How to Make Art That Brings Housing Justice – SPID Theatre / Riverside Studios, London

SPID take their story of community activism and social change on tour, using a workshop format to reach audiences far beyond their home in Kensal House.

How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice

Well this is a first. I haven’t received a certificate for attending any other event I’ve been to in connection with this blog. But How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice is not your typical evening at the theatre. SPID Theatre describe it as “a dramatized talk and accredited, interactive workshop”. Right up front, then, it asks something different from audiences.

But let’s take a step back. Who are SPID and what’s this all about? SPID Theatre are a company who focus on high quality youth theatre on council estates. The name stands for Social, Progressive, Interconnected, Diverse. It’s also a nickname of founder and artistic director Helena Thompson. SPID espouses values of integrity, empathy, endurance and humility. Since 2005, they have been based at the Kensal House Estate, which shares a landlord with Grenfell Tower.

If you’re not familiar with Kensal House (I wasn’t), it was the first modernist social housing project in the UK. Architect Maxwell Fry designed it in 1937 as an urban village. This included various shared facilities, including the Community Rooms now occupied by SPID. By 2005 they were Grade II* Listed but on the Heritage at Risk Register, which is what drew SPID here in the first place – at first in a squatting capacity.

In the intervening years they have produced multiple theatrical projects, changed lives of young people (and others) in the community, raised millions to restore the Community Rooms, won awards from RIBA for the refurbishment, and held the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to account. All this while navigating community tensions, particularly in the wake of the fire at Grenfell Tower and RBKC’s decision to invest in SPID’s restoration project. What a lot of experience to try to impart in a 70 minute workshop!

A Powerful Testament

Thompson developed How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice over the seven years it took to successfully navigate the arc from suing RBKC to completing the award-winning restoration. It has multiple threads. Participants start by exploring an archival exhibition about social housing. Next, they write down in eight words or fewer what housing justice means to them. A film plays in the background with information about SPID and Kensal House. Once the workshop gets properly underway we learn more about SPID and housing justice, before Thompson performs the dramatised retelling of her story. There are ample opportunities for active participation, including poetry reading and building model estates from boxes decorated by local young people. The workshop closes with a Q&A and meditation.

Thompson describes herself as an ‘artivist’. How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice is certainly a reminder of art’s power to enact social change. It’s also a reminder of the personal cost this can come at. Thompson doesn’t centre her suffering, or use this platform to dispute the charges sometimes levelled against her. Instead, the point is to understand the systemic forces at play here. The reasons for a council to neglect a listed building while using it as a reason not to undertake accessibility upgrades. The pitting of groups with shared interests against each other; the breakdown of trust. Thompson’s solution is to ensure that people’s voices are heard. A quote that resonated with me from the workshop was “you cannot persist in ignoring people if you understand their stories.”

As a final evolution of a work many years in the making, How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice deserves as broad an audience as it can muster. There are a couple of upcoming dates listed on SPID’s website. This includes an opportunity tomorrow (24 July) to see it in the Community Rooms at Kensal House. Whether you are a housing justice activist yourself, or just need a reminder of what art and theatre can do, Thompson has created a powerful testament to the integrity, empathy, endurance and humility that SPID embody.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

For future dates for How To Make Art That Brings Housing Justice, or other SPID projects, see here.