Projects

Buy Back Turbo Island

 

 

Turbo Island is a small triangle of land at the junction of Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft.  Its existence is due to the destruction of the building that once stood there during an air raid in World War II.  After the War, it remained a vacant plot, and an advertising hoarding sprouted there. This was given official recognition in the 1960’s. The land in front of the hoarding became de facto a “public space”, which was privately owned. This anomalous status allowed it to become a haven for street drinkers, and its unkempt nature became a totemic symbol of Stokes Croft.

            

 

In 2014, PRSC applied to European Green Capital 2015 for a grant to commence the process of buying back Turbo Island for the Community. It did not win.
Below is the content of the bid.

THE PITCH:
Turbo Island is the piece of land on the corner of Stokes Croft and Jamaica Street.
Bombed during the war, it was used for advertising hoardings since the ’50’s.
In around 1985, the then Avon County Council sold this land to the advertising company for £32,500, FIVE YEARS AFTER STOKES CROFT WAS DECLARED A CONSERVATION AREA.

The land in front of the hoarding was of no interest to the advertisers, and remained a wasteland, largely inhabited by street drinkers and drug addicts. In 2007 PRSC started to make good, floating the then patently absurd notion of Stokes Croft as a Cultural Quarter.

Seven years later, the landscape is very different. It is time for this property to come back into community ownership. If you look at the images below, it is hard not to agree that the Community has earned this right.
The West Country philosopher John Locke(1632 –1704) in his Second Treatise on Government, asked by what right an individual can claim to own one part of the world, when, according to the Bible, God gave the world to all humanity in common. He answered that persons own themselves and therefore their own labour. When a person works, that labour enters into the object. Thus, the object becomes the property of that person.

By this measure, there should be no argument. However, the rules are not so simple, unfortunately.