Promising Home

This exhibition asks us to consider the value of a council estate. Who owns it and what is it really worth?

At a time when the Prime Minister has threatened to bulldoze 100 of the country’s worst ‘sink estates’ why is the media image of the estate so different from the views of many of its residents, who love their homes and think they are great places to live? In an era of housing crisis, with increasing homelessness and a shortage of available and truly affordable housing, why are we demolishing so much good council housing and replacing it with private new builds?

Jane Brake and John van Aitken of the Institute of Urban Dreaming (IUD), who are based on the Pendleton estate in Salford, Greater Manchester, have been recording everyday life in the area since 2004. Famous for its industrial past, in the 1960s Pendleton was the site of a flagship housing development of high-rises and maisonettes, providing council housing for thousands of people. Today we see a good deal of the estate’s former council homes disappearing and private homes emerging in a public-private scheme to ‘regenerate’ the area.

The exhibition examines the economic and social role of housing by drawing on a range of responses to Pendleton. Through a variety of works, walks and 29 October 2016 - 15 January 2017, Promising Home @ People's History Museumdiscussions, IUD have explored the estate, its value and the precarious position of council housing today. The exhibition questions whether the market should be allowed to solve the current housing crisis, and debates the right to housing and a place for everyone to live in the city.

The exhibition presents a selection of IUD’s extensive archive of video, photography, artworks, texts, textiles and everyday archaeology of the estate.