“Housing is the battlefield for our time, and the house is its monument”

Jeanne van Heeswijk has been working with the community of Anfield for the last 2 and half years. The neighbourhood was targeted for major regeneration in 1998 and in recent years hundreds of homes in the area were cleared for demolition, in anticipation of multimillion investment. 2Up 2Down creates a situation where the community can take matters into their own hands, with a people-centred, intimate approach to re-imagining the area, claiming the right to live well.

A group of more than 20 young people are working with architects and other design specialists to re-use a block of empty property comprising a former bakery building and two adjoining terraced houses. Taking the community as their client, they have designed an affordable housing scheme, shop, meeting and project spaces.

Simultaneously a cross-generational group of local residents have set up Homebaked Community Land Trust – a co-operative organisation with its roots in the garden city movement – to enable the collective community ownership of the properties and to reopen the Bakery as a social enterprise.

Loaf by loaf, and brick by brick, 2Up2Down is building a new idea of community, work, social space and with it a new community resilience.
For more information, visit the official website HERE.

2Up 2Down/Homebaked b. 2009, lives and works in Anfield, North Liverpool.

Jeanne van Heeswijk, b.1965, Schijndel, Netherlands, is an artist who lives and works in Rotterdam, NL. Projects include Freehouse: Radicalising The Local, (Rotterdam South, NL, 2009 – present The Blue House Space for the Unplanned 2005- 2009 (Ijburg, Amsterdam, NL), Le Grand Deballage de la Vie Associative, Saint-Michel, Bordeaux , 2011and 2Up 2Down/Homebaked (Anfield, Liverpool 2009 – present). She has exhibited in numerous biennials including Shanghai and Venice, and won the 2011 Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change.