohen@barnet.gov.uk
cllr.c.ryde@barnet.gov.uk
Barnet – Golders Green ward
cllr.m.cohen@barnet.gov.uk
cllr.d.cohen@barnet.gov.uk
cllr.r.thompstone@barnet.gov.uk
Brent – Dollis Hill ward
cllr.parvez.ahmed@brent.gov.uk
cllr.liz.dixon@brent.gov.uk
cllr.arshad.mahmood@brent.gov.uk
Brent – Mapesbury ward
cllr.helen.carr@brent.gov.uk
cllr.lia.colacicco@brent.gov.uk
cllr.ahmad.shahzad@brent.gov.uk
Camden – Fortune Green ward
richard.olszewski@camden.gov.uk
flick.rea@camden.gov.uk
lorna.russell@camden.gov.uk

Film: The Night Cleaners - historic women's trade union struggle - Saturday 7th October Preston Library

OF – a little word makes a big difference.

Guest post by Philip Grant

A couple of months ago I was walking along Empire Way, for the first time in a while, when a new street name caught my eye: 

Palace Arts Way street name sign

Many people, new to the Wembley Park area, might wonder who or what “Palace Arts” is or was, and why a road should be called that. As someone with an interest in local history, I realised that the road is by the site of the former 1924 British Empire Exhibition Palace of Arts building, so why was the “OF” missing from its name?

I wrote a joint email to Quintain’s Wembley Park company and to Brent Council’s street names department, asking whether there was a mistake on the sign, and if not, why the “OF” was missing from the name. Brent replied promptly, saying that Quintain had submitted the naming application in 2015, and that all proposed names are subject to consultation with the emergency services (they sent me a copy of the London Fire Brigade guidelines on street names) before being approved. 

It was a couple of months before I received a full response from Quintain, but when I did it was clear that they had asked for the street to be called “Palace of Arts Way”. Brent had declined to accept that name, and they thought this was because “OF” was not permitted as a word in street names. Having checked the L.F.B. guidelines, there is no mention of “OF”, although it does say that new street names should not begin with “The”. It appears that the reason the name was shortened may be because the guidelines suggest that names of more than three syllables (before the suffix “Road”, “Street” or “Way” etc.) should be avoided.

Guidelines should be respected, but they are not strict rules. No doubt I am biased over this particular name, but surely common sense and respect for the heritage of Wembley Park should allow an extra, two-letter, syllable in this case? Just speak the names out loud. “Palace of Arts Way” has a soft flow to it, and would take no longer to say in a 999 call than “Palace Arts Way”, which has a hard sound between the first two words that forces you to take a short break in speaking them.

Why all this fuss over a little word? What is special about the Palace of Arts which means that it should be remembered in a street name? Let me share at bit more Wembley history with you.

As with much of Wembley Park’s story, it involves the British Empire Exhibition, which was held in 1924 and 1925. Like its larger neighbours, the Palaces of Industry and Engineering, the Palace of Arts (seen here in a postcard from the time) was one of the big reinforced concrete buildings showing off the best that Britain had to offer.

Palace of Arts 1924 postcard

A full range of arts and crafts were on show in the building’s many galleries, including paintings by leading British artists from the 18^th century onwards, and furniture in room settings from the same period up to the 1920’s. There was a sculpture gallery, and rooms displaying works by artists from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Burma. Other exhibits showed the development of architecture, pottery, paper-making, printing and bookbinding. One room sold works by current artists and craftspeople, with nothing costing more than half a guinea (now 52.5 pence, but worth rather more then), showing that art could be affordable to the general public.

One of the main attractions was Queen Mary’s Dolls House, which visitors had to pay an extra 6d (2.5 pence) to see - more than 1.6 million did so in 1924, with all the money going to charities nominated by the Queen. The project to make this was begun in 1921, with the 8ft 6in x 5ft x 5ft high mansion designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Hundreds of companies donated 1/12^th scale working models of their products (including piano-makers Broadwoods, who had a works in Kingsbury at the time). Leading artists created miniature paintings to decorate the rooms, and top authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy and Rudyard Kipling hand-wrote short stories and poems in tiny books for the dolls house’s library.

Packing up Queen Mary's doll house 1920's

After the Exhibition, the Dolls House was moved to Windsor Castle (where it can be seen today), with money from visitors to see it still going to charity. Although some of the Exhibition’s buildings were demolished after it ended, the Palace of Arts survived. It was used mainly as storage space for Wembley Stadium, and especially for the Empire Pool / Wembley Arena after that was built across the road in 1934 (you need somewhere to put the sections of the banked timber track, that you use for your annual six-day cycle race, for the other 359 days!).

Palace of Arts as BBC Broadcasting Centre for 1948 Olympics

 The building got a new lease of life in 1948, when the facilities at Wembley were used to host the Olympic Games. The BBC took over the building to provide the broadcasting centre for radio presenters and journalists from around the world who came to cover the Games. It continued to be used as the main base for the BBC’s outside broadcast unit until the Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush opened in the 1960’s. After that, the ageing structure began to fall into disrepair and, although it was a “listed building”, permission was given to demolish it in the early 2000’s. 

Palace of Arts awaiting demolition 2002

Basilica, Palace of Arts, November 2004

For a number of years the site remained derelict, and many local residents will remember the last, forlorn surviving part of the “Palace” alongside Empire Way. The Basilica had been a wing of the original building devoted to religious art. Before this part of the building was finally demolished, several beautiful mosaics were carefully removed, and one of these can now be seen in Brent Museum.

Cedar House, Emerald Gardens, on site of Palace of Arts

Quintain finally got round to developing this area of their Wembley Park estate around 2013. The blocks of apartments on the site are now called Emerald Gardens, fronting onto Engineers Way opposite the Arena. I admit that “Palace of Engineering Way” would have been too much of a mouthful, but I still think the little road along the back of Emerald Gardens should have been called “Palace OF Arts Way”.

Philip Grant