I'm in love: what's that song?*

Last weekend heralded the Vernal Equinox, when the days begin to get longer and lighter. The Wheel of the Year is on the turn, and Spring is starting to show its face. There are daffodils emerging outside St Peter's, and some beautiful crocuses in the city's lawns and squares (the pic to the left was taken outside Kings House last week - good work, CityParks!).

Anyway, I'd hoped that I'd be feeling more energetic and perky this week after one of the most epic bouts of SAD in living memory, but typically I've been laid low for the past few days with a malaise which (wit being in slightly short supply this evening, following a very disappointing tea) I can only refer to as Grandaditis.

Symptoms: after working all morning and having lunch, I am overcome by the most unusual urge to "just close my eyes while I listen to the Archers". Fast forward to 3.15pm and I awake, spluttering and jonesing for a nice cup of tea, to the sound of the You & Yours Budget Special (or something similar), having kipped all the way through the Afternoon Play [*hmm face*]. Good grief. I sincerely hope this is temporary as it's severely hampering my ability to, erm, do stuff in the afternoons. And it's making me feel ooooold.

Anyway, mindful of my recent vow to be a more regular correspondent, I just wanted to check in (before I pass out to the sound of the Shipping Forecast) for a quick round-up of musings and happenings since my last post:

1. Full Council last Thursday
This was a pretty depressing meeting, all in all, although we managed to pass our Notices of Motion on Maternity Services, and Letting Agents. Cllr Jason Kitcat has neatly summed things up here if you want the painful details.

Suffice to say that the unholy alliance between the Tories and Labour in voting together to: a) defer the debate on councillors' allowances until after the General Election, and b) to force through changes to the Council constitution which will curtail debate in the chamber, put me in mind of nothing so much as the end of Orwell's Animal Farm when "the creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." More evidence (as if any were needed) that Greens are the only real opposition in Brighton & Hove.

13 Greens Good: page 2 photo in the Argus - one for Glum Councillors, surely? ;)
13 Greens Bad: Tweeting from Full Council is now apparently under review (bah - and I've only just started doing the wretched Twitter thing)


2. Alex Chilton: December 28, 1950 – March 17, 2010
RIP Alex. I've had a hard time conveying who you were and just why the Box Tops and Big Star were so ace when I've commented on your untimely passing to other people, but your music will always remind me of being thirteen.*



3. Phoenix
After a period of thorough and well-executed consultation, Phoenix will be submitting planning applications for the redevelopment of their building by the end of March. Last week I had the pleasure of accompanying both Caroline Lucas and our new council Chief Exec to view the plans and meet some of the artists who work in the building.

Both my guests were extremely enthusiastic about the plans, and I felt very proud to be able to show Phoenix off to them. There are so many wonderful artists and makers working from the building, and I've got everything crossed that the applications will be successful, as the redevelopment is essential if Phoenix is to continue to provide affordable workspace, and to consolidate its work within the wider community. Not to mention making the building energy efficient. Or continuing to contribute to the city's economy [*administration priorities face*]. Watch this space...

4. Caroline was ace on Question Time
As Thursday night was Full Council and I was in the Chamber till gone 10pm, I couldn't indulge my habitual TV politics fix, so I did what any self-respecting geek would do and watched it again on iPlayer on Friday night. Believe me when I say that this was a pure treat. Well done that woman.

5. Social Media Tory Bashing
Ah, this and this is probably very old but both sites have been making me laugh a lot [*waves bye-bye to Phil Collins. Again.*]

6. Neil Harding is back! Back! BACK!
So the least I can do is to make more effort with this blog. Nice to have you back Mr Harding. You have been missed.

7. So is Ben Duncan
Cllr Duncan's official Kemptown PPC blog is finally launched :D Hurrah!

8. Ward stuff
Good meetings tonight with residents. The first concerned planning enforcement issues over a scaffolding site which is owned by the same developer to whom we lost an appeal to build on former railway allotments last year, and was kindly attended by the council's new Enforcement Manager, who comes with a formidable track record in securing the UK's highest ever enforcement fine (£150k, suckas). We'll know more in a month's time about whether we need to up the game in terms of the council considering taking legal action on this.

