photographer, writer, sustainability campaigner
Articles from before August 2020 are available on Martin’s archive site…
I first came across Colin Ward, as so many people did through his writings, as a teenage school student. I was sixteen when his Penguin Education topic book Violence was published in 1970. In the context of everything from the Vietnam War to violence on the football terraces, the connections made were inspiring, and terrifying. …
Colin Ward was always drawn to the kinds of spaces where people could participate in what he referred to as the ‘anarchy of everyday life’. Not strictly ungovernable spaces, but contexts in which self-organising was at least tolerated and where activities that were messy or seen as odd could be enjoyed without being disturbed. These …
Nearly forty years ago Jeff Bishop and Paul Hoggett published a fascinating book entitled Organizing around enthusiasms: mutual aid in leisure (Comedia 1986) a study of the up till then, unexplored worlds of the hobby and the small club and the people that made them tick. This utterly charming centenary publication, Oxfordshire County Council Staff …
This is the first full length biography of Colin Ward, the one hundredth anniversary of whose birth is in August 2024. Ward who died in 2010 lived for almost half a century with the title of Britain’s most famous anarchist, yet he would have been bemused at the idea that he was famous. This biography …
Sometimes a chance experience draws you in to exploring an idea. This happened to me on my first visit to my elder daughter’s new home in Edinburgh. I thought I knew the city well, I lived there briefly in the early 1970s, but she has a wee flat in one of Edinburgh’s ‘colonies’, a distinctive …
It is a strange feeling being at the centre of a national and international ‘culture war’ storm. And even stranger that that storm is about a planning theory. But that has been how it has been for the past 10 months living on a fairly unprepossessing street off a somewhat down-at-heel main road, Cowley Road, …
The programme for this musical which has transferred from Sheffield Crucible Theatre to the National Theatre (NT) in London, has a powerful and informative introductory essay by Sheffield urban planner Gordon Dabinett. Not an everyday occurance in NT programmes. But Standing at the sky’s edge is no everyday performance. The setting for the musical is …
‘The Archeology of East Oxford’ records the results of a programme of archeological work carried out in East Oxford,defined as ‘Oxford-east-of-the-Cherwell’, between 2010-2015. The area is full of interesting historical and archeological sites but as the introduction puts it:‘External perceptions are, however, often of a mundane and unexciting nature; that Oxford’s sprawling eastern districts are …
The land has always been a contested space. The 2000 ‘right to roam’ legislation, despite its inviting title, only covers about 8% of land in England. Getting outside and enjoying the fresh air and countryside were high priorities during the pandemic, and focused people’s minds on what was and was not possible. Land ownership and …
Back in the 1990s when I first became a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute I opened my first copy of its The Planner magazine with great interest. One thing I still remember from that edition was a letter lamenting the fact that architects got all the glory in Hollywood movies and that planners …