A temporary display of photos is set to become a permanent fixture on our stairwell.

The Old Winchester Arms, a pub until 1969, was squatted in the early Seventies by a group of young people looking to rehouse their youth club. After wrangling with the local authority, they were given leave to remain – provided they fixed the place up – until 1974, when plans for a new civic centre in Swiss Cottage were expected to materialise. Peter Mandelson, one of the original crowd, said in an interview ‘I spent far more time setting up a tremendous youth club at the Winchester Arms at Swiss Cottage, tearing it apart with my bare hands, then rebuilding it to make it structurally sound’.

The rest, as they say, is history. The Winchester Project, also known as ‘The Winch’, grew into a radical and relational grassroots organisation committed to working with the most disenfranchised and marginalised children and young people in Camden and further afield. Envisioned and empowered by the bold communitarian ideologies of the time and a pioneer in the areas of gender, racial and sexual equality, the Winch’s reputation across London grew, and it became a byword for the creative, intentional, relational youthwork which would see it taken over by children, young people, families, local people, staff and volunteers in the name of making a difference, of creating a better society.

It’s difficult to capture exactly what the Winch did, or was, in comparison with today’s sanitised, standardised youth centre.