BCA Ponder and me: yes and ..
Why I chose a different but complementary path to this hugely successful community campaign - story 56
This matters to me. I didn’t realise how much until I began writing this post.
Big Barnes Ponder has left an indelible mark on Barnes over the past decade — all for the better. Mortlake Mash-Up appears poised to do the same.
I support both, unequivocally.
So why am I writing this?
My answer begins in October 2023.
Ponder 1: What I missed — and what I learned
I wasn’t part of the first Barnes Ponder, run by the Barnes Community Association (BCA) from 2013 onward. I say "missed" because I hadn’t grasped the scale of what others had been doing.
Yes, I saw, felt and enjoyed the changes — the new High Street scheme, the Suffolk Road playground, the parklet, open-air events on Barnes Green, the 22 bus campaign, re-routing of the 378, the rickshaw, the defibrillator phone box, the 20 mph campaign, the Barnes Day Out project, the shop local initiative, and the murals.
Another version of the BCA’s blog includes a sentence that struck me:
“Placemaking lies at the heart of the transformation — benefitting the whole community and drawing visitors .. year-round.”
Placemaking. I’ll return to that.
Ponder 2: The reboot
The BCA Ponder team decided to reboot the project for a second cycle. This presentation - even without the commentary - explains that process
By the time of the ‘Town Team Meeting’ meeting in October 2023 the co-ordinating group had bundled a subset of the proposals into six thematic workstreams - One Barnes, High Streets Barnes, Placemaking Barnes, Safer Barnes, Green Barnes and Travel Barnes.
Progress is ongoing, as detailed here.
A disclosure: I’m a BCA member. I happily pay my £18 a year. I helped with the traffic team at the 2024 Barnes Fair and volunteered again for this year. I also offered my time for Ponder 2.
Notes & thoughts
From that October, 2023 meeting, three impressions stayed with me:
Don’t mention the Bridge
Computer says no
Back to basics, at least for me
Hammersmith Bridge was the elephant in the room. It came up as a joke, repeatedly. Everyone knew we could spend hours discussing and disagreeing, so without saying as much, we avoided the topic. Like Brexit before, the Bridge was the unspoken B-word.
The Ponder team, understandably, concluded they had no real influence over the decision, and so chose not to engage with it. Ponder time should be focussed on the things that could be addressed. The right call.
But I wanted to talk about the Bridge. I knew people in the room had strong, opposing views. I wanted to hear them, try to understand them. The BCA’s thoughtful report a year after the closure captured the complexity well.
I wasn’t just interested in the mechanics. I wanted to explore what it might mean to never reopen the Bridge to cars. What would that imply for Barnes? For the wider area? That interests in how an urban area works I think that makes me as much urbanist as a placemaker.
Another memory: frustration. Not with the Ponder team. But in the room from people who deal with others when trying to make things happen. Sometimes it is silence from businesses and sometimes from government bodies. Transport came up a lot — buses and rail in particular.
I understand why this is off-putting. But this has been my life for over twenty years . I am drawn to these seemingly intractable ideas. Ask some of the many (so many) financial professionals in Barnes and Mortlake about patient capital and they will assume you are talking about long term investment. But there’s another definition: the intellectual and social capital required to stick with an idea that is initially rejected by your peers. My public service experience shows it can take years, sometimes a decade plus, to see radical ideas become reality.
Finally, I remember listening. To more than a hundred thoughtful, impressive residents. I felt out of my depth. A novice. I realised I held untested opinions. I needed to go back to basics. Build my own case, from the ground up.
I’ve done this before. I find that journey — from not knowing to some understanding — both intellectually and emotionally rewarding.
Where do I stand?
Ponder and I are walking the same ground, but sometimes see different things.
I’ll continue to support both Ponder and Mortlake Mash-Up. They are wonderful and necessary.
But here’s where we may diverge: Ponder and Mash-Up accept, say, the number of cars as a given and optimise around that reality. That makes sense — they want to get things done, and that’s the terrain they’ve inherited.
I want to challenge the status quo. For example, I want to imagine what happens if we start with people, not cars. That doesn’t mean no vehicles — it means fewer cars.
This is ambitious. I may not even have a role to play in achieving it. I’m still learning. I’m still that novice. Others are already doing this work. I applaud them. I may be late to the conversation. But as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.
And I want to do all this as well as helping Ponder and Mortlake Mash-Up to improve things. That is why I chose the title:
Yes, and…