I walked from Asda to the East Marsh today, looking at a landscape that we are told can be improved by public health slogans.
What I saw wasn’t a campaign location; it was a community under siege by neglect. I saw wheelie bins choking narrow paths, derelict buildings, and the rats scuttling in broken alleyways that no one takes responsibility for. This is our material reality. And yet, into this struggle, the NHS and the Council chose to drop a film crew and a shame mural.
Using our community’s neglect as a gritty aesthetic while ignoring the rotting housing isn’t engagement. It is the extraction of our shared trauma to satisfy the job descriptions of people who don’t have to step over our rubbish or live in our cold homes.
A Warning Ignored
Our Creativity Lead at EMU spent the end of February trying to bridge the gap between a bureaucratic ‘idea’ and our street-level reality. She informed the Creative Producer at Chief Productions, the Manchester firm hired for the job, that the East Marsh is sick to death of being Done To.
She offered a roadmap for dignity. She warned that shock-tactics can trigger defiant hostility. Unfortunately the deal was already done. Chief Productions had no knowledge of the location they had been given by North East Lincolnshire Council, who had told them Rutland Street would be perfect. The institutional machinery had decided that a quick turnaround for a national TV advert was more important than the emotional safety of the people living on the street and with no local knowledge, Chief Productions had to press ahead.
The Dark Side Insult
The communication we received from the Creative Producer was naive with kindly overtones but wasn’t an invitation to talk; it was a notification of intent. He explained their vision thus:
The Rutland Street side will be the ‘dark side’ when you are a smoker, and the Castle Street side will be the lighter side.
To have outsiders designate the physical reality of our street as the dark side is a profound insult. It reduces our storied neighborhood to a flat, two-dimensional stage. Most troubling of all was his claim that;
The members of the public we have met so far have been nothing but nice so I think we will be OK.
Being nice is a survival strategy for a community used to being ignored. Weaponising that politeness to override our genuine concerns suggests that as long as we are quiet, outside organisations can keep extracting our daily reality for their agendas. Most at fault here is North East Lincolnshire Council who compromised a film company, a community and an artist with its ill thought out, quickly signed off deal with the NHS to get the project moving are reckless velocity.
The NHS has a £4.2 billion budget, but instead of putting more GPs into the East Marsh, they chose to spend money on an artist and a film crew to paint a finger-wagging message on a wall.
This only draws symbolic attention to a social issue where there is a desperate material need to address the underlying causes. On Rutland Street, the NHS isn’t improving our community; it’s decorating our stagnation:
- The Old Age Gap: In the East Marsh, people can expect to lose their good health by the time they are 50 years old. Across the rest of England, that doesn’t happen until people are well into their 60s.
- The 20-Year Cliff: There is a nearly 20-year difference in healthy life between people living in the most deprived 1% of the country (like the East Marsh) and those in the wealthiest areas.
- The Housing Crisis: Almost half of the homes (43%) in the East Marsh are officially ‘non-decent.’ This means they are damp, cold, or unsafe. This is nearly three times the national average.
- The 13-Year Debt: Simply by being born or living here, residents are ‘taxed’ 13 years of healthy life compared to the average person in England.
Institutions would rather spend a fortune shaming individual behaviour than spend a penny fixing the cold, damp homes that are actually killing us. We aren’t turning a corner; we are falling off a cliff.
The Silence of Authority
When Billy challenged an NHS representative on-site, asking,
‘What gives you the right to do this here?’ the response was a recommendation to talk to the local MP.
That is the sound of an institution that has forgotten it is a servant, not a master. They couldn’t offer a single moral justification for their presence. To add insult to injury, the local person being filmed wasn’t even from the East Marsh, they were from Cleethorpes. Every decision was remote; every resident was a prop.
A Community Request
We are a community rebuilding after decades of managed decline. We are not a resource to be mined for poverty porn. We propose a new standard for any agency wishing to operate here:
- Nothing About Us Without Us: Genuine consultation begins before the budget is set.
- No More Poverty Porn: Stop using our trauma to aestheticise national campaigns.
- Service Before Symbolism: Redirect marketing budgets into material health and housing.
The artist involved now understands our concerns and wants to work with us on something positive and hopeful. The ball is now in the court of the authorities who delivered this clumsy mess. It is time for them to put it right with some restorative practice and enough resources to actually turn the dark side into sunlight.
