Where I'm writing from

I'm the Founder of the Bureau of Silly Ideas — BOSI — a civic arts and street theatre organisation. For twenty-four years we've occupied five railway arches in Brixton, London SW9. We hold Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation status. We run Club Silly. In planning language we're an anchor cultural operator. In plain English: we're part of the furniture of this neighbourhood.

In 2019, Network Rail sold the UK railway arch estate to a consortium that became Arch Co — now a portfolio company of Blackstone, the world's largest private equity firm.

What is happening to us

In the same week Arch Co signed a new protected 10-year lease with us, they filed planning application 26/00491/FUL — proposing B2/B8 industrial use. Dark kitchens. Last-mile delivery hubs. In place of a centre for creation and joy that has been here for twenty-four years. The application describes the site as derelict. It is not.

BOSI is not a pop-up. We are a twenty-four year old not-for-profit civic arts organisation with ACE National Portfolio Organisation status, embedded in Lambeth's Creative Enterprise Zone — a zone Arch Co has been lobbying to have their estate removed from. Free culture, created in Brixton, touring everywhere. Over 500,000 people since 2002.

What Schwarzman's name is on

Stephen Schwarzman has given well over £700 million to cultural and academic institutions. I want you to see the list - because the contrast with what his company is doing in Brixton is the point.

Sixteen days

The gap between the philanthropy and the practice is sixteen days wide. Visible to anyone who looks.

Why the model can't see us

Blackstone isn't run by people who want to destroy culture. Their financial model simply has no column for what we do. Social value — the thing that makes culture worth preserving — doesn't appear in the calculations. It has no weight. What does appear, driving every decision across the portfolio, is return on capital, occupancy rates, yield per square metre.

The model never registered us. We don't exist in the dataset. The algorithm runs and produces an answer: whatever is in those arches should make way. That's not malice. That's a spreadsheet with incomplete columns. The effect is the same either way.

I was in those rooms

I convened two formally minuted meetings to understand what was happening and why. The planning application had already been filed before the second. It wasn't disclosed.

Around 800,000 commercial tenants in the UK are managed by asset management companies making data-driven decisions. We are one of them. Arch Co's portfolio target: £30–£35 per square foot. The GLA's Culture at Risk team stated on the record: there isn't a cultural organisation in this city that can afford that level of rent.

The first was on 28 January 2026 at Lambeth Town Hall. Around the table: myself and Anna Gregg, Senior Administrator at BOSI; from Arch Co, Jack Colson (Head of Corporate Affairs), James Seabrooke (Developments Director), and Ben Yeomans (Head of Asset Management, West London); from the GLA, Bisi Oyekanmi (Programme Manager, Culture and Community Spaces at Risk) and Siúan Poirteir (Culture and Community Spaces at Risk Officer), who chaired proceedings; Cheryl Gallacher from Arts Council England; and from Lambeth Council, Dawn Bunce (Senior Cultural Development Officer) and Will Steadman (Head of Neighbourhood Regeneration).

The second meeting was on 12 March 2026, in the BOSI arches at Valentia Place. Around the table: myself and Anna Gregg; from Arch Co, Jack Colson (Head of Corporate Affairs), James Seabrooke (Developments Director), and Andrew Mason; from the GLA, Bisi Oyekanmi (Programme Manager, Culture and Community Spaces at Risk), again chairing; and from Lambeth Council, Dawn Bunce (Senior Cultural Development Officer) and Laura Davy (Assistant Director, Neighbourhood Regeneration and Partnerships). The minutes record:

We were sitting in the BOSI arches. The people who want to use a planning designation to terminate our occupation were sitting across the table from me. And they acknowledged — with the GLA's Culture at Risk officers present, with Lambeth Council present, on the record — that the numbers simply don't work for culture. Not just for me. For any cultural organisation.

Lambeth's current Creative Economy Strategy commits to protect and grow the borough's creative infrastructure. The planning application contradicts nine of its commitments. It was submitted anyway. Because the Creative Economy Strategy is not in Arch Co's dataset.

This isn't just about me

I know that. What's happening to BOSI is happening to cultural organisations in railway arches across the country, in warehouse districts, in every ex-industrial space where institutional capital has moved in and applied a model that can't see social value. The same process, every time: asset acquired, yield model applied, model can't see the culture, culture disappears.

The cultural fabric of cities is being eroded by the same incomplete spreadsheet, in every city where institutional capital has moved in without counting the S. And the man who runs the company that builds those spreadsheets is opening a concert hall in Oxford with his name above the door.

We are ready to work with Blackstone on this

This is not only a boycott. It is an offer.

I am ready to work with Blackstone and Arch Co to develop the methodology that would make social value visible in their decision-making. And we are not starting from scratch. The data already exists. The Mayor of London's office holds datasets and studies on cultural and community value in London neighbourhoods. Lambeth Council has its own evidence base, aligned to its Creative Economy Strategy. These are not theoretical frameworks — they are live, borough-level datasets that can be mapped directly onto Arch Co's portfolio.

As an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, BOSI is required to report on its social impact. That reporting exists. It is available. It documents audience reach, community engagement, economic multiplier effects, wellbeing outcomes — exactly the kind of social value data that is currently missing from Arch Co's model. That data, combined with the GLA and Lambeth evidence base, gives Blackstone something genuinely valuable: a tested, credible methodology for measuring the social return on cultural tenancies, grounded in real London data.

This is not charity. It is a market edge. The investor that can credibly demonstrate social value measurement across its portfolio — not as a disclosure exercise but as a genuine input to decision-making — will lead the field. We have the impact data, the GLA relationships, and twenty-four years of evidence. We are offering to do this together.

What I'm asking you to do

If you're an artist, an academic, a cultural practitioner, or an institution with a profile and a diary — I'm asking you to decline invitations to perform at, participate in, or lend your name to Schwarzman-named venues: the Schwarzman Centre at Yale, the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at Oxford, the Schwarzman Auditorium at the Frick, the Schwarzman Building at the New York Public Library.

I'm not asking you to do this forever. I'm asking you to do it until Blackstone commits to changing how it makes decisions — until social value becomes a real input to the model, not an afterthought in a sustainability report.

I understand the difficulty. These are prestigious institutions. People have relationships with them. Careers are involved. I'm not dismissing any of that. But culture cannot be a philanthropic gesture in Oxford while it is a line item to be optimised in Brixton. A £185 million concert hall cannot call itself a gift to the arts while the same patron's company files planning applications to terminate arts organisations' occupation and replace them with dark kitchens. That contradiction needs to be named — out loud, by people whose names mean something to the institutions that carry Schwarzman's.

A £185 million centre for the humanities — studying ethics — and a planning application to demolish a twenty-four year old arts centre. Same name. Sixteen days apart. Someone should say so. We invite him to take it on.

I'm hoping that someone is you.

Add your name: [pledge URL]

Roger Hartley
Founder, Bureau of Silly Ideas
Arches 12, 14, 17 & 18 Valentia Place and Arch 555 Brixton Station Road, London SW9
April 2026