COMMON GROUND

Too often, the spaces that bind communities together are treated as expendable. Pubs are gutted for profit, halls fall into disrepair, and high streets lose the heartbeat of culture and care. When a building is boarded up, it is not just plaster and timber that’s lost it is memory, gathering, and belonging.

Common Ground exists to resist this dispossession. We campaign for places to be held in common, stewarded not for private gain but for shared life. Each saved building is a refusal to accept that our commons can be stripped away; each revival is an act of kinship with place.

In Hoxton, Folklore rose from the shell of a disused shoe factory into a living music venue. Upstairs, Tall Tales became pioneering Rent-into-Equity apartments, testing new ways of living in connection with place and community.

In Shepherd’s Bush, The Greyhound, a pub left to rot, is being reimagined as a community venue, with The Pack above offering homes that build security without severing roots.

In Camden, The Admiral Mann, once shuttered, is set to reopen as a community hub, while The Upper Deck above will provide Rent-into-Equity housing, anchoring belonging in the heart of the neighbourhood.

Each of these projects shows that place is not just infrastructure it is kin. By saving and reimagining these spaces, Common Ground demonstrates a different way forward: communities as stewards, not bystanders; places as hearths of solidarity, not commodities to be traded away.