image source, julia manning morton
Funded initiatives include efforts focused on local protests, homelessness in ‘cardboard cities’ and squatted Rastafari communities
Heritage projects across the capital are to receive part of a £180,000 grant from Historic England.
Child care workers’ strikes, homelessness in “cardboard cities” and long-term squatter Rastafari communities are among the eight projects that will benefit.
Tom Foxall, of Historic England, said the winners “shed important light on our working-class heritage”.
The group’s Everyday Heritage programme, launched in 2022, aims to showcase the diversity of England’s heritage.
This is part of the organization’s commitment to “enable a wider range of people to connect with, enjoy and benefit from our historic environment.”
So far, 57 projects have been funded across England, with a further 56 projects forming the latest list of funders, including eight in London.
“If the nursery teacher says no.”
Not-for-profit partnership On the Record will receive more than £12,000 for its plans to record and share the history of the Islington childcare workers strike 40 years ago, when around 160 people went on strike. Become.
image source, julia manning morton
After the strike, workers secured improved standards of care given to children.
The workers, mainly women, many from ethnic minority backgrounds, had called for child-to-staff ratios in childcare centers to be reduced.
After two strikes in 1984 and 1989, workers secured improved standards of care for children and created better working conditions for themselves.
This study could be a podcast, a radio theater, or an audio walking tour connecting daycare sites.
castle in municipal area
Kingswood Arts has been awarded £25,000 in funding to work with local people over a 12-month period to create a permanent exhibition exploring the working-class history of Kingswood House from 1811 to the present day.
Neighbors have recorded their experiences at the Grade II listed Victorian ‘castle’ in the middle of a council estate near Sydenham Hill station.
image source, Massey-Harris Company/Library and Archives Canada
Wounded Canadian soldiers stayed at Kingswood House, which was used as the Massey-Harris Sanatorium.
The initiative aims to trace working-class life from private homes to wartime hospitals and later times as libraries and community centres.
echo from the bridge
Eastside Community Heritage has been awarded more than £21,000 to commemorate the history of the ambitious working-class band, who played at Canning Town’s Bridge House pub from 1975 to 1982.
The venue has become a major live music destination, showcasing everything from Iron Maiden to Dire Straits, Chas & Dave to Depeche Mode, and raising the profile of bands such as Paul Youngs’ Q-Tips.
image source, Eastside Community Heritage/Barry Watts
This promotional shot for Q Tips, taken early on a Monday morning after a long weekend of gigs, became known as the “hangover shot.”
Bridge House was also one of the first pubs to launch its own record label.
As part of the project, oral histories and pop-up exhibits are planned to document the stories of those who came to socialize, hear and perform live music.
lost cardboard city
Heritage England is investing around 25,000 people in a project led by artists and homeless people who aim to create a ‘Cardboard City’, an encampment made of hundreds of cardboard boxes on the underpass between Waterloo Station and the South Bank. donated pounds.
image source, Eleanor Bentall
Benches dedicated to the homeless community form a key part of the Cardboard City project
The area was home to thousands of rough sleepers for two decades in the 1980s and 1990s, but according to St John’s Church charity The Bridges of Waterloo, many of the people who lived there were He is currently in poor health or has passed away.
The organization is currently exploring what they call “the area’s neglected homeless legacy” by speaking to former residents of Cardboard City, those who supported them, local residents, and examining items associated with that time. I would like to remember and commemorate him.
40 years and 40 stories from Chinatown
China Exchange has also been awarded nearly £25,000 to explore the hidden stories of people working in Chinatown, where more than 150 diverse businesses have been based there from 1985 to today .
image source, England History Archive
China Exchange said Chinatown is a workplace for thousands of ethnically, culturally and socially diverse Londoners.
The cultural events organization plans to publish and share stories of ordinary workers in Chinatown, including short and long-form recorded interviews.
History of the House of Horror
The House of Dread project aims to explore and document the untold stories of the Rastafari community at St Agnes Place in Kennington, believed to be London’s longest-standing squatter site. Become.
The squatter existed for more than 30 years and became a meeting place for the Rastafari community, and by the 1980s it became known locally as the House of Horrors.
Historian Dr Aleema Gray and a group of community producers will now work with Rastafari Movement UK to coordinate a series of community conversations and collection days.
They were awarded £24,980 to create digital learning resources to explore how and why St Agnes Place has evolved.
Tom Foxall, Historic England regional director, said: “There is so much hidden history to uncover here in London. Every community has a story to tell and we want to hear them. “I think so,” he said.
“This is the strength of our Everyday Heritage Grants Program, which funds projects that actually engage local people by being community-led and allowing them to research and tell their own stories. Offers.”