Gresham College is London's oldest Higher Education Institution and has been providing free public talks for over 400 years. Most of these take place at the Museum of London or at the college's own base in the City, Barnard's Inn Hall. However, in recent years there has also been an annual lecture by the Lord Mayor at Mansion House. The current Lord Mayor, Alderman Michael Bear, has been involved in many regeneration projects in his career as a property developer, including the one which was the subject of Tuesday's lecture - Spitalfields:Opportunity through Regeneration.
Having recently visited this area on a guided walk, it was very interesting to learn more about its recent history and the huge changes it has undergone since the process of redeveloping the market site began in the early 90s. Alderman Bear was Chief Executive of the Spitalfields Development Group and most of his lecture focused on the work of this group, describing the process of relocating the existing fruit and vegetable wholesale market, developing a number of different masterplans and the planning battles involved in removing the market which had been opened there as a temporary measure in 1991. As might be expected from a site with such a long history, alot of money had to be spent on archaeological digs. As well as the charnal house that I already knew about they also found the sarcophagus of a Roman princess.
There was a strong emphasis on involving the local community throughout the 20 year redevelopment and also, of securing community benefits through developer agreements and the Lord Mayor presented some impressive statistics on the impact that the changes have had on the deprivation indices for the area. So the project seems to have been successful in regeneration terms although of course, with any regeneration project, there is always the issue of whether the changes are due to improvements of the circumstances of those who lived in the area originally or changes in the population of the area. I was too polite/reticent to put my hand up to ask about this when there was a brief opportunity for questions at the end of the lecture.
As I'm never likely to be invited to the kind of dinners and banquets that are normally hosted at Mansion House, the event also offered a great opportunity to see inside this building. The hall where the lecture was held was full of gold leaf, stained windows and huge statues. And if all that wasn't enough we were even given a book about the Spitalfields redevelopment to take away with us afterwards.
Gresham College offers several lectures each week throughout the year (although none in August) on a wide range of topics including business, history, music and science - I particularly like the fact that they have a 'very unusual'category. You can just turn up for most of them although there are few like the Lord Mayor's one, that you need to book in advance.
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