Meet the community group taking on 'absentee landlords' to put empty building in hands of artists
The People's Property Portfolio's community share offer aims to buy up and restore a listed building for artists in Bradford to offer UK City of Culture legacy
Bradford was named UK City of Culture in 2025. Now People's Property Portfolio is trying to secure space for artists in the West Yorkshire city. Image: Daniel Johnson Gray / People's Property Portfolio
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A Bradford co-operative is giving residents the opportunity to have a stake in how a local building is brought back into community control, as it is set to become a multi-use workspace for local artists and cultural organisations.
Through a community share offer campaign, the People’s Property Portfolio (PPP) is allowing people to buy social investment shares from £50 to help raise funds to restore and renovate 17-21 Chapel Street, a Grade II listed building in Bradford’s city centre.
PPP is aiming to bring buildings back into long-term community ownership after seeing community groups and artists “forced out of spaces by absent landlords or property developers”. In November 2025, the group acquired the building at 17-21 Chapel Street, originally a Quaker school for boys before becoming home to the Bradford Resource Centre, a group of activists and trade union movements.
With the building since falling into disrepair, PP plans to “revitalise” it as an arts hub, using the community share offer campaign to fund its refurbishment.
“For too long, we have seen artists forced out of the temporary spaces that they have improved by landlords that want to profit from their efforts,” PPP’s chair Harry Jelley told the Big Issue.
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“We also regularly see community organisations priced out of the rental market. We’re asking for investment from local people, and supporters from beyond Bradford, who care about a democratic vision for our city, keeping the doors of this heritage building open.
“We don’t want a city centre determined for us by greedy developers or rogue landlords who don’t care about how Bradford works for the people – just the future commercial value of their properties.”
17-21 Chapel Street in Bradford Image: People’s Property Portfolio
PPP claims that if the 17-21 Chapel Street restoration is a success, it will continue the project over a number of other buildings and spaces.
Jelley said: “We have our first property, and we are in this position of vitally needing funds to get us through this next stage towards capital works on the project.”
Explaining that the group has building consent and planning permission to do the work, he explained that the share offer is about securing the funds to “bring the building into use”.
“It’s about reinvigorating what’s been an empty building for the last 20 years and getting it to the state where it can serve the community again,” Jelley added.
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He explained that the building would have a “huge impact” on the arts in Bradford, which was named the UK City of Culture in 2025, an honour that Jelley said “cemented our drive to make special things happen in our city and build on that with the ambition and talent here in our district”.
“There are so many good arts and community organisations in Bradford that are doing incredible work with communities, but they’re always having to think about where they might be next year or next month,” Jelley said. “What we want to do is be a socially-minded landlord that provides secure tenancies in buildings that are fit for purpose, so they can do all of that work and not always be having to manage a building as well as operate out of it.”
Bradford co-operative to give residents the opportunity to have a stake in how a local building is brought back into community control Image: People’s Property Portfolio
‘Bradford city centre is peppered with buildings that deserve more care’
Explaining the need to bring arts venues back into community hands, Jelley spoke about a building which collapsed on Dale Street in Bradford in December 2025, which had reportedly been empty for years.
“This is what happens when the landlords who own these buildings are absentee… or holding it as an asset and aren’t interested in how these spaces can work for the community,” he said.
“Bradford city centre is just peppered with these buildings that deserve way more care, and our communities deserve to have a city centre where these buildings are working for us. We want to challenge all of those structures that mean that our city centres aren’t thriving, and that wealth is extracted from the city rather than being held in the hands of the people.”
He added that by investing in PPP with the share offer, “you’re not only giving vital resource to get us through these next few years, but also you’re becoming a member, and that means that you can join meetings… you can vote for who’s on the board, you can have a key say in those big decisions for our organisation”.
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He added: “You don’t have to be living in Bradford or from Bradford to invest, or to want to invest,” he added. “We’re trying to do things differently here and show that community ownership of space and in our city centres can help our cities thrive, and if you believe in that, then it’s worth investing.”
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