Rosanna Spence meets Mark Wilson of Rockaway Park (a subversive DIY cultural haven for people seeking art, music, food, nature, protest, and solace and support from a tight‐ knit community in Temple Cloud) to talk punk, creating the park from scratch… and the story behind the Chapel of Unrest – Rockaway’s own place of worship unlike any other
It’s not often that mid-way through an interview, I wonder whether or not it’s a story I actually want to share with readers across the city. Not because this particular one isn’t worthwhile. Far from it. Instead it’s because as I’m listening to Mark Wilson, the man behind Rockaway Park, tell me about his punk roots and how the
community in this pocket of Temple Cloud has grown organically from the cracks in society, flourishing in the face of adversity, I’m steadily realising how special this place is. That no matter what you might assume or preconceive about Rockaway Park, it’ll manage to surprise you. How there’s nowhere else quite like it in the UK. How I’d rather to keep all it for myself (and I’m not the first journalist to feel this way). But, we’re in the business of sharing good stories here, and life’s too short to be selfish. So if spreading the word about what’s happening over at Rockaway ruins some people’s best kept secret, then apologies in advance.
It’s hard to describe exactly what Rockaway Park is. I’d first heard about it from friends who flocked there for the delicious Sunday roasts. It’s part-repurposed scrap wonderland, part-art exhibition, part-event space, part-work space, part-protest, part-place of worship, part- community hub, part-educational centre, part-gig venue, part-Airbnb, part-café, part- ‘this feels like home’, part- whatever you want to be. And that’s kind of the point; it’s un-boxable, forever dodging the label maker – but rather than hiding in the shadows it lingers in the glittering sun that shines through the trees and reflects off the actual rocks that support this community (hence the name) determined to lead with a ‘can do’, hopeful attitude of approaching things differently, and helping others be able to find a more joyful perspective in life in the face of uncertainty and division.
All the young punks
“I left school in 1977, in the year of punk rock, and I thought: ‘I want to be a f*cking punk, I want to change the world’,” Mark tells me. “I formed a band [anarcho-punk project The Mob] and put out records, and did it all ourselves. I really firmly believed in the DIY approach, more so than the music. I really liked the idea that there was this movement for positive change that was done by the people, and wasn’t done by anybody higher up. It rang every bell with me straight away. So, I’ve spent most of my life ‘doing it myself ’.”
Mark left home fairly early and went off squatting in London, forming housing co-operatives, putting on free festivals and tours, “always pushing the boundaries, always trying to find somewhere to live, solving housing situations perpetually – that’s still ongoing – and always looking in the margins for answers; looking at where the cracks are that we can work in.” This desire to exist as far from mainstream culture as possible saw his ventures take him even further away, spending weekends travelling back and forth from peace convoy camps.
“I ended up making a half-decent record [with The Mob] that sold a few copies, and then, in typical style, shooting myself in the foot, I went and lived in the woods in a tepee – and a caravan – and having nothing to do with the music world for another 20-odd years. I had kids, and wanted to look after them, so we started buying bits of land and moving onto them in unofficial camps.”
This way of living continued for years – punctuated with battles against the council about the camps – and meanwhile Mark was putting his in- depth knowledge about Transit vans to use, renting various spaces across Bristol to break them down into parts. A self-confessed workaholic, his dismantling business became huge, and rental costs were accumulating until someone told him about a yard for sale in Temple Cloud.
“So, I came here, I saw some squirrels jumping around in the trees, and I thought, ‘This space is entirely inappropriate. It’s miles from the M4, it’s miles from the M5, it’s miles from my customer base. Let’s buy it!’ I said yes there and then.”
A desert oasis
Moving his life onto the yard was the turning point. He didn’t know it yet, but Rockaway Park was waiting patiently underground to spring up through the last burning embers of his breakers business, through the ashes of more council battles, through huge financial struggles… ignited by the spark of his return to music.
“It was my 50th birthday, and my partner at the time suggested reforming the band, she said it had meant quite a lot to people at the time, and she thought I undervalued it. It had never occurred to me in the intervening 28-or-so years. I didn’t realise we’d inspired a lot of people.”
Once The Mob started playing music again, tours and gigs in America beckoned. It was here than Mark came across alternative, artistic communities like Slab City in the Californian desert, “I saw people doing whatever they wanted and making huge, beautiful sculptural wonderlands. I was smitten.”
Despite life outside of the band feeling like “a disaster”, it was Mark’s turn to feel inspired the next time he returned home from across the pond. “I thought we could try and turn the yard into some sort of artistic creative space. I thought that would be far more in keeping with what I actually care about, and have alternative housing and all these other things. I’ve always worked so hard because I knew I had to put a roof over the kids heads, and there was no one to ever bail me out – that’s where I developed a mad work ethic.”
