Building community-run social infrastructure
Stakehold is a meanwhile social space operator developing new models for establishing and stewarding neighbourhood social spaces in London.
We work with vacant and transitional properties — particularly those suited to pubs and social venues — to explore how communities can participate in the creation, use and long-term stewardship of local civic infrastructure.
We use cultural programming as a catalyst for new neighbourhood social spaces to emerge, evolve and remain locally rooted over time.
Across the UK, pubs, venues and community spaces are closing at accelerating rates.
Rising rents, staffing costs and extractive property models are making many traditional social spaces economically difficult to sustain, while high streets and neighbourhoods are increasingly defined by vacancy and underuse.
Yet despite claims that "nobody goes out anymore", the demand for social infrastructure has not disappeared — it has changed.
As the cost of hospitality continues to rise, people still need places to meet, organise, participate in culture, share food and music, work collectively and spend time socially outside the home.
Stakehold aims to create the conditions for social spaces to thrive with less reliance on extractive hospitality economics, laying the groundwork for new forms of shared civic infrastructure.
Stakehold acts as a mobile cultural activation unit, temporarily occupying strategic vacant properties across London to pilot their use as neighbourhood social infrastructure.
Operating as a kind of pop-up public house, each activation builds evidence of local demand while providing affordable and flexible space for cultural organisers, broadcasters, artists and community groups.
Similarly to meanwhile use organisations, Stakehold seeks temporary lease arrangements that activate disused properties and align with local policy objectives. Uniquely, however, the aim is to nurture the formation of community-led groups capable of pursuing longer-term social space provision within each area.
We identify underused buildings, meanwhile opportunities and spaces in transition.
Events, workshops, assemblies, food, music and broadcasting to create public participation.
Participants become contributors, members and collaborators in the ongoing life of the space.
Governance and responsibility distributed across the community in response to localised demand.
Temporary occupation evolves into cooperative ownership and community-supported infrastructure.
The continued closure of Britain's pubs has become emblematic of a wider decline in everyday social infrastructure.
Despite continued demand for shared social space, rising costs, business rates, utility bills and inflated rents are making many traditional pub models increasingly difficult to sustain.
Stakehold is interested in how the historic civic role of the pub — as an informal assembly space, local institution and site of intergenerational exchange — might be reinterpreted for contemporary neighbourhood life.
Rather than treating the pub as a nostalgic or purely commercial model, we see it as a familiar and adaptable social format capable of supporting broader forms of participation and collective stewardship.
Operating across meanwhile use, cultural programming, community governance and spatial research.
Temporary and transitional occupation of underused venues for cultural and social programming.
Membership structures, assemblies and collaborative governance models.
Events, workshops, food, music, discussion, broadcasting and public activity.
Exploring long-term models for community-supported neighbourhood space.
Approach
Stakehold draws from practices in:
The project is currently being developed through independent architectural and cultural research focused on the future of neighbourhood social infrastructure.
Stakehold is currently in its research and development phase.
We are currently seeking partnerships at every level.