BANK JOB - HSCB
Bank Job is a feature film and art project pushing for a national debt write-off as part of a reset for a fairer economic system.
Throughout 2018/19, the “Bank Job” team operated out of a former Bank on a High Street in Walthamstow, North East London, as HSCB (Hoe Street Central Bank). The Guardian called them “The Rebel Bank” - as they first printed their own banknotes/artwork and sold £40,000 worth of them. The team used 50% of the proceeds to fund local projects, picking up the pieces of the broken financial system - local food bank Eat or Heat, homeless kitchen Pl84U-Al Suffa, youth project The Soul Project, and Barn Croft Primary School. They used the other £20,000 to buy up and abolish £1.2m of local high-interest debt. Debt gets sold for a fraction of its face value when debtors fail to make repayments. Debts get sold on and on - but debtors get chased for the full amount.
Art Connoisseur Corner
Our monthly special selection of fantastic masterpieces on Numismatics, Exonumia, and Scripophily. Enjoy!
What is the Bank Job?
HSCB - HOE STREET CENTRAL BANK
HSCB operated throughout 2018 and 2019 in the former Co-Op Bank on Hoe Street in the London suburb of Walthamstow. Summer-Autumn 2019 saw us working with community share offer specialists, finance and business planners, a team of Kingston University architects mentored by architects Kristin Trommler and Tilo Gunther, with the mission to secure and build the bank as a beacon of hope and action in the fight for a fairer economy for people and planet. The building is LISTED as an ASSET OF COMMUNITY VALUE, but negotiations broke down with the owners, and the bank job team left the bank building on Christmas Day 2019.
NESM June 2026 Selection
HSCB BONDS
Buying up the debt and sending out letters to say those debts have been canceled is a quiet act. To give this community heist of a feature film a fitting climax and literally explode the conversation around illegitimate debt and a just economy into the minds and living rooms of Britain and beyond, we quite literally exploded the debt in a ‘debt in transit’ van in an action and artwork called ‘Big Bang 2’ (19 May 2019).
HSBC BANKNOTES
The banknotes were printed and sold between March and September 2018, raising £40,000. 50% went to the local causes featured in the notes (food bank, homeless kitchen, primary school, and youth project), and 50% to the purchase and write-off of £1.2 million of local debt.
The Gary - in 1000
Gary Nash of Eat or Heat Foodbank.
Established in 2013, Eat or Heat is a charity that runs a food bank for people in Waltham Forest affected by a deteriorating economic situation, who are having to choose between heating their homes and feeding their families.
Art Connoisseur Corner
