Is it really possible to know a place if you have never
lived in it? Existential philosophers have expressed an interest in sense of
place as 'lived experience'. They wanted to get to the very essence of place
through a study they called phenomenology.
On Wednesday last week, Cath, Iain and I hopped on a minibus
in Liverpool and came screeching, slap-bang, face to face with a tale of lived
experience so heartbreakingly poignant and electrifyingly angering that we have
been able to think of little else this week.
We didn’t live in that place, but through an incredible artistic
intervention we certainly experienced its phenomenology.
This was the Anfield Home Tour. Originally commissioned as
part of Liverpool Biennial, the tour is a careful weaving of personal
experience, literary talent, comedic improvisation and theatrical direction
that combine to tell a story, or many stories, of life in an area of housing
market renewal.
The tour reveals tension between insider and outsider accounts of Anfield's situation; the resulting 'insider' narrative is so rich in colour and texture that lived
experience in Anfield is brought into sharp focus.
Housing Market Renewal arrived in Anfield some fifteen years
ago. As ‘Carl’ our tour guide pointed out – the emphasis here is upon housing market renewal, not community renewal. In
his view, this has been a project entirely focussed on the future with little
regard to the ‘now’. The gleaming Keepmoat future has yet to arrive for many
who continue to live in Anfield, in a diverse housing stock of Victorian
terraces, some humble, some grand: five bedroom redbricks with period features.
These are the houses Phil and Kirsty dream of except for their ‘location,
location, location’. Because in Anfield residents have been told their location
is one of deprivation, undesirable, and their houses not good enough.
Conversely, as Jayne Lawless explained when our minibus parked outside what was
once her family home, “we didn’t feel deprived”.
Here stood the now ‘tinned up’ terrace in which Jayne’s
parents raised their family, both worked and Jayne had a comfortable home in a
safe and caring community. When they were just five years away from paying off
their mortgage, Jayne’s parents were forced to sell through compulsory purchase
order. They didn’t get a fair price and, for their new home, they had to take
on more debt which Jayne will be liable for when they pass away.
As did Bob, who climbed on board our minibus outside what was
once his home. A DIY enthusiast, he’d invested in his house over many years,
only to watch the damp creep in when surrounding properties fell empty and the council
failed to make them watertight. Hospitalised with pneumonia, kids setting fire
to empty houses on his street, he was finally delighted with his relocation. He
chose not to dwell on the money he lost in the transaction and the fresh debt
he’ll pass on to his offspring.
On and on the tour went, with one resident’s story layered
upon another until finally we were asked inside Sue’s house. Bought by her
grandma in 1920, she described the ways in which her family had modernised and
in turn restored this beautifully presented home. A compulsory purchase order
has hung over it for years and Sue still doesn’t know if she is staying or
going.
She hangs on as her surroundings
fall into the ‘controlled decline’ of absentee private landlords, antisocial tenants
and neglected empty houses from which flora grow through into the walls of
Sue’s loft space. Sue was barely able to conceal the emotional pain and burden
of stress this has weighed upon her for no small number of years.
At the conclusion of our tour, we disembarked at Homebaked.
Here over hot tea and fresh bread, we were reunited with all of this story’s
characters and they explained what they plan to do next…
HOMEBAKED
Jeanne van Heeswijk has been working with the community in
Anfield for the last two and a half years. Through the 2Up 2Down / Homebaked
project the community can take matters into their own hands. Here the community
have come together to reuse a block of empty property made up of a former
bakery building and two adjoining terraced houses.
They have set up the
Homebaked Community Land Trust, a cooperative organisation with its roots in
the
garden city movement. This will enable the collective community ownership
of the properties and the reopening of the Bakery as a social enterprise.
Visit the
Homebaked blog to see what they're up to