Defying rock bottom
Anyone rocking up to the site is greeted by an old fairground elephant riding atop of what looks like an old warhead. He chuckles and says: “Watch this,” tapping his smartphone. Suddenly there’s a sparkling fountain erupting from Nelly, pouring into the natural pond below. A pond that’s also surrounded by sculptures from artists including the anonymous @gettinguptostuff. It’s a taste of what’s to come from the rest of Rockaway, as we head past more scrap that’s been transformed into spectacular structures – from waltzers to windmills – and into the caravan, and former office, behind the stage in the Main Shed, where we sit for our chat. Mark’s huge, blocky mobile phones from the late 80s and 90s sit on the side, relics of past deals and networking.
Creating Rockaway Park has become an unending project for him and those who share this space. As Mark and I are talking there’s hammering, repairing, people amending and improving the space around us – that’s because Rockaway never sits still.
“We never stop making more, or creating more, or making it better, or beautifying it, or adding solar panels, or are just constantly trying to make it a sort of real example of what’s possible, especially in this day and age when everything feels so bad on every level. You want to show some glimmer of hope, you know, people can say, ‘There’s this guy doing this thing…’ People send others here all the time, especially who may be in distress, they don’t know what to do, or they’re down, they’re stuck in some position, and people say, ‘Mark’s got a way of seeing his way through sh*t’. I’ve used adversity like a propellant in a fire.”
Fuelled by this fire, Rockaway Park is now home to various venues and spaces, accommodation, workshops and studios, a community forest garden, rehearsal studio, café, therapy room, a School of Curiosity, wellbeing services, and… its very own place of worship.
Losing my religion
So, about that church, then. Or rather, the Chapel of Unrest, as it’s known. Mark had bought a huge, curved structure in 2018 and it was put up with no real intention or plan. It was only when some Airbnb guests on site asked if they could get married in there that the crew started to refer to the open structure as ‘the church’.
“The council wanted business rates from the building, but the only thing that had ever happened in there was one wedding, so I said it’s a church. The council responded that you can’t have a church without a recognised religion. What makes that then? A quick Google, and it takes 60,000 people apparently. That’s not the truth, of course, but it was the first answer that came up, so my immediate thought was: ‘If I can get 60,000 on board, they could pay a tenner to join (£20 if you get a T-shirt), that could give us anywhere between £600,000 and £1.2million. Then we can build a church’.
All that went through my head in about 10 seconds, then I started thinking how I know a lot of talented people who can make some beautiful objects to adorn said church, and we can use all this money that we’ve raised to build a monument to our people, to people who give a sh*t, to artists, weirdos, nutters, visionaries, the left-of-left-of-centre, people who actually care about the world, a place to celebrate diversity.”
Mark may have shared his idea too soon, because he was immediately batting away countless £10 notes from enthusiastic people keen to be part of it. He wasn’t ready.
But his daughter lent him a book on science and belief, “and it made perfect sense. People need places to come together and sing. They need places to experience communal joy. They need places where they can commune with nature. They need places of pilgrimage. And the more I read this book, my church fits all these things much better than any church I’ve ever been in.”
People interested in alternative ways of living were stopping in at Rockaway Park on trips between places such as Dial House in Epping Forest (known for its anarcho-punk roots since the ‘60s) and Glastonbury.
A punk pilgrimage, perhaps? During the pandemic, the church’s open sides also meant it became a safe place of sanctuary for those wanting to meet and form radical thought. All signs seemed to be pointing to the church as a monument, a protest and, as it would eventually become, a fully registered place of worship.
On my visit there was just shy of 2,500 members of the Chapel of Unrest’s ‘congregation of agitation’, drawn to a place they feel they belong. Each has their own skillset and story to tell. “If you bring a lot of people together in some sort of common goal, whatever that may be and whatever it means to them, you can go further. You can feel hopeless on your own, can’t you? You’re much better with a group of people. Not that we meet regularly as a group or anything. In fact, the only rule is that you’ve got to be kind and respectful to each other.”
The one word that seems to empower this place is ‘can’. You’re enveloped in a ‘can-do’ philosophy, and Mark will find a way to wriggle around every instance of ‘cannot’. It’s even inferred on the bottom signature of the team’s emails, in the mantra: ‘Would those who say it can’t be done, please stand clear of those doing it’.
“There’s usually a solution to something if you look hard enough for it,” he says. “Or if you work hard for yourself and what you care about, you will be rewarded eventually… I like to think so anyway. I may be wrong, but I like to live in hope rather than in frustration that you can’t do anything. I believe you can.”
For information about the site and upcoming events, visit the main website rockawaypark.co.uk, where you can also sign up to the team’s newsletter, and follow @rockaway_park on Instagram
