Has Headingley a new HEART

Icon_article Published: January 08, 2011 17:22 by nab

Tagged as: community
Neighbourhoods: headingley leeds ls6

The Headingley Development Trust (HDT) held the grand opening of HEART (Headingley Enterprise and Arts Centre). HEART is based in an old primary school in Leeds.  The building is leased to HDT for 125 years and HEART, the project running the building, will provide a community centre for Headingley for 25 years.  It is so clean and slick it is hard to distinguish it from a for-profit company but this is one of the few ways of attracting paying users.

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The aim of the building is to provide a community space for Headingley, a place to bind the residents together.  Headingley's make-up has changed dramatically in the past 15 years from a diverse community to over three quarters being students.  The transient nature of student living means it is generally at opposites to the sedate settled population with noise complaints, rubbish and HMOs (multiple occupancy housing) being the top causes of friction.  HDT was set up to counter this.

HDT was set up in 2005 and has grown to have a 12 member board and over 900 members.  It has a hand in Headingley farmers market, orchard, natural health food stores and more.  The HEART project has the support of a privileged area of Leeds, unlike Tiger 11 in Beeston and Holbeck, for fundraising which has helped secure the building.  Affordable hot-desking maybe of benifit to some members of the area but not others, there is also an option to put on events in the space.  How much of this will be accessible to non-privileged Headingley residents is also unclear but although the HEART and HDT is run by bankers, property developers and Headteachers it is trying to make a change.  Are people with influence and power the best people to alter the system to make it more equal and fair, in turn making themselves less influential and less powerful?  Without influence and power changing anything is hard work.  We live in a society where it is the norm for only not-for-profits with managers and developers to be sucesful in projects such as this.

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HEART

Comment Published: January 10, 2011 09:36 by Chris Hill

Don't want to take things too seriously, but the bankers, developers and headteachers in question are presumably our retired Primary School Head, our 'Banker' who works in the credit card section and yours truly as the 'developer' who has developed a centre that will give away 90% of its profits when it makes them. Not quite the ruling class.

But yes, HEART, like any community enterprise, will always have to wrestle with the level of charges to make things affordable while avoiding going bust.

Chris (Board Member)

Give us a break!

Comment Published: January 10, 2011 11:59 by Lesley Jeffries

Hi there
Thanks for covering the launch of HEART. As Chris says - we do happen to have some professional people giving vast quantities of their time and skills for free, but the aim of HEART is indeed to be inclusive - as is evidenced by the groups meeting there this week - the elderly, support groups like AA, new provision for young people.

Headingley has a particular set of problems which is not summed up as 'deprivation' (though some elderly residents are indeed isolated and relatively poor). HEART aims to address our situation - it is emphatically not the answer to all of society's ills!

We hope to participate in further discussion about how Development Trusts like HDT are beginning to fill the vacuum being created by distrust of conventional politics - and the extent to which this solves (and sometimes exacerbates) problems in society. It is an important topic and not one to be dealt with by trite attacks on the so-called 'middle classes'. Let's have the debate - but avoid knee-jerk reactions.

Lesley, Chair of the HEART board