Morecambe's Exchange: An art shop helping residents find a way out of poverty

Looking back on it, Jo Bambrough is not sure she would still be in Morecambe if people hadn’t leapt on the art exchange she started with two friends in the town in 2015.

“If people hadn’t bought into it once we started it, I probably wouldn’t be here,” she says from the shop floor of the Exchange. The gallery and cafe sits in Morecambe’s West End, part of the seaside town in Lancashire that has fallen into disrepair since its Victorian heyday. “And there’s no way I would be talking about projects that are in the region of £3m.”

It was a problem she never faced. The Exchange started in a tiny red terraced house on West Road, tucked in from the promenade where the elements have turned some of the more spectacular Victorian buildings a mossy shade of green.

On a wet day, the building gives off a welcoming glow. A bell greets each visitor as they come through the door and duck beneath a blanket pinned to to a doorway, into the self-service cafe.

The rise of foreign holidays took its toll on Morecambe in the Nineties and the area has never quite recovered. The high street in the West End tells a familiar story of decline: the lights are on in the bookmakers, but round the corner a pet shop and baby clothes shop are both shuttered. The greengrocers that used to populate the street disappeared after the arrival of a giant Morrisons. A mural records a better time, when bakeries and butchers jostled for space beside a sweet shop, tea rooms and a toy shop.

These days poverty is entrenched among residents of the West End, which is ranked as one of the 20 per cent most deprived areas in England.

Bambrough, who hails from nearby Lancaster, and partners Beki Melrose and Melody Treasure wanted to create a place with an open door: somewhere for people to gather. They had planned to open studio space, but local artists said they would prefer a place to display and sell their work.

Soon people were gathering at the Exchange anyway. “People started coming in and not going home,” Bambrough says. “It became a bit of a social hub.”

So they partnered with the Writing Room, a workshop for writers in a neighbouring terrace, to acquire some more houses on the row. A small grant from Big Local, a lottery-funded partnership set up to encourage grass-roots activity, provided the means to knock through two of the terraces to create the adjoining cafe and shop. Bambrough received funding from UnLtd, a foundation for social entrepreneurs, to support her in the work.

While we talk, we are frequently interrupted by visitors who come to sit in the cafe. Some avail themselves of art materials and draw daffodils in pencil. Others work quietly on laptops, stopping to make tea in exchange for a pound in the jar. Kirsty Stuart-Clarke gets some pointers for the website for her photography business, Bipolaroid Photography, while in the corner, Cefn Hoile is organising prototyping workshops for his business, Shrimping It, which the Exchange has incubated for cheap rent.

Many others stay all day. So many, in fact, that the Exchange has quickly outgrown the row of terraces and has for the last year been negotiating for ownership of a church opposite – a great empty red-brick that has suffered two fires and has a crack running down one steeple.

The church project – called “Steeple for the People” involves not only securing the space and getting rid of the damp, but conceiving a renovation plan for studios and arts spaces that will cost several million.

Steeple for the People is just one of the Exchange’s many ambitious projects – another involves taking over an empty department store a couple of streets away to create business units.

In December, the Exchange founders came together with 300 local residents and community actors to form the Morecambe Community Collective, in response to a Granada report that said families in Morecambe were struggling so much that schools were helping to wash clothes and charge mobile phones for parents. Doctors had reported the re-emergence of illnesses such as rickets, once associated with the Victorian poor.

The Morecambe Community Collective has held monthly meetings to enact a plan to turn Morecambe’s fortunes around – from the bottom up.

The Exchange’s ambitions go way beyond art. “Art is not an essential commodity and, if you’re living on the breadline, you’re not going to come here and buy art, because when you’ve paid your rent and your bills there’s nothing left,” Bambrough says.

So Bambrough and Melrose (Melody Treasure has since left) are hatching plans for the Exchange to become a community land trust, which would allow it to take buildings into collective ownership and use them for the benefit of everyone.

The proportion of people who own their residence in the West End of Morecambe is low: just 41 per cent of homes are owner-occupied, compared with a north-west average of 65 per cent. Almost half – 48 per cent – have private landlords, compared with a north-west average of 14 per cent.

Claire Cozler, a Labour councillor for nearby Westgate ward who lives in the West End, says she has witnessed tenants of private landlords on her street get kicked out for complaining about problems ranging from damp to open sewage. “The area is in crisis,” she says.

Cozler got involved with the Exchange a year ago. “It has given a centre to Morecambe,” she says. “Art can have a positive impact: it’s about confidence, knowing who you are, not being ashamed of your identity.”

Bambrough believes that if the Exchange can create a community ownership structure for owning property, people will be able to use their income to recirculate wealth in the economy. And she doesn’t stop there: “The next thing after property is collectively owning things needed to run businesses – whether that’s printing or creative equipment.”

Securing assets into community ownership will be vital for the Exchange to survive in the long-term, after one-off funding from sponsors like Big Local have run dry.

In the cafe next door, a rotating cast of locals keep warm by the heaters in the cafe, helping one another make paintings, plan new projects and get the advice and support they need. “I’ve never once seen someone come into this venue and not get the help they need, whether it’s a lift, or someone to speak to about their benefits,” Bambrough says. “Seeing the way people responded to the Exchange and the benefit it has on people’s lives; there’s really nothing more inspiring.”

Hazel Sheffield visited Morecambe with funding from Local Trust, which runs the Big Local programme