Reclaiming Windrush Square: why urban development projects need to heed local voices
Lifelong Brixton resident, Windrush descendant and community organiser Ros Griffiths chairs the Friends of Windrush Square group.
- Lifelong Brixton resident, Windrush descendant and community organiser Ros Griffiths chairs the Friends of Windrush Square group.
- It does so by advocating for initiatives that generate social value – in other words, that benefit the local community.
- Windrush Square offers an instructive example of how crucial it is that any urban development project be, as Griffiths argues, “people-led.”
Contested heritage
- The square also features a bust of Henry Tate, first unveiled in 1905, in front of Brixton Library.
- As Griffiths outlines, local sentiments about Tate’s ongoing prominence on Windrush Square are mixed:
We still need to have a conversation about that history. - In 2022, Friends of Windrush Square launched the Reimagining Windrush Square campaign to both reexamine this history and rethink how the square is used today.
- The 2010 redesign, by landscape architects Gross Max, was part of the Mayor of London’s 100 Public Spaces Initiative.
- The Friends of Windrush Square, instead, want to see Windrush Square used in a way that benefits the local community.
- To take part in reimagining the square’s future, sign up to the Friends of Windrush Square engagement hub.