The second meeting was convened to discuss ongoing issues surrounding the introduction of a new residents' parking scheme in the streets immediately south of the railway tracks at London Road station. I'll be speaking to this at tomorrow's Environment Cabinet Member Meeting. And I'll say no more at this point, because there's been some deeply regrettable political fail occurring over this in the ward of late, and actually it's all just a little bit sad and unedifying. Suffice to say, it's a cowardly and cynical politician, local or otherwise, who refuses to engage with controversial or difficult matters merely for the fear of losing votes. And - as someone once said - I'm not like that.

A bientot.

*An unexpected side-effect of Alex Chilton's passing has been having the Replacements' eponymous paean to the great man permanently stuck on my internal jukebox for the past week. What a tune. A boyfriend put it on a mix tape for me when I was 15, and it still sounds as exuberant and fresh as it did when I first heard it 22 years ago. My eyes and throat have been aching with nostalgia and a yearning for times and things long past.

Playing Farm Town In Real Life

Those of you who may have had occasion to check out my Crackbook profile will know that "I only joined so I could play Farm Town". This is true. While Crackbook may be the vehicle of choice for cyber-stalking by jealous ex-lovers, and competitive sadding by the hysterical masses, I genuinely only joined so, erm, I could play Farm Town. Why? Well, I've been on the Allotments Waiting List in Brighton & Hove for nearly six years now, and (as Diana Ross once said) I'm still waiting.

I first got the allotment bug a decade ago when my sister kept a plot just around the corner from her home in the South Manchester Muesli Belt. Her set up was ideal - a utopian exemplar of benevolent Victorian town planning, with a series of terraced cul-de-sacs abutting a field of allotments literally a minute or two's walk away. We spent lots of happy times there together, digging, mulching, planting things, and eventually pulling up tasty veg (not to mention enjoying a glass of wine in the evening sun after our labours). I was hooked*.

Anyway, when I moved back to Brighton in 2004, I immediately put my name down on the waiting list for a plot on a site about five minutes' walk away from home. There are only ten plots on this site, and the list subsequently closed in 2006.

Even though the Council has now taken the sensible decision to halve plots as they become available (thus doubling capacity and making plots more manageable), such is the shortage of allotments in my immediate vicinity (ie walkable within twenty minutes) and the demand for allotments city-wide, I suspect I will have moved house before I get anywhere near the top of the waiting list.

And although I probably could join a shorter waiting list for a site which is not within reasonable walking distance, I'm not interested if it means having to drive to get there - to me, this pretty much defeats the object, and would definitely diminish the pleasure of having my own plot in terms of hassle.

So I'm really not kidding when I say I only signed up to Crackbook** so I could play Farm Town - I know it's a bit donkey eyes***, but I had resigned myself to the fact that being a cyber-food-grower was the closest I was going to get to having my own patch of land for a long time.

With this in mind, you can imagine how ridiculously chuffed and excited I was when I heard late last year that a pilot food-growing garden was going to be set up in my ward, in Preston Park itself. The pilot is one of a number of initiatives set up by Harvest Brighton & Hove, as a joint project being delivered by the B&H Food Partnership and Food Matters, along with several other groups across the city.

Local food growing is a cornerstone Green Party policy, and since 2007 Greens on the Council have been pushing this. Cllr Paul Steedman in particular has done some excellent work via the City Sustainability Partnership, and with reference to Harvest, I was delighted to sponsor BHFP's original (successful!) £0.5m Lottery Food Fund bid, which is now providing funding for the Harvest portfolio of projects that focus on growing, cooking and eating more local food.

The official ground-breaking for the Preston Park demo garden took place yesterday afternoon >>>>>

It was excellent to meet the Harvest team in the flesh (after lots of emails), and I'm really looking forward to checking the work rota tomorrow to see when I can next go along to help out. The plot's been marked out, and now the hard work starts - building raised beds and sorting the fencing out first (sadly security measures will need to be in place to deter vandalism), then the fun bit of prepping the soil and planting the seeds and bulbs.

The beauty and the whole point of the demo garden is that (hopefully) it will show people how easy it is to grow your own food in a very small space - Mr K had speculated that it would be like an allotment in a park, but it's much smaller than that (4msq?), which reflects the fact that many people in B&H have titchy patios or balconies, and it's all about making the best use of the space you've got.

What's also particularly sweet is the evident whole-hearted support of the Tory administration (two of whom were in evidence at the demo garden launch yesterday - wonder where the Preston Park Labour councillors were?): we've come a long way since Greens submitted our response to the Core Strategy in August 2008, when Paul and I were told point blank that local food-growing wasn't a priority for the administration.

