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

In 2010 Liverpool Biennial commissioned artist Jeanne van Heeswijk to work with people from Anfield and Breckfield over the next two and a half years to rethink the future of their neighbourhood. 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 worked 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 designed an affordable housing scheme and shop, as well as meeting and project spaces.

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

Loaf by loaf, and brick by brick, 2Up 2Down / Homebaked is building a new idea of community, work and social space, and with it a new community resilience. 

For more information, visit the  official project page or Homebaked's website. 

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, 2011) and 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.