Newcastle

Housing Voice

10 Oct

Summary

Shieldfield Art Works (SAW) combines faith, art and community activism. Part church, part art gallery, part community space, SAW’s work builds community, showcases their area – Shieldfield in Newcastle-upon-Tyne – and provides a platform for local residents to voice their concerns about the issues affecting them.

Guided by local residents, SAW produces art which highlights the issues facing the local area. For example, they’ve guerrilla-planted wheat around the estate to provoke discussion on the use of public land in the artwork Shieldfield Wheatfield, collaborated with artist Andrew Wilson to film the stories of the residents in North East Enders, and put on an exhibition called Community not Commodities, featuring prints by Theresa Easton which ‘seek to enable the emotional value of home and communities’. In all of this, their art expresses the hopes and anxieties of the local community. They aim to encourage investment in local infrastructure, hold those making decisions to account and amplify the voices of residents.

They take a participatory, collaborative approach, although there are no formal democratic structures such as church meetings. Much of their work is informed by relationships with their community, including Dwellbeing, a research group made up of local community members and artists. Together, they research the issues faced by the community, and then they action arts-based responses to this. Dwellbeing’s thinking informs the SAW team’s decisions on what issues to highlight in exhibitions, and they even produce some of the exhibitions themselves.

Based in the building of the former Methodist church, SAW is rooted in faith. The team is overseen by a minister, and observes a cycle of prayer and rest. They also run Mixing Bowl, a weekly fresh expression of church based around art. Alongside time for prayer, Mixing Bowl has different artistic activities, along with a discussion topic each week, although conversations are usually free-flowing. Those who take part really appreciate the welcome they get, even though some of them may not call themselves Christians and often feel excluded from a more traditional church. There is a time of reflection at the end of each exhibition, when they sometimes perform a ‘funeral’, looking back at how it went and celebrating what went well. This ensures that SAW aren’t simply protesting, but instead imagining a new, better world: God’s kingdom.

Background

Shieldfield Methodist Church was dormant in the late 2000s, but the minister, Rev Rob Hawkins, believed it would be a mistake to sell the building, as it was in a strategic location useful to the church’s mission. He made a deal with Ramy Zack, the owner of a large commercial art gallery nearby called The Biscuit Factory, who offered a philanthropic investment to enable it to be reopened as an art gallery and community space. The space reopened in 2010 as The Holy Biscuit. As time went on, they found that activism and their community were increasingly important to their identity. The exhibition space became a tool to pull people in, rather than the main focus. Because of this, in 2019 they were renamed Shieldfield Art Works. Nonetheless, they see art as having a unique ability to change perceptions and help people to imagine something different, so this remains core to their work.

‘No pubs, no social club, there’s a church but it’s only small’ – Alison Merritt Smith, SAW.

Shieldfield is literally being wiped off the map. After years of neglect, with little investment in the community facilities that this area of social housing needs, some developers are rebranding it ‘Upper Ouseburn’. Ouseburn – part of the city’s cultural quarter – is expanding, threatening the cohesion of the existing community and driving up rents.

Land in Shieldfield is also being developed into private student housing. With students only living there for a short period, the area’s population is increasingly unstable, creating tensions in the community. Much of this land is owned by international investors, meaning that there’s little incentive for them to listen to the community’s concerns.

Treating housing primarily as a commodity is making it harder for many people to afford a home, but it’s also having a negative impact on communities. Their area is seen as a location prime for redevelopment, and some believe that the estate is being allowed to decline in order to make way for this.

‘Often when you’re talking to local residents, [they say] the students are to blame, but there’s bigger things going on here’ – Alison Merritt Smith, SAW.

Shieldfield’s residents love their area. They compare it to Eastenders. The difference, though, is that Shieldfield lacks the communal spaces that allow Albert Square’s community to flourish. Without a residents’ or tenants’ association, it is also difficult for residents to make their feelings heard. Churches are often the last community group left in an area, so we are key in responding to this. That’s why SAW’s work is so important.

Impact

Their activities involve between 100 and 150 people a week, while art on the exterior of their building is seen by thousands.
They are well-known in artistic and theological circles around the country, and this has brought Shieldfield to a wider audience.
SAW’s work helps community members to take pride in their art and their community.
Attendees of Mixing Bowl have felt excluded from traditional church – some identify as ‘queer Christians’, some only came to faith recently, and some would not describe themselves as Christian.
They have provided an informal interface for conversations between the academic community at the nearby universities and local residents, allowing research and activism from both sides to flourish. This, in turn, relieves tensions between outsiders, the students and long-term residents.
SAW’s reopening has provided one of the few community spaces in the area, and has retained a Methodist presence in the area.

What do you need?

Personnel

SAW has six employees, all working for approximately two days a week.
Pastoral oversight is provided by a Methodist minister, Rev Alison Wilkinson.
Their team is fairly young, although they had a wide range of experiences in art, theology and activism.
When they opened, there were just three staff – a director, the minister, and an intern.

Finances

Their running costs are currently around £80,000.
They are part-funded by a Connexional grant from the Methodist Church.
They also rely on some local authority funding.
They have received additional funding through other charitable trusts.
They would not have been able to afford the initial refurbishment and relaunch without a philanthropic investor.

Tips

Building your art and your theology on the issues affecting your community can make it feel more relevant, reinvigorating a church’s mission.
SAW encourages people not to try to ‘do too much’, because campaigns are often more effective if they are targeted.
However, they also encourage people to ‘be bold, think big. Change people’s expectations of what’s possible’ – being focused does not mean being unambitious.