St Mary in the Community
Creatives call halt to disposal, seek link to castle.
Under an initiative co-ordinated on behalf of Hastings Creatives group by Glenys Jacques, trustee of Barefoot Opera and long-time collaborator on local theatre, film and arts projects, a petition will be delivered to Hastings Borough Council (HBC) next week calling upon it to register St Mary in the Castle as an Asset of Community Value (ACV).
A community body with a local connection is generally required to nominate a prospective ACV, but this can consist of an unincorporated group of 21 or more people who appear on the local electoral register. At the time of going to press, Ms Jacques’ petition had already attracted around 120 signatories, each of whom lives in the borough and claims a creative interest in St Mary as an arts venue and/or exhibition space. She was hoping this number would reach 200 by 1 February, when the petition is due to be served.
HBC put the property up for sale or lease with commercial agents Dyer and Hobbis in November, and leader Cllr Paul Barnett has stated that tenders for “future management options” have been invited for the council’s consideration by 4 February. But if, as seems likely, the council accepts the ACV nomination, it would result in a moratorium on disposal for a minimum of six months during which the local community can raise funds to mount a competitive bid.
Is this realistic? The Creatives group, led by Jess Steele of Hastings Commons and video entrepreneur Paul Walker, think so. As reported a fortnight ago in HIP 217, they propose that the council should link St Mary with Hastings Castle above as a single tourist attraction connected by a vertical stairway or lift shaft. Consulting engineers have pronounced this scheme technically feasible; costings, while steep, are capable of being justified on preliminary calculations of a business case. Historic England are said to be “very supportive” of the linkage idea, which should generate far higher footfall for the castle than the current viewings figure of 30,000 per year.
Most encouragingly, the Town Deal Board, of whom Ms Steele is a member, is reported to have shown “general interest” in the link project. The Board previously allocated a figure of £3.45m (out of their overall pot of £24m) to a stand-alone project which they have previously described as “Hastings Castle World Heritage Destination”, and apparently netted further potential match funding of £2.85m from other sources. But they have never exposed to any public scrutiny what is proposed. Could this be the plan they didn’t know they were looking for?
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I do think we need to be open to and aware of the dangers of allowing Jess Steele to absorb St Mary’s into her growing empire of buildings she claims are community based, but are actually just funnels for an ever increasing amount of public subsidy into her network of commercial organisations that are essentially property developers who exist to make profit. The majority of the social benefit the Hastings Commons claim to have produced is actually work done by rent paying tenants. Hastings Creatives, a local non-profit networking group, were charged £150 to use the Observer Building for their regular meeting tonight – and that’s with the bar open and making further profit for the OB. Is this the future model for St Mary’s?