Maybe it's a cynical vote-grabbing exercise, maybe it's the zeitgeist - I don't really care as long as we keep making progress on this.

A massive well done to the Harvest team - can't wait to get my hands dirty ;)

* Despite the surfeit of Rainbow Chard one year [*blech*]

** Speaking of Crackbook - this is quality and pure lulz

*** Family expression for something which makes one feel ineffably sad

Actually, this IS serious

Having been variously damned with faint praise and savaged by a dead sheep in recent days over the lack of *proper politix* on this blog of late, I vowed yesterday to devote some time to blogging about serious matters in coming days.

But I didn't expect things to become quite so serious quite so quickly.

This afternoon I got a call from The Argus. There has been a stabbing incident at Hove Park School today.

I have been campaigning with Prestonville parents over the last few months over many issues at Hove Park - poor GCSE results, an inadequate school bus service, discipline problems - but this is a terrible new low.

Thankfully the child on the receiving end isn't seriously injured, but nevertheless this is still an extremely serious and distressing incident. I have demanded and expect to get some answers from the LEA over the next day or so regarding an urgent plan of action on this.

Very, very sad and shocking news.

Baking for Equal Pay Day

Today was Equal Pay Day.

Women working full-time earn on average 17% less per hour than men working full-time. For ethnic minority women, the gap is even higher at 20%. For women working part-time compared to men working full-time the gap is 36% per hour – rising to 45% in London.

Today, working women effectively received their last pay cheque of the year. This is because the 17% full-time gender pay gap is equivalent to men being paid all year round while women work for free after the 31st October.

The excellent Fawcett Society works hard every year to highlight this important issue by co-ordinating a series of events across the country to raise awareness, and to put pressure on the Government to reform legislation so that this disgraceful inequality in pay is outlawed and brought to an end.

So this morning Brighton & Hove Greens converged on Brighton station, to collect signatures for Fawcett's petition on Equal Pay, and to give out free biscuits to commuters with low blood sugar - with a 17% chunk missing to give them food for thought as well.

















I baked my contribution last night (above).

I used this recipe, and these handy icing pens for (*ahem*) the Propaganda, and they were very tasty biscuits indeed.

But sadly not quite sweet enough to replace the bitter taste in my mouth whenever I think about the facts of pay inequality in the UK.

We got an average of three signatures per minute :) I love proper campaigning :D

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Just as I was about to switch the crackberry off on Wednesday night, I got an email from the Planning Inspectorate informing me that a recent appeal by a developer seeking to build on former allotment land adjacent to London Road station had been allowed.

I can't begin to say how gutted I am about this. This site has history - as does the developer.

I was approached by the Friends of London Road Allotments (FLORA) in autumn '07, when a previous application to build nine poky flats on this previously undeveloped site (which is an urban haven for wildlife including slow worms) was the subject of a planning appeal by informal hearing. We defended this appeal successfully, and residents and councillors alike started to brace themselves for the next application.

This latest application was for four three-bedroom dwellings. When this was again refused by Local Planning Authority officers, the developer decided to take it all the way to a Public Inquiry - no doubt flushed by the success earlier this year of the Highcroft Villas PI (a site which was also former railway allotments and owned by the same developer [hmm]). He even used the same barrister - one of the top Planning barristers in England & Wales.

All that money. For four tiny houses. At the expense of not only the public purse (the council did their absolute best to defend the refusal and hired an equally top-flight Planning barrister), but also at the expense of the considerable mental, physical and emotional energies of the residents involved with FLORA, and of course to the detriment (to the point of annihilation) of the wildlife on the site, and the fact that this is a much-loved patch of urban greenery in the midst of the city.

This bitterly disappointing decision comes after years of campaigning by FLORA, residents and councillors.

Despite the fact that FLORA amassed a huge body of evidence to demonstrate that the site had been used as allotments and had never been built on, the Planning Inspector still chose to allow the appeal by Kingsbury Estates Ltd.

The Council fought hard against this, but sadly all our efforts weren’t enough to protect this site. Now this urban oasis, which is a haven for slow worms and other wildlife, will be lost forever, and I have profound concerns for the preservation of other cherished open spaces in our city.

The Inspector cited the Highcroft Villas PI and the recent granting of permission for development on a greenfield site at Princes Road as precedents for allowing the London Road station appeal.

