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Category Archives: JRS website
The New Cross Massacre / The Deptford Fire / The Black People’s Day of Action
Black People’s Day of Action Continue reading
Posted in Deptford, JRS website
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Thoughts about Hastings Pier 10 years after the fire
Today is my daughter’s 20th birthday. A decade ago she spent her 10th birthday in the shadow of the still-smouldering Hastings Pier fire. I had been up all night, watching from the White Rock Hotel while our beloved pier was … Continue reading
Posted in Hastings, Hastings Pier, JRS website, Piers, Seaside
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Crisis, Recovery, Transition, Legacy
“Provide hope and inspiration for collective action to build collective power to achieve collective transformation. Rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams.” Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter, 2013 “Hope offers us clarity that, amid the uncertainty … Continue reading
Posted in Hastings, JRS website, Policy, Thinking
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Thoughts in a crisis
I’m finding it hard to begin this but I want to share some thoughts and an update, so here goes: We are all reeling. We are what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick called ‘Paranoid Readers’, desperately searching for information and meaning across … Continue reading
Posted in Jericho Road Solutions, JRS website, Thinking
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How the Money Works Part 2: Rock House
(See also Part 1: Hastings Pier: How the Money Works) Until we as citizens understand ‘how the money works’ when it comes to developing land and buildings we will always be disadvantaged – land and buildings are where power is … Continue reading
Posted in Hastings, JRS website, Self-renovating neighbourhoods
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Hastings Pier… 3 things you can do to help
“There are battles you think you’ve won, only to discover you need to fight them all over again” – Jonathan Freedland, Guardian 28/4/18 At first, when the Hastings Pier Charity was put into administration in November 2017, it seemed terrible … Continue reading
Posted in Hastings Pier, JRS website
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Investing Upside Down (ppt)
Here’s a link to the slides I showed yesterday at the Labour Party #NewEconomics conference in Southampton. Plus the narrative notes. Investing Upside Down – Jess Steele Investing Upside Down – narrative
Friends Again!
Friends of Hastings Pier reestablished 2018 Continue reading
Posted in Hastings, Hastings Pier, JRS website, Piers, Seaside
2 Comments
I am losing my heart to Ore Valley
I feel like a love-struck teenager. I’ve always been in love with places, and always attracted to the underdogs – my towns Deptford and Hastings and all the other-people’s-places that I fall in love with: Blackpool, Scarborough, Bradford, Greater Manchester, Liverpool 8. If … Continue reading
New Year’s Honours
I am delighted to have been awarded an OBE for Services to Community Assets in the New Year’s Honours list, largely for my role in the rescue of Hastings Pier from closure in 2006 to reopening in 2016. Jericho Road Solutions helps … Continue reading
Posted in JRS website, Uncategorized
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America Ground Pow Wow!
The first America Ground Pow Wow, held on 6th October, aimed to maintain and expand a local conversation which was kicked off by White Rock Trust earlier this year to ask the questions: is gentrification happening, if so is it a … Continue reading
What’s happening to Hastings?
Change is underway… The Pier will reopen next spring. Local businesses will see footfall improve and new business are already opening up. After years in which the powers-that-be ignored our seafront in favour of ‘grade A’ offices and White Rock … Continue reading
Posted in JRS website, Uncategorized
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Ground Control?
The building at 49-51 Cambridge Road Hastings needs a new name. What about Ground Control? Continue reading
Posted in Hastings, Jericho Road Solutions, JRS website, Meanwhile, Uncategorized
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Roller-coaster week
It’s been a roller-coaster week here in Hastings. Since handing over the pier project to Hastings Pier Charity, the White Rock Trust has been focusing on the wider neighbourhood and on the second most challenging building in town – the … Continue reading
21 years of regeneration – revisited
It’s 21 years since I published Turning the Tide: The History of Everyday Deptford. At that point ‘the present’ was full of regeneration programmes. What was their impact? What did we learn? What should be done differently in future? On April … Continue reading
Posted in JRS website, Uncategorized
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Spinning Plates 