Photos by Tony O'Brien

HSCB - HOE STREET CENTRAL BANK

THE BANK PLAYs A STARRING ROLE IN THE BANK JOB FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FILM. the film had its WORLD PREMIERE AT HOT DOCS FILM FESTIVAL 2021 and after a uk cinema release is nominated for THE BIFAS AND A grierson award. upcoming screenings here or:

WATCH BANK JOB

ORGANISE A SCREENING

HSCB operated throughout 2018 and 2019 in the former Co-Op Bank on Hoe Street in the London suburb of Walthamstow.

Summer-Autumn 2019 saw us working with community share offer specialists, finance and business planners, a team of Kingston University architects mentored by architects Kristin Trommler and Tilo Gunther with the mission to secure and build the bank as a beacon of hope and action in the fight for a fairer economy for people and planet. The building is LISTED as an ASSET OF COMMUNITY VALUE but negotiations broke down with the owners and the bank job team left the bank building on Christmas day 2019. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT IN OUR BID TO STAY AND GROW. Hoe Street Central Bank lives on as we operate out of the shed this all began in!

‘The Bank is Dead. Long Live the Bank.’ (Adam Spiegel James).

We are no longer in the bank but its rebel spirit lives on as we launch our new project - power. more very soon.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE BANK’s Story HERE.

The bank is a key part of the feature documentary film ‘Bank Job’ bringing together a local community to examine how money and debt are made in our current economic system and look for alternatives that work more in the public’s favour.

Hoe Street Central Bank has been the centre of an act of citizen money creation. Throughout 2018 it hosted intensive weeks of money printing ( 12th-25th March and 5th-23rd June) with a team of local people of all ages and backgrounds working to print HSCB bank notes in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20 and 50, 100 and 1000 on a public print production line.

In place of the Queen, leaders of the local foodbank, homeless kitchen, youth project and primary school graced HSCB banknotes. We raised £40,000 from the sale of these notes worldwide - £20,000 shared between the four note causes and £20,000 to buy and write off 1.2 million pounds worth of local predatory debt.

In October 2018 we printed our HSCB bonds and in May 2019 we exploded this 1.2 million pounds of local debt in a ‘debt in transit’ van in front of a Docklands skyline an artwork/action called ‘Big Bang 2.’ In summer 2019 the bank became a public mint again - striking and casting coins from the exploded remains as artwork/interest for the global bondholders who helped make this happen.

Engaging people in a collective act of printing money and abolishing local debt in a former high street bank is a provocative intervention in dominant narratives around the economics that affect all our lives and the planet we live on. The bank has become a hub of economic education, action and events hosting programmes of lively debates and workshops - from debt and democracy to economics and ecology - bringing together big name pundits with local action groups at HSCB.

May 2021 sees the world premiere and cinema release of the feature documentary film ‘Bank Job’ increasing the audience and impact of a call for economics justice.

The March 2018 opening of HSCB was supported by a small Waltham Forest Council Arts Development Grant, Indycube letting us in the bank, Lipman-Miliband Foundation and Raymond Williams Foundation, UCL Urban Lab.

we are so thankful to Indycube for their support of our presence in the bank. We won the Artquest Workweek Prize 2018 for a critical and risk taking project. This is DIY risk and production on overdrive and we are working on making money for the infrastructure and work that goes into making debt write off, rebel banking and feature film making and distribution happen.

MORE RECENT THANKS TO A WALTHAM FOREST BOROUGH OF CULTURE ‘MAKE IT WORK’ VENUE GRANT, COMMUNITY WARD FUNDING, ARTSADMIN AND ARTNIGHT, NETWORK FOR SOCIAL CHANGE and arts council.

HOE STREET CENTRAL BANK IS NO LONGER OPERATING FROM ITS LOCATION BELOW.

LOCATION