COMMUNITY, CREATIVITY & CONVERSATION - UNLOCKING NEW HOUSING IN EUSTON
During autumn of 2025, we’re working with Camden Council as part of their wider work on housing with the Euston Housing Delivery Group, set up by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to help deliver much-needed new homes (including affordable) and the facilities to support them in the Euston area.
BLUEPRINTS
EUSTON’S FESTIVAL OF COMMUNITY-POWERED HOUSING
Blueprints: A Festival of Community Powered Housing Ideas unfolded at ODAC over 4 inspirational days at the end of October, and we are so grateful to all who came to share their ideas on how a community-led future in Euston could look! It was a whirlwind of imagination, passion, and connection, all fuelled by a shared urgency for community-powered housing in Euston. The week felt inspiring and energetic, creating a space for everyone's voice to be heard.
We hosted an incredible array of workshops, talks, performances, and artworks as an epic culmination of research on behalf of Camden Council. The Neighbourhood Studio was completely transformed into a colourful, interactive artwork comprising all of the neighbourhood contributions created by residents across our Making/Conversation workshops, which we ran for 10 weeks to discover insights into peoples priorities for the future of our homes and neighbourhood. This research is set to inform the writing of a Euston Housing Compact; a document outlining the principles and priorities of the community when it comes to delivering new homes. ODAC was a part of ensuring that resident voices were meaningfully sought out, listened to, and platformed in this research.
Creative Director Daniel Pitt said it best:
"It's hard to have hard conversations, and it's hard to imagine what's possible while in the middle of the current reality. This project has been, like much of ODAC's work, about creating the right, trusted conditions for people to come together and connect, converse properly, and imagine. We're honoured that hundreds of Euston residents have shared their needs, opinions, and dared to dream with us. Citizen power is growing here. We are your ally.”
BLUEPRINTS PHOTO GALLERY
Take a look at the gallery from the festival. Thank you to Alice Horsley for the photos!
FOYER EXHIBITION:
SOCIAL HOUSING - A SPACE FOR US?
This exhibition brought together historical posters of protest and public campaigns for social housing. The historical posters including, ‘Your Britain: Fight for it Now’ by Abram Games (1942), one of a series of three depicting progressive public buildings superimposed over bomb sites, promised a better future including building model housing, as well as more recent protest and campaign posters.
In the exhibition were powerful local exemplars of social housing — from the pioneering St Pancras Housing Association to Camden Council and LCC schemes that responded creatively to social need and display a vision for life:
The LCC Ossulston Estate, constructed between 1927 and 1931, was part of the post–World War 1 wave of building, when ‘homes for heroes’ were demanded. The slums here resulted in LCC designing larger-scale development across London. Here we have a vision inspired by Karl Marx Hof in Vienna, following ‘garden suburb’ principles and provision for drying rooms.
The second, the 1930s St Pancras Housing Improvement Society, cleared slums and transformed Somers Town — embodying their ‘housing is not enough’ ethos that extended beyond bricks and mortar to include community provision and 'art in everyday life' by Sculptor Gilbert Bayes, still visible in details such as decorative finials. In 2204 we celebrated the 100 year anniversary of this innovative scheme.
The third, more recent, is Oakshott Court (1976), a Modernist block in Somers Town was designed by Peter Tabori during the golden age of Camden Council architecture. Sharing its open-space design principles with Highgate New Town, it represents a wave of innovative housing that followed the creation of the London boroughs in 1965.
Social Housing – A Space for Us? explored how the past and local architecture have built spaces that have shaped an urban context for life and we hope the principles will shape the future of housing in the area.
Curated by A Space for Us People’s Museum in Somers Town, is campaigning for the conservation area based on this social housing heritage, and is preserving the stolen social housing art.
Please help at www.aspaceforus.club
