Britt Jurgensen is a co-producer of Homebaked, a co-operative bakery and community land trust on a street near Liverpool Football Club, on the premises of the former Mitchell’s Bakery. Starting from the bakery building, the CLT propose a larger scheme of community-led development and regeneration of parts of the high street, providing workspace for social enterprises affordable housing and recreation.
We showed by the example of a profitable business that there is value in that place.
What’s your name?
My name is Britt Jurgensen. I live in Liverpool, in Anfield, just behind the LFC stadium. It’s a fantastic neighbourhood to live in. It has an old school structure so people still marry down the road. They know each other. It was blighted through regeneration and it’s also been a troubled neighbourhood. It’s one of most deprived wards in the entire country. It doesn’t feel like it when you live there though. It depends what deprivation means.
What was the moment you decided to get involved in the trust?
I don’t think I wanted to get involved in CLTs originally. I wanted to get involved in housing. I moved into that neighbourhood and I saw what was happened or had happened and I wanted to do something about it – I wanted to change that. And I also wanted to find a sense of belonging. I’m not a UK national. I’ve lived in Liverpool for a very long time but I’m not from there and I used to tour and travel. So I started working with people in my neighbourhood as a way of meeting people really.
How do you fit it in?
It fits in with my work. I’m an artist and I work in public areas to make neighbourhood art. So I come at neighbourhood questions with an arts perspective and process. I just fit it in where and when and then I also work, paid, for the CLT at the moment, for a day a week in community engagement.
What’s been your proudest moment?
In the summer of 2013 we were ready to open our neighbourhood bakery. This is building that we thought we would have to open our bakery in. It’s a very important bakery in the neighbourhood, it’s been there for hundreds of years. It’s iconic in that high street. Everyone remembers that bakery and the family that ran it for 50 years.
The family were retiring because they thought they would be compensated in a regeneration scheme. When that was then halted, we took it over as a group and we decided to open it as a bakery again. And when we were just about ready to figure all this stuff out, none of us were proper business people, we had everything ready and then the council turned round and said, “Oh, we are going to knock this building down in a couple of months’ time.” And we said, “You know what, we’ll open.”
There was a moment when we all came together as a group and thought about taking that risk and we decided together at that moment that it would be worth it. And I’m very proud of that moment because people were pro-active and it worked. It’s not going to be demolished. So we showed by the example of a profitable business that there is value in that place.
Now we’re about to get the freehold, so we’re about to co-own that building.
What’s the hardest moment?
For me the hardest moment – and it happens over and over again – is when people leave. Because people burn out, or there is a conflict, because it’s not easy to work on that level, so we get tired, because it’s on top of other work. Because we’re a diverse group, we don’t have the same political views or financial, cultural backgrounds. So someone feels that it doesn’t represent them any more or we’re not democratic enough, so they leave.
Those are the hardest moments I think, because you have a relationship and you rely on other people and you didn’t help them enough or support them enough and you have to let them go at that moment, and it’s hard.
What gets you through?
I think I’m mostly stubborn. Stubbornness as a group that we said we were going to do this. There has been a lot of dashed and damaged hopes in our area and a lot of promises, it’s a changing group but also a core group and a lot of us are very stubborn that we’re going to deliver for ourselves and each other.
What’s the next step?
The next step, now we’ve got the bakery, is making profit. Which is a big step, it means it runs itself. We have nine people working there. We weren’t able to save the houses next to us which we would have liked to because it’s a coherent block with the bakery attached but we have no leverage over it and it’s going to be demolished.
We said some time ago that if it’s going to be demolished, we would like to build. So this is where we make a strong housing offer as a CLT next to the bakery. We went through year-long design process to propose a scheme of 26 flats. Behind us is a recreation ground. It’s a contested space, there is a lot of antisocial behaviour, people are afraid of it. So we are starting to do events there, grow things, build things, to bring it back. So in the end we’re hoping that it will be a small high street offer that is community earned or stewarded or run.
Many CLTs you don’t have to live there to have a say. For us it’s about regeneration, or development without displacing people. I live down the road. Part of that is looking at making some of the land and some of the development affordable in the future. So if there is gentrification happening we’re part of the reason for that.
How did you vote in the EU referendum and why?
I can’t vote because I’m German. I’ve lived in the UK for a long time and it was painful for me to watch it. It was painful for me to see people who want similar things fight. All those things that were invited into the debate made people mistrust one another.
Liverpool voted quite strongly in, most people I know did and I would have, even though I have criticisms of the EU because I think it’s important to stay in touch with other movements that are the future of grassroots and are the future of how we are going to organise ourselves. I personally think it’s going to be less and less important which nationality or nation state you belong to but that’s a long term view. I know lots of British people who feel something has been taken away from them in being able to participate in those processes of social change that happen internationally.
Will the outcome affect what you do?
It might affect some funding. It will have an effect on our neighbourhood as economic decline always hits areas like ours first.
What advice would you give someone who wants to take part?
It’s fun actually. It sounds it’s hard with all the legal stuff – and it’s important to get involved in that. But in general, don’t forget the human aspect and you’re building something that is not friends – it’s a community, which is different – but you get to learn from the people around you, which is great.
Why is community important?
Because we all have a need to have a place where we live and work that is a quality place. That involves a lot of things – not being alone, care, shopping, homes, housing. People who live locally in a place have the best interest at heart for that to be excellent and that’s part, for me, of building a community. It’s really nice to know everyone around, even for simple things like where your cat is going to go when you’re on holiday.
