Heat Hub Heist

As the poor got poorer, local councils  were inspired to think about the optics of people dying alone in unheated homes during the chilly winters. Small grants enabled local organisations with free space to keep their heating on and invite local people to come in and warm up, sometimes offering  soup and sandwiches as part of their welcome to the heat hub.

People certainly benefitted from the warmth, and they also met other people.  For some this went no further than the chat and the bingo.  For others it presented opportunities to establish some common ground: to build solidarity.

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Mission Accomplished

It isn’t the kind of building you’d notice on Google Maps. A red brick set amidst terraces of red brick. The Mission is a working, sleeves-rolled-up place, somewhat larger than the surrounding houses, but no more ornate.  Like many of its type, set in poorer streets across the land, it is loved with a rough, unsentimental familiarity and relied on to do its work.

In past times, the Mission performed its original purpose as a non-denominational meeting- house with both religious and educational aims. Working children were sent to Sunday school there and, after a modest lunch, spent afternoons struggling with reading, writing and adding-up.  

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Local Newsletter

Returning to office camaraderie was a major life event: arguably third after marriage and buying your first property? Edwin savoured the anticipation. Jumping the steps 2 at a time, he reached the colonnaded entrance of Mean Streets Communications; a.k.a Moan Streets Miscommunications by fellow trainee journalists.

That first regrouping was a creative recoil against 18 months of enforced house arrest and Zoom meetings. Piotr, old- school consulting editor, was in the “control” chair directing the pent-up tsunami of creativity. Fountain pen in hand, he wrote each suggested scoop-in-the-making on a physical clipboard. Retro-style reporting values he called it. Meanwhile the trainees tapped electronic devices desperate not to miss the opportunity of reporting tomorrow’s leader.

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