Fore Street: Good Growth Fund
While a renewed vision for Angel Edmonton gradually emerges, more immediate action was needed to address the urgent challenges its residents face now and build their capacity to negotiate the long, disruptive process of redevelopment.
Angel Edmonton is a neighbourhood in transition, framed by some of London’s largest recent and upcoming developments. To the east, just a 20-minute walk away, Meridian Water will deliver 10,000 new homes and 6,000 new jobs to Enfield. Fifteen minutes to the south, Tottenham High Road has been transformed by the new stadium and surrounding regeneration at White Hart Lane. Even the Joyce and Snells Estate, which this stretch of Fore Street serves, is set for comprehensive redevelopment in the coming years.
While these major projects could (and should) be guided to provide real, tangible benefits for existing residents, it will be years before those benefits are fully felt. In the meantime, estate residents continue to face very low income and employment levels, severely limited access to skills and training, and a poor public environment.
Against this backdrop, JKA was commissioned by Enfield Council in late 2019 to help secure funding from the GLA’s Good Growth Programme. With an initial deadline of just three weeks, we developed a persuasive vision for immediate, high-impact improvements to make the most of the Council’s limited resources, and ensuring the firm backing of the local community.
We quickly developed a detailed understanding of the area’s challenges by interviewing local businesses and community groups, tapping into existing networks and working closely with Council officers to secure introductions. While socio-economic data highlighted the urgent need for better access to skills, training and economic opportunity, our conversations revealed a wealth of local stakeholders eager to bring cultural activity onto the high street but lacking the space to do so.
In parallel, a thorough review of the Council’s property portfolio allowed us to begin matching community needs with existing assets. From this emerged a multi-layered strategy to address the core themes underlying local concerns, with a suite of interventions designed for flexible and scalable delivery.
We proposed to activate derelict garages to turn an area associated with crime and anti-social behaviour into workspaces for young entrepreneurs and a hub for business support, while also creating a new, well-overlooked walking route through the estate. A creative retrofit of an existing library on the high street aims to unlock its potential as a cultural venue, extending activity into the evenings. Meanwhile, a new school street and public art interventions around the awkward connections between the estate and the high street look to create safer, more attractive routes home for residents.
Our strategy enabled Enfield Council to secure £2.2 million in funding from the GLA.
Following this success, we were appointed to design and oversee the construction of the interventions, realising the scheme within the available funding.
Throughout the process, we mentored local practice Fisher Cheng, guiding them in working with complex stakeholder bodies and delivering public artwork commissions. We also supported the Council in procuring enterprise charity Launch It to operate the new workspaces, ensuring the project’s long-term impact and sustainability.
The Fore Street Living Room Library was the first element of the strategy to be delivered on site. It provided not only an immediate social space for discussing the future of the estate but also a base for a new partnership of local community and cultural organisations, Fore Street For All.
Together with Enfield Council, this partnership secured additional funding from the GLA’s High Streets for All Challenge Fund to run a lively year-long programme of events following the library’s reopening – from concerts to ecology workshops – all while the library continued to fulfil its core functions.
The former garages have been transformed into affordable workspaces under the name Angel Yard, supporting local entrepreneurs aged 18-30 working in fields as diverse as animation and aquaponics. The operator secured further funding to convert a double-decker bus into a café, extending activity along the estate’s new internal street, and continues to deliver a rolling two-year business support programme, empowering the next generation of business founders to create sustainable enterprises.
A local primary school now has a new school street and clean-air route, conceived in collaboration with students, as a place for their imaginations and micro-fauna to run wild together.
During the construction of Angel Yard, residents voted in favour of a full demolition and redevelopment scheme for the Joyce and Snells Estate. Angel Yard now stands as a precedent for the permanent provision of affordable workspace, which will be delivered before the garage site is redeveloped, ensuring an enduring place for young businesses to grow on Fore Street.
