“This was just a big empty space. And so there was a friend who was moving in and I did the walls and put a door in, and under the sink there. And then subsequently, when it seemed to be a case of either get somebody else in or move out, I then built another small studio. But at no time did I tell the council what I was doing. There’s nobody there who knows what this place used to look like. So, there’s nothing preventing [us] - if they came and said 'I don’t remember these walls here', I would just say 'they were here when I moved in in 1988'. So they’re a lousy landlord in one sense, but they’re also sort of benign neglect. […] it's pretty much a hands-off arrangement, as far as the council is concerned.”

“I can easily imagine a better, and, more convenient space. […] when I started the teaching, I started looking for a place to work in London. And a friend found this place, just after its fortunes had changed. So, I came and had a look and it looked like the ideal artist's studio. It was big and relatively bright, and cheap.”

“The space is falling apart, you can see that - bits of the ceiling are missing, and there’s a piece there that really is seriously missing. This space got water penetration problems […] This [my studio] was one of the worst studios. In 1997 we had a court case involving the tenants against the landlords, over the proposed increase in the rent, and one of the documents that was offered was photographs of my ceiling! [...] the plaster had come off, water had poured in, the cast iron joists were exposed. They're [the landlords] not interested in doing anything, but they are also constrained in what they could do because of some anomalous developments when the flats that used to be council flats were sold off, a lot of the people who bought flats here, think that my ceiling is their roof garden. And so, exactly how that came about is not apparently clear to anybody, but what it means is that if the council wants to get access to the roof again, to patch it up so my ceiling doesn’t leak, they have to get the permission of the people who think that they’ve bought a roof terrace.”

“There have been times when it seemed that the artists and crafts people were increasingly a minority, and partly because of the rent was expensive for artists, but cheap for architects. [...] There are still architects, there are engineers, designers, and computer people. We've had people, [such as] carpenters, motorcycle repairs. There’s a place at the end that’s used for photographic shoots, so it's a sort of all-purpose studio, so there’s a mixture […] And there’s a cleaning firm here, and so they do the cleaning in the yard. At least they do the lavatories, and, it all seems to work and everybody seems to get on. But there’s certainly no plan to have [this], nobody thought this would be a great place for an artistic community.”

“the council is instigating the rent hikes. The council has no interest in the fact that there are loads of artists here. Initially the places were cheap and remote, this was the back of beyond, now is central London, but in 1985, it was further away than Hastings. So, these places were cheap, nobody wanted them, and, they had to offer inducements to get people to move in. [...] So 3 out of the 4 [yards] survived. It wasn’t just the question of knocking the space down, they were letting the [spaces] run down. So [there] were full of squatters, because they were doing nothing to maintain, so when I moved into [this space], there was no water and no electricity, there were just empty spaces. And, so part of the deal was that we got a rent-free period, or a reduced rent period I guess it was, to do that sort of thing. And so lots of the other places underwent a similar process, and a lot of artists moved in because they were cheap.”

“an attempt was made, I’m not sure when, to have them [buildings] listed, [it] was rejected on the basis that there was no particular architectural merit. […] They represent an extraordinary curiosity, and of course the arrangement with the flats and the workshops was quite possibly unique […] [it] was a visionary thing to do”

“We share the space. There’s 3 of us in here. When I took the space in 1988, I had it all to myself for about 15 years. And then the rent went up, this was before the 15-year leases were here, the rent went up through the roof and lots of people moved out, and I got a friend moved in, and we partitioned off [the space] a bit at the end for her,[...we] went on for about 5 years, and then, another rent squeeze came. By that time we had the 15-year lease, but the rent still went up. [...] Now I decided that the best thing to do, rather than to just leave, was to squeeze another person in. We share the lease. In fact the way it works is that they pay, I think into my bank account, but I’m not charging them rent, we're sharing the space.”

“we divide up the [space] […] [we] are part of the Bermondsey Art Group BAG. […] They have exhibitions in Bermondsey Art Group and I’ve participated in one of the exhibitions, but they’re sort of headquartered in Bermondsey proper, in a place called the Café Gallery.”

“The café, I don’t go in there a lot, but Lisa has. […] I would just bring my own food. But there’s a rudimentary kitchen there, with a refrigerator […]I don’t spend my evenings hanging around inner London, I go home, so I don’t do much in restaurants.[…] Just this past summer, I discovered that there was a sort of garden centre just a 5-minute walk from here, so I’ve replenished the plants that are up on the [balcony there][…] There is an art supply shop that I used to go to a lot which has changed its name [...] and it's quite a good supplier.”

