Almost a year has passed since Take Back the City took our Masterplan for Mackie’s out to public consultation, with overwhelming support from the public who attended, both for the idea of developing the Mackie’s site to be useful and also for building homes for a few hundred of the near 50,000 families on the social housing waiting list. Consultation responses gathered on the day found that:

• 91% of respondents thought that the Mackie’s site should be developed in some way

• 86% of people thought that the site should be used to address housing need

• 75% of respondents agreed that our Take Back the City masterplan should be developed, with the majority of people supporting the housing mix in the proposal as well as the space allocated for employment space

These findings are quite a contrast to the story which might be told by some, that the local community is not ready for homes on the Mackie’s site.

Christmas Delivery!

The TBTC campaigners have not been idle in the intervening months!

At Christmas we staged a big Christmas giveaway and some of our Christmas Elves (aka Take Back the City campaigners) delivered copies of the masterplan, the planning consultation report referenced above and a Limited Edition TBTC Calendar to the Ministers for Economy and Communities, the NIHE as well as party leaders and officers at Belfast City Council. We’re certain they read them carefully with a hot chocolate and a candy cane over their Christmas holidays.

Change Stories

We continued our collaboration with TBTC Coalition members Queen’s University Belfast as part of the international ‘Change Stories’ project, comparing community participation in urban development in Belfast, Bogotá, Colombia and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Students in the Street Space programme at Queen’s worked with homeless families to understand more about their needs with a view to designing different aspects of the Mackie’s site. In January, the TBTC team went to meet Queen’s architecture students and hear about their designs, which were inspired by our masterplan and the experiences of the families who fought for it. In June, we saw refined versions of these designs alongside representatives of the MAC and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.

Gardens

Take Back the City campaigners continue to grow and nurture the land at Mackie’s including the garden at Forthspring Inter-Community Group. Here, TBTC organisers are working with local primary school children on rewilding the environment at Mackie’s. This year saw several groups of children earn their ‘Top Rewilders Award’ for all their hard work to encourage biodiversity at the site and reclaim the land for the community. Maith sibh to everyone!

MAC Exhibition: The State of Belfast

Throughout May and June we worked in partnership with the MAC Belfast to co-curate a brand new exhibition ‘The State of Belfast’ which uses Grenfell by Steve McQueen as a stepping off point to address the inherent injustices and inequality as well as issues of race and poverty which are inextricably linked to the Grenfell tragedy. The State of Belfast explores how these same conditions exist in Belfast and how we might collectively address them.

Families who have campaigned for housing rights in Take Back the City are acting as guides to the exhibition, which sets PPR’s advocacy for rights in a wider historical context. The exhibition distils PPR’s approach to campaigning for change through the inclusion of Inez McCormack’s words echoing across the space:

“To enable the powerless to be part of making change, that changes how they see themselves….and that changes everything.”

What’s next?

As part of the exhibition, we’re launching the next phase of the Take Back the City Masterplan, sharing new plans for 35 homes on a part of the Mackie’s site tucked between Springfield Parade, the West Circular Road and Paisley Park. The designs build on the original brief which homeless families gave to architects for the development of Mackie’s - that any homes developed there should be co-created, inclusive, sustainable, locally built and designed to respect good physical and mental health.

Join us in the MAC on Friday 5th September at 6:30pm to hear insights from Matthew Lloyd Architects on the design, as well as from the Take Back The City campaigners. Plus, you'll have the chance to explore the plans and share your thoughts with us on takebackthecity.ie that same day. We look forward to seeing you there!