This decision comes as Local Planning Authority officers are hard at work on the new Local Development Framework (LDF), which will replace the current Local Plan in 2010. The LDF contains an Open Spaces Study which seeks to protect urban green spaces, whether publically accessible or not.

But now I'm genuinely fearful that the Open Spaces Study will be severely weakened by this latest decision from the Planning Inspectorate, and that it will become virtually impossible for the Council to fight development proposals affecting inner-city green land.

It is deeply depressing to think that all the hard work that officers have put in to developing robust policies to protect urban open spaces has been totally undermined by the Planning Inspectorate. As a city, we are hemmed in by the sea and the South Downs, and these valuable pockets of wildlife habitat are quite rightly much-loved by the residents who live nearby.

Sadly it may now become impossible for us to protect these sites, despite the best efforts of officers, councillors and residents alike. This is a grim day for the Planning system in Brighton & Hove.

So much to blog about, so little time...

Hello readers! Sorry to be a bit on the quiet side over the past few days.

I'd love to be able to say that my recent radio-silence has been due to a (much-needed) holiday, but the truth is I've just been up to my eyeballs what with one thing and another (Goldsmid, campaigns, committee work, ward case work, meetings etc etc).

The problem with being so busy Doing Stuff is finding the time to blog about it... but now I'm back! Back! BACK! (as Smash Hits used to say). For this evening and tomorrow morning at least. More to follow shortly (in bite-size chunks - no-one wants to be accused of being TL:DR).

Last week I was mostly...

I've just returned from a long weekend Up North seeing my folks, which was lovely. I've been without broadband for a few days (insert your own joke about Northerners here), so I thought I'd do a quick round-up of last week's happenings before getting on with this week's work.

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London Road CPZ

The majority of correspondence I received from residents last week concerned controversial proposals to introduce a new Controlled Parking Zone in the area around London Road station.

Residents in the affected streets have now received consultation packs - whether they're for or against, people need to make their voices heard, so I hope the response rate is good.

I think my fellow ward councillor Cllr Kevin Allen is trying to set up a meeting with Highways officers about the proposed scheme - hopefully I'll hear more in the next few days.

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From Bra Wars to Bosom Buddies

The Bra Recycling photocall finally went ahead on Tuesday morning!

Dramatis personæ from l-r in first pic: Cllr Dee Simson, Leonie Petrarca of The Pink Dolphin Appeal, Cllr Jayne Bennett, Cllr David Watkins, me, and Cllr Gill Mitchell with the first batch of bras to be donated to the collection point at The Level (Pictures: Hannah Brackenbury 16/06/09)

I'll leave it to readers to come up with their own captions...

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Prestonville Town Square?

On Tuesday I also met with Marek from the Prestonville Community Association to discuss an idea floated by residents for a 'Town Square' for the Prestonville community.

We met outside the Chimney House, and were joined by Lee Davies of Conran & Partners and Ben Meekings of Project Centre, a highway design consultancy and landscape architecture practice who have worked on a number of award-winning street schemes.

Marek has blogged about this, but the basic idea is along the lines of the Home Zone model, where cars are still allowed to use the road, but don't have priority over pedestrians or cyclists.

This is a really exciting idea. As you'll see from the pix below, there's loads of space where Upper Hamilton Road meets Buxton Road, so there'd be no need to lose any parking, and hopefully better siting of the bicycle racks too.

This is still very much an embryonic idea at the moment, but it was an excellent meeting - thanks so much to Lee and Ben for giving up their time to come and discuss it with us.

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Green New Deal at the UNISON Fringe

Also on Tuesday (it was a bit of an epic day), I took part in a panel on the Green New Deal at the UNISON Conference Fringe, organised by David Arnold (UNISON National Policy Officer for Green Issues).

My fellow panellists were Paddy Tipping MP, Lucy Pearce (Stop Climate Chaos coalition), Caroline Fife (UNISON South East Business & Environment officer), and Sarah Pearce (TUC Green Workplaces Project).

I was really pleased to be invited to take part, and enjoyed the Fringe session immensely. The other members of the panel spoke very passionately about the work they're doing in their respective fields in trying to advance some of the ideas contained within the Green New Deal, and the audience asked some excellent questions. It was also really heartening to hear just how much work the Trade Union movement is doing in engaging members with promoting sustainability in the workplace.

