On the 7th of May, the plan for UCL to demolish Carpenters Estate was scrapped. Read more in our press release.
On the 25th of October, Newham Council accepted UCL’s £1 billion proposal to build a new campus in Stratford. However, the site chosen for the new campus is the Carpenters Estate, a council housing estate with hundreds of residents set to lose their homes and community with the new plans, and many more who have already been forced out by the Council over the last decade. UCL’s process thus far has included little to no satisfactory consultation with residents and the wider UCL community, including students and academics (see UCL Urban Laboratory’s statement).
On the 31st of October, UCLU held an open meeting, ‘UCL Stratford: Bulldozing a Community?’ (click for minutes & more) with Carpenters residents, UCL academics, students and others to discuss the current proposals and to question whether this is how a university should act. One result of this meeting has been to start a public campaign to fight in solidarity with the residents against UCL’s current plans and to ensure that their demands are met. To get involved with the campaign, share ideas or to ask questions, please contact uclusavecarpenters@gmail.com and see below for upcoming events and meetings and for more background information. Please also look at UCLU’s policy passed in March 2012 regarding the new campus and the Carpenters Estate.
Table of Contents
Background information/relevant websites
Get involved:
Upcoming events/meetings
We’re having a follow up campaign planning meeting this coming week to discuss what we do next:
When: Wednesday, 14 November, 1-2pm
Where: Harrie Massey Lecture Theatre, 25 Gordon Street, UCL Union
Join & invite friends on Facebook!: Facebook event here /// UCLU Save Carpenters FB page here
If you’d like to submit agenda points, ideas for the campaign (particularly on info you’d like to see on the website!), or have any questions, contact uclusavecarpenters@gmail.com
Mailing list & online media
To join the mailing list, e-mail uclusavecarpenters@gmail.com
The UCLU Save Carpenters Estate Facebook page can be found here: invite your friends & share it!
Background information
Relevant websites
UCLU passed policy on the Stratford Campus and Carpenters Estate in March 2012. Read ‘Solidarity with the residents of the Carpenters Estate’ here (PDF) which includes background information and UCLU’s stance on the current proposals. For an alternative format to PDF, contact dco@uclu.org
To learn more about the campaign to save the Carpenters Estate check out the Save Carpenters campaign wordpress.
For the UCL Urban Laboratory statement on UCL’s new campus, visit their website here.
For UCL’s plans for the new Stratford campus, visit the UCL website.
For information from Newham Council on UCL’s proposal and the Carpenters Estate, see the Newham Council website.
See below for the videos shown at ‘UCL Stratford: Bulldozing a Community?’ and for more info on the Carpenters Estate.
Videos
‘London 2012 legacy: ‘The Olympics has cost me my home’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/video/2012/jun/13/london-2012-legacy-olympics-homes-video. (Embedding directly from The Guardian doesn’t work on here for the moment but do watch this one because it’s the best.)
‘Carpenters Estate’
‘Newham resident denied entry to home by police’
‘Newham resident challenges mayor over promises of secure housing - the Guardian’
News articles/press
***Coming soon***
Past events
31 October: ‘UCL Stratford: Bulldozing a Community?’ - minutes & more
Updates from the open meeting: On 31 October, UCLU held an open meeting in response to Newham Council approving UCL’s proposal to build a new campus in Stratford. Here are the minutes (doc) which include the videos shown at the beginning of the meeting. If you’d like to get on the mailing list, contact eeoo@uclu.org
UCL Stratford: Bulldozing a community?
Open meeting with residents of Carpenters, academics and campaigners.
Medical Sciences AV Hill Lecture Theatre
6-8pm, Wednesday October 31st
You may have heard that UCL is in negotiations with Newham Council to build a new campus of equivalent size to the Bloomsbury site in Stratford. You may not be aware however that the planned site for this development is the Carpenters Estate, currently inhabited by about 700 people. The plans will involve the demolition of the Estate, meaning the destruction of people’s homes, their community, their history.
As the proposals currently stand, UCLU is opposed to the redevelopment of the site into a UCL campus. UCL’s own Urban Laboratory states ‘ethical regeneration is only possible if community-led,’ but the residents of the estate have outrightly rejected UCL’s proposals. We believe that the university must be an ethical organisation; it must not be built on mass eviction. The promise of bringing jobs and business to the area seems crass, coming from an institution which still pays its cleaning staff below the London Living Wage, tripled its students’ fees, and accepts handouts from arms companies.
Is this how a university should behave? Come hear from Carpenters residents, housing experts and UCL insiders and make up your own mind - is UCL bulldozing a community?
https://www.facebook.com/events/331562460275775/
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 MINUTES: 31 October: UCL Stratford: Bulldozing a Community? (DOC) | 59.5 KB |