POP RECS LTD.

DAWN STOREY TALKS TO DAVE HARPER ABOUT POP RECS’ INSPIRATIONAL NEW CHAPTER

In November 2020 I spoke to Pop Recs Ltd.’s Dave Harper as the new venue was being built in Sunderland – and now, excitingly, it’s ready to open. Part gig venue, part café and all community space, I caught up with him again to ask how it all came together, and how he ended up moving into the new space.

“Well, our first home at Fawcett Street wasn’t the most robust set-up as far as regulatory bodies were concerned,” says Dave, “and our Stockton Road cafe was always an exercise in resilience and maintaining some kind of presence. The activities and events we put into those spaces far, far outweighed what the reality should have been. This feels like the first time we’ve had any level of autonomy as to how we want a place to look and what it should do.”

The new building on High Street West was once home to the first ever Binns department store, and Dave is adamant that Sunderland deserves such a unique space. “It’s a city with high unemployment, low wages and completely on its arse as far as hope goes,” he says, “but it’s an incredibly resilient city, a creative city and a proud city. We’ve always made the best of bad facilities but enough is enough. We’ve seen the worst of politics and life up here and it doesn’t need to be that way. When we started looking at the space over six years ago it didn’t have a floor, a roof or a rear wall. Now it does have those things and much, much more. It will make all of your wildest dreams come true.”

LET YOUR PEOPLE INFORM YOU WHAT HOPE LOOKS LIKE FOR THEM AND TRY AND MAKE THAT A REALITY

Importantly, like its previous incarnations, it’s hoped a multitude of activities will take place at Pop Recs – including theatre and art classes, plus community groups carried over from the other buildings. “Myself and Pete Brewis are working on a summer run of old school kids’ discos,” adds Dave. Furthermore, their partnership with Washington Mind has developed too. “We’ll have a team of counsellors on site five days a week. This will directly have an effect on waiting lists which are already unmanageable and keep young people away from the very real stigma of entering a clinic or a hospital.”

For Dave, the heart of Pop Recs is both the people it serves as well as those behind the scenes. “We’ve never strayed from Pop Recs being informed by the people who make it what it is. It’s their home and they have the right to choose how to make themselves comfortable. We know we’re on the right journey because our people let us know. We understand that, given the pandemic and Brexit, the worst is still to come in terms of mental health and in terms of hope, which has never flowed very freely in this city anyway. We’ve always been conscious that something needs to exist to react to that. So we’ve put together two new accredited schemes to train people most at risk from dropping out of society, whether that be via our food and hospitality offer or a more technical edge via our Crew School. When the people have those skills they come and work for us and the other businesses that have become our friends. [The ethos broadly remains] let your people inform you what hope looks like for them and try and make that a reality.”

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