On Saturday, Occupy Southend set up temporary camp in the High Street near the Odeon Cinema. Twenty occupiers were in attendance and eight tents were deployed. We occupied the site for two hours and were buoyed by the genuinely warm support from many of the passers-by.

Occupy Southend has been established to focus on a system of living, created by the banks and the corporations, that is quite simply 'not fit for purpose'. We refuse to pay for a crisis of their own making. We do not accept the cuts imposed on us. Corporations manipulating democracies - your time is over. We call for and end to a system that pollutes land, sea and air; an end to a system that generates and perpetuates global tax injustice. We look forward to a world where sustainable global resources are shared equally by all the people of the earth.

Occupy Southend aims to become an all inclusive voice of this town, to be a receiver of information as well as a giver - to be a beacon of light, and a vehicle for change.

As humans we are amazing. We can create wonderful systems to live under, but somehow we find ourselves existing under this rotten one. No more will we extend our power to the few. Our power must and will return to us, and from use of our own power we'll develop a world centred on the heart and not the corporate bank balance.

Occupy Southend will be staging further temporary occupations around the town in the near future, resulting in the establishment of a permanent site. If you agree with our views and our aims please come join us at Occupy Southend!

Occupy Southend

Paul Giles’ article (YA Oct 26^th) about the three partners working together to deliver the new £27million library and learning centre, to be built on the site of the old Farringdon car park - Southend Council, the University of Essex and South Essex College – have now short-listed six firms with the successful bidder to be announced in January 2012, left one important question unanswered. What will happen to the current library in Victoria Avenue when the new one is Built?

One answer popular with many is that it be turned into a community arts centre and fine art gallery in which to display the entire Beecroft Collection – containing paintings by Constable, Rossetti and Leyden and a 19^th centre costume collection which attracts attention from as far away as the USA.

Only two per cent of which ever gets to see the light of day at any given time because it is currently housed in an inadequate, out of the way, Westcliff location opposite the Cliff’s Pavilion.

And all this week, from Monday until Saturday, guess who’s holding an exhibition in the foyer of Southend Library setting out in detail what could be, unless of course, the Council is utterly determined to flog the place off for high rise development of some such?

Pop along and see... it’ll be well worth SKIPPing lunch for.

John Haran

Leigh-on-Sea

At long last a befitting home is proposed by SKIPP for the Beecroft Collection, and one that clearly helps Victoria Avenue to retain a necessary part of its architectural heritage, by keeping the library building for a cultural purpose. If I had to choose one organisation that had done so much to protect the arts and heritage of Southend, I would name SKIPP. They have- thank goodness, the political courage to recapture the spirit of our 19th century forebears who then clearly had the foresight to create a vernacular Southend.

So much devastation and ill-conceived development has wrought havoc on Victoria Avenue, in particular since the nineteen sixties; first with inappropriate office blocks so close to the heart of the town and now there are plans to demolish the library, which has acted as a real catalyst for the arts of literature, photography and painting in particular over many years. So this enlightened proposal by SKIPP to save the building and to turn it into a cultural centre for the town has to be applauded.

Beecroft generously donated his art collection to the people of Southend, now it badly needs a new home, one providing a more appropriate environment to the present crumbling edifice it presently occupies; so too the needs of the other arts so that every aspect of the human spirit can be brought together under one roof, if the SKIPP proposals are accepted.

In recent years Southend has suffered from huge losses to its built environment with some irreplaceable buildings reflecting the heritage of the town, being sacrificed in the name of progress. The library building, admittedly a 60s design, but what is wrong with that if it is of good quality and robust, and one that has served the community well over the years. It is still structurally sound, with many years of useful life in its illustrious frame. So to suggest that it becomes a cultural centre for the wider community is both a brave and enlightened suggestion in the face of municipal opposition.

Southend cannot go on demolishing its architectural heritage for there are certain buildings that help give it its quintessential character, a character still loved by so many. So SKIPP is right to find both a logical and appropriate use for this soon to be vacated building.

They have our irrevocable support.

Vin Harrop

CHAIRMAN OF THE FOUNDATION FOR ESSEX ARTS