The hour passed very quickly, and I would have really liked more time for the questions, especially from the Planners present. I hope I get asked back next year!

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Preston Park Access

On Thursday I met with Preston Park Avenue residents to discuss their continuing campaign for a pedestrian access ramp into Preston Park at the northern end of the street.

Last October I presented a petition about this to the council (signed by over 300 residents), but little progress has been made since then, partly due to the uncertainty surrounding the implementation of plans for a parking scheme and associated landscaping works (which were due to include the access ramp) within the park itself.

I'm now trying to get to bottom of this, and will be putting a question to the Cabinet Member for the Environment at Full Council on July 16th.

The bottom line is that, with two Nursing Homes at the northern end of Preston Park Avenue, an access ramp is sorely needed . The photo above shows the nearest ramp, opposite no. 20 - about halfway up a very long road, and hundreds of yards away from the Nursing Homes.

Are residents going to have to wait another summer before access into the park is improved?

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This week is set to be a bit quieter, but having been away for a few days I've got some catching up to do (*eyes exploding Inbox*). And I am now going out for this evening's Green Group meeting.

Woodcuts & Trees

This time last week Mr K & I took a lunch break together, and went along to Brighton University on Grand Parade for some tucker and to view the last day of the end of year degree shows for the Faculty of Arts & Architecture.

Lunch in the canteen was a total bargain at around £2.50 each - I had ricotta tortellini and it was lovely. Highly recommended for cheapness and tastiness, plus ambience - there was a jazz quartet playing in the marquee in the courtyard :)

The shows were great as always - I feel so proud to live in a city with such an amazing art college. Here are a few tasters, from architecture to ceramics:

The textiles were as wonderful as always (sadly no pix as visitors are understandably forbidden from taking photos), but my favourite this year was these wood cuts:

I just love the jolly pussycats' faces :)

Well done and thank you to all the students whose work I enjoyed - sorry I can't credit you (I will try and remember to make a note of people's names next year - it was all a bit whistle-stop this time unfortunately).

The quality and abundance of all this beautiful work made me realise how important it is to keep campaigning for more affordable creative workspace in Brighton & Hove, especially for young artists and makers who are just starting their careers.

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Afterwards, en route to the local party office to stuff some envelopes for the Goldsmid by-election, I passed through the 'Walking Woods', a temporary 700-tree mini-forest in Victoria Gardens, just outside the Sallis Benney building.


Ben Duncan wrote an excellent post about this installation, which was designed by architecture student Lucy Palmer, and partly funded by SEEDA as part of the 'Places from Spaces' project.

‘Places from Spaces’ aims to encourage new design thinking for urban public spaces. By working with students from local universities to create temporary landscaping installatons, the theory is that communities can "test" creative schemes for transforming public spaces, asking "what if?" – what might be possible in reinvigorating our shared places?

What a pleasure for the senses. I was sorry I didn't have more time to just hang out in this wonderful temporary arboretum and enjoy it - but it started to rain and duty was calling.

As I left the Gardens and began to make my way up North Road, I couldn't help pondering the vast ideological chasm between SEEDA's laudable intentions and the local Tories' plans (or lack of) for Victoria Gardens, and the green spaces to the south and north of the site (known collectively as Valley Gardens).

Praise where it's deserved: under the last Labour administration, officers had begun work on radical plans to transform Valley Gardens, reducing car traffic and making pedestrianisation a priority. The car-obsessed Tories have now dropped this like a ton of hot bricks.

More recently, in our response to the Core Strategy for the emerging Local Development Framework, Greens criticised the lack of provision for local food growing within the inner-city, and suggested that parts of Valley Gardens could be used for community food projects. Again, this went down like a cup of cold sick with our Conservative chums.

I wonder if David Cameron knows how short-sighted and blinkered his colleagues are in Brighton & Hove? Vote Blue Get Green my derrière.

Thanks nevertheless to Lucy for a beautiful if temporary glimpse of what the future might hold. What if, indeed?


PS The brown grass in the forefront of this picture is not part of the installation. It's the annual post-Ladyboys of Bangkok witherment... (hmm)

Weekending

Apart from a spot of leafleting in Goldsmid earlier this evening, I am taking it easy this weekend after a rather epic week. The predominant theme was trying to catch up on council work following the Euros. Here's a bit of a round-up:

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On Monday, I had a meeting at the Phoenix with fellow Trustees and senior council officers to discuss plans to refurbish the building.