“At one stage [the flats and the workspaces behind] were joined, which was the whole idea behind all this [...] And, so there’s still a sense of community, because some of the people who work in the yard also live in the flats, and the studios are, as often as not, there are exhibitions that involve people who live in the flats which don’t actually work in the studios, so that’s what doesn’t happen all the time, but that's something part of the picture. So, I know people in the flats, I don’t necessarily know where their flats are, but I see them at times so yes, there is a sense of community, but not much beyond what we can see here.”

“There used to be a tenants’ group for all 3 yards which was called previously PBA, the Pullens Businesses Association. Somebody pointed out that we were likelier to have a higher profile, and possibly even attract grant money, if we threw put the word art in. So the tenant group’s name became Pullens Arts and Businesses Association, PABA.[…] the crisis arose, which had entirely to do with personalities[..] so there are now separate organisations. We have the IYA [Iliffe Yard Assocation]. They must have the PYA [Peacock Yard Association]. So, they’re now separate, and they’re significant in that, in theory, they‘re the groups that the council negotiates with over battles to do with leases and rents.[...]There’s also a separate sort of sub-body, that is to do with the open studios, […] they have two representatives from each yard, so there’s a maybe a dozen people altogether, who do what’s necessary for working hours in the studios, so that any differences that might have arisen in the past between personalities in Peacock Yard and Iliffe Yard are forgotten about, for the purposes of the open studios.”

“[For day-to-day management] people are elected, or accept responsibilities at the AGM. So the photographer I mentioned earlier, takes responsibilities for the bins, since he can see them from his front door and he's also in charge of negotiating with film companies about using this for movies and advertising which happens quite a lot, the lady is now the secretary of the IYA, there’s a treasurer who's an engineer, so there’s a group of people who more or less, are voted in, but they more or less vote themselves in, because only people who want to actually do something turn up to the AGM. […] But anyway, there’s a head of our service responsibilities, that get passed around, from year to year.”

“Although the self-management is an interesting idea, [...] I think in retrospect, it's not a secret, it was never going to happen, it was a dream rather than a practicality; there were just too many people who didn’t care. […] if you’ve got a 3-year license, you’re not going to turn up for meetings to organise a self-management. So the self-management is just sort of day-to-day management. The self-management that had been envisioned was going to be an arrangement whereby the rents would be collected or would be paid into […] the self-management was partly to get the existence of the yards as a group sort of enshrined in some kind of agreement, so that they [the yards] wouldn't get sold off.”

“I believe now that the standard arrangement for somebody coming into the area is not a 15-year lease but a 3-year licence, 3 years less one day. […] the 15-year leases were turned out to be a temporary thing. So I couldn’t guess how many people still have them. There was a period of 2 years when people like us who'd been here for some time were able to sign up for the 15-year leases [...] and then that stopped, and exactly at what point that happened I don’t know. But it's not a topic that one explores with one's neighbours, because of course they would discover that they were getting the short end of the stick to say the least.”

“10 years ago we were given, for the first time, 15-year leases. Up until then they were trying to rent review in the fourth year, which meant that the rent increased in the fourth year[...] now we’ve got a 15-year lease, and, the last rent review, for me and for most other people is at the end of October this year. So we’ve had another 5 years to go on 15-year lease. […] at least compared to what the arrangement used to be, we now know exactly what the rent is going to be, because the amount of increase is determined by, the retail price index. So whatever's happens to that in 5 years determines the new rent, so there’s no anxiety about it.”

“Even despite the open studios, which happen twice a year, we frequently come across people who are local residents, which stumble into the open studios and say 'I had no idea this was here!' [...] Apart from the open studios, nobody here cares or wants, or expects passing trade. Visibility in that sense just doesn’t arise. Nobody is producing stuff here that they would expect local community to want to come in and buy.[…] [it is] not a shop front, it's a factory.”

“They’re Victorian drains and everybody is aware of that […] the drains may prevent the council from actually selling the place[…] Well there are all sorts of, maintenance and structural issues that are not being addressed.[….] apart from the drains, there are big maintenance issues, and the floor that your foot is on it's gone now dry rot.”