One of the occupational hazards of political activism is turning up to a meeting when nobody else does. It is sometimes annoying, but seldom ever a wasted experience.
That was what happened on a drizzly Wednesday night last week when I headed into Newcastle-under-Lyme town centre. It was almost seven o'clock and the town was caught in the hiatus between the shoppers going home and the drinkers coming out to play.
Both are less plentiful than they used to be, Newcastle has fared better than some local town centres, even so it has its problems. The market, which has survived for hundreds of years is in the process of bring killed off by council incompetence and consumer indifference. There are more shops open here than in Stoke or Burslem, but the prevalence of signs screaming ‘sale’ suggests business is far from good
Cultural Squatters occupies a former TV rental shop in a grim sixties shopping precinct newly renamed ‘Astley Walk’ after Phillip Astley a local son credited with inventing the modern circus. There is little of the big top about it as I walk past an employment agency, another coffee shop and somewhere selling electric bicycles. Things are clean and despite the weather people are out and about, but there is an undercurrent of desperation it is hard to ignore.
Cultural Squatters bills itself as a hybrid of pop up coffee shop, arts space and community venue. A melding of town centre as a place for experiences and good intentions that can tempt cynicism when taken at face value.
The reality is, I'm relieved to say, somewhat different and, more importantly, a lot more positive.
The interior is the sort of jumble of mismatched furniture, posters and comfy looking sofas that looks entirely random and probably took weeks to design. At the door I am met by a lively woman who introduced herself as Narina and exudes good humour and friendliness to an infectious degree.
She confirms the meeting I am down to attend is booked in for tonight, but not due to start yet and offers me coffee. At a pound for a mug it is reasonably priced and served without the self-important posturing I have paid over the odds to endure in more self-consciously hip establishments.
One of the virtues of waiting for something to happen is that it gives you an opportunity to watch what is already going on all around you. Settled on one of those comfy sofas I sit back and take in the show.
Through the window I can see the evening passada of a provincial town getting under way. Stylishly dressed young women getting out of taxis and running across the road to the cash machine, one with a scarf over her head, looking for all the world like a chic babushka. Early evening drinkers going from one pub to another and at the bus stop opposite a family, together in terms of proximity, but separately engaged with the glowing screens of their phones.
Inside Cultural Squatters a sort of writer’s circle is taking place in the room behind me, a dozen people reading stories each one received with polite interest and positive comments. On the wall opposite where I am sitting visitors have chalked positive messages, most are greeting card stuff about being nice and seizing the day; one reads ‘play or be played'.
So what game, if any, is Cultural Squatters playing? The atmosphere is friendly without trying to recruit visitors into being happy by decree. Its ethos is rooted firmly in the welcome all as equals values of the counterculture, but without the often-tedious introspection dressed up as profound insights.
The meeting didn’t happen and after a second coffee I left and walked home the long way along Merrial Street, past the former council offices. These were down to be redeveloped for retail and high- end apartments, the project has been put on a back burner due to uncertainty about the future of the high street.
The talk now is of high streets and the towns to which they are attached becoming places where people go to have experienced rather than to buy things. That makes me nervous, largely because it makes me think of hipsters paying over the odds for bowls of cereal while the services everyday people depend on atrophy.
Cultural Squatters suggests another and more rewarding sort of experience, one based around the desire for friendship, community and being valued for who we are that is fundamentally human. In a country where we are too often encouraged to focus on those things that force us apart rather than bring us together that can only be a good thing.
I don’t know whether that or anything else will save the high street from going the way of the dinosaurs; but it might just make us a whole lot happier.
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