I've got a soft spot for this modernist landmark, but it's urgently in need of an upgrade and a makeover, not least because there are real problems with solar gain in parts of the building.

RH Partnership are the architects for the project, and they've done an excellent job with the initial design concept:

The design's moved on somewhat since the image above was produced, but this should give you a flavour of the proposals. It's all very exciting, not least because Phoenix are aiming to self-fund the project. I'm hoping pre-application discussions with the Planning officers will happen over the next couple of months.

On Monday evening we had a Group meeting, which included a presentation by CityClean officers regarding the new Waste Strategy for Brighton & Hove. Obviously Greens are always going to be hard to satisfy when it comes to the way in which the city currently manages its refuse and recycling, but there are some surprisingly good proposals in the emerging document.

Sadly nothing as yet regarding taking action on the plastic containers and cutlery used by food retailers on the seafront and throughout the city, but I'm going to keep pushing on this. If we can introduce compulsory biodegradable / compostable vessels and cutlery at events in Brighton & Hove, it will be easier to make the case to local businesses I hope.

And the Supermarket Summit is back on! Apparently.

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Tuesday was devoted to ploughing through my groaning Inbox and dealing with emails, and on Wednesday I had a Planning Committee meeting, preceded by a meeting (wearing my Deputy Convenor hat) with Cllr Brian Oxley in which he outlined his aims as Chair of the Governance Committee over the next municipal year, and asked for feedback from the Green Group on his proposals (guys, if you're reading this, I'll be typing up the notes on Monday).

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On Thursday morning I met with a senior CityParks officer to discuss a request from residents on Preston Park Avenue for an access ramp into the park at the northern-most end of the street. This is an ongoing campaign, and I'll be posting more about this soon.

I had a cultural lunchtime, and then went up to the local party office to stuff envelopes for the Goldsmid campaign with Ben and our friend Alison. After a quick dash home to eat and see Mr K, it was back out for a local party bash at Moksha, to celebrate our success in the Euros.

Dr Caroline Lucas MEP & Cllr Keith Taylor

The lovely Moksha people had made us little cupcakes with green icing :) and a jolly good time was had by all.

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I had meetings throughout Friday morning, with Tourism officers, and then with Planning & Enforcement officers regarding sites adjacent to London Road station. Again, the latter concerns an ongoing campaign, and I'll have more to say on this over coming weeks.

After lunch and a whizz through some emails, it was back to the local party office for yet more envelope stuffing with Jason, Phelim and local party Chair Simon. Four thousand envelopes later, we were finished by 10pm - and retired to the pub.

*phew*

The ongoing saga of Anston House

In a few weeks' time it will be two years since developers bulldozed protected trees on the notorious Anston House site, sparking local outrage.


In October 2007, I presented a petition to the council signed by hundreds of residents, which resulted in the eventual prosecution and fining of the developer earlier this year - the first time Brighton & Hove City Council has taken legal action on the illegal felling of trees covered by Tree Protection Orders.

Conveniently enough, the developer declared himself bankrupt a few days before the case came to the Crown Court (hmm), thus escaping the maximum fine of £20,000 per tree. And now council officers are having difficulty in tracking him down in order to re-serve a Section 215 notice requiring him to tidy the land...

Several residents have contacted me over recent months asking when action is going to be taken to clear the site, and I met with Planning Enforcement officers last week for an update. It seems the s215 notice they served earlier in the year was not officially registered as having been received, so unfortunately the only option is to re-serve it, by hand to the registered company offices.

Once the s215 has been re-served, the landowner will have 8 weeks to clear the site, removing all the rubble, building materials, parked up vehicles etc. If no action is taken by the landowner by the end of this period, the council will employ contractors to clear the site, placing a charge on the land.

I'm disappointed that it's taking so long to get somewhere with this: the site is in a truly shocking state. I'll be asking for an update from officers later in the week to get confirmation of the revised timescales for action on this.


In the current economic climate, in my opinion it's highly unlikely that anything will be built on the site anytime soon... Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the Lewes Road community gardeners' book once the land has been cleared?

The 99p Exhibition: you do not have to make work about money, but you have to make work without money

From eco-art to cheapo art: Mr K & I also checked out the 99p Exhibition while we were in town yesterday. It's part of the Brighton University end of year shows, featuring work from first year Critical Fine Art Practice students.

