Throughout 2018/19 we operated out of a former Bank on a High Street in Walthamstow, North East London as HSCB (Hoe Street Central Bank). The Guardian called us “The Rebel Bank” – as we first printed our own banknotes/artwork and sold £40,000 worth of them. We used 50% of the proceeds to fund local projects picking up the pieces of our broken financial system – local food bank Eat or Heat, homeless kitchen Pl84U-Al Suffa, youth project The Soul Project and Barn Croft Primary School.

We 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.

The rebel bank HSCB lives on through the Bank Job book, the film, the community built around the project, the movement it is part of and the online membership site HOE STREET CENTRAL BANK OF IDEAS (50% going to immediate mutual aid reconnecting with the four local projects featured on the banknotes and 50% to making sure the Bank Job reaches out across the world. This is now transforming as we launch a new project called POWER. More very soon.