Fittingly for an exhibition of work made from materials costing no more than 99p (see rules to the left), these enterprising first years have negotiated a free short-term lease on the old Music Library, which has been empty for several years.

This is a wonderful space: I think I enjoyed being inside this stately and dilapidated building as much as I enjoyed the work on display.







Jeffrey Cervantes: Three Falling





Carianne Whitworth: Fabrication


Well done to all the students whose work is featured in the 99p Exhibition - there are some excellent pieces, and the spirit of the project is very in keeping with the times - yo, the zeitgeist!

Congratulations are in order too for bringing the old Music Library back into use, albeit temporarily. Empty property is one of my personal bugbears, and there's lots of it in Brighton.

Happily, there's also a long and illustrious history of squatting in Brighton. Local hero Harry Cowley commandeered empty houses for servicemen returning from both World Wars, and now groups like Slack Space Brighton are working across the city to identify empty property which could be used for short-term creative projects.

The shortage of affordable workspace is a real problem for the creative industries in Brighton & Hove, a sector which employs around 10% of the city's workforce, and which generates millions annually for the local economy.

Brighton has about 20 organisations of various sizes offering space to artists (the largest being the 55 studio Phoenix Arts Association, of which I'm one of the Trustees), but there is nowhere near enough cheap studio space to satisfy the growing demand.

Earlier this year, the Guardian ran a story on a growing movement of artists transforming empty high street shops into galleries and studios. At the same time, Brighton & Hove council officers were working on trying to come up with practical solutions to meet the city's need for more affordable creative workspace, including looking at models used by artist-led projects in London.

But is the political will there to actually do anything to bring empty property back into use in Brighton & Hove? Green councillors called on the Tory Administration in February to produce an audit of empty property across the city: the Tories rejected it out of hand.

We'll keep calling for action on disused buildings in Brighton & Hove, but it the meantime it seems that direct action may be the most effective solution to the problem of buildings being left to rot while so many people are crying out for space in which to produce work. Go first year students and Slack Space Brighton!

Dirty Beach

Gorgeous day today. Mr K & I headed for the seafront, taking in Chloe Hanks & Lou McCurdy's Dirty Beach exhibition on the way.

I first got to know Chloe and Lou when I called on the Council to take action on single-use plastic bags in Brighton & Hove way back in October '07: Chloe is the founder of Plastic Bag Free Brighton, and Lou was then working on her More Plastic Than Plankton project.

Although the Tories have reneged on their supposed commitment to [*ahem*] "eliminate" the free issue of plastic bags in the city (not appropriate in the "current economic climate", apparently - hmm), it's great to see that Lou and Chloe are still pressing the point that disposable plastic and other litter is damaging our environment, and making thought-provoking art in getting this message across.


The exhibition was excellent, and has attracted rave reviews from the Times (amongst others) during the recent Festival. Lou's textural panels (made from the plastic flotsam she gleans from local beaches) contrast wonderfully with graphic designer Chloe's (100% bio-degradable!) eco-graffiti. Here are some highlights:


















Chloe takes advantage of the snow!

Anyone for tennis?

Hanksy at large


Well done Lou & Chloe, and thank you for a wonderful free exhibition - keep up the good work.

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From one Dirty Beach to another: Mr K & I continued our peregrinations down to the seafront, with our sights set on a tasty smoked fish sandwich from The Brighton Smokehouse for lunch. As we waited in the queue, I admired their sign:



































Look! The fish is smoking! :0


While it was great to see traders doing so well today on the seafront, sadly our hunger got the better of us, and after 10 minutes' queuing we decided to head over to the Kemptown side of the beach (where it's generally quieter) in search of lunch, finally hitting upon the fish & chips joint near the Crazy Golf.

"Do you think this fish is from sustainable stocks?" asked Mr K wryly. I guessed not, as I eyed up the plastic debris eddying round the cafe tables:


































Two things:

1. What is wrong with people? There are bins every ten yards or so on the beach. For pity's sake, please pick up your litter and bin it, you lazy idiots. As they say in Suffolk, don't be a tosser.

2. If Glastonbury Festival can stipulate that all food traders use biodegradable / compostable / recyclable plates & cutlery etc, what is stopping Brighton & Hove City Council from working with traders to introduce similar measures on the seafront?

More on this soon I hope, in conjunction with work I've been doing on sustainability at events in the city...