BBC TV London News 24 September 2013

Warren Nettleford BBC reporter in Rye Lane talking with Eileen Conn from Peckham Vision

“Gentrification ‘distorting’ Peckham” : Effects of rising property prices on Peckham were reported on BBC TV London News on 24 September 2013  Http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-24229352 The news item raised the questions whether this was gentrification and was it good or bad for Peckham. Peckham Vision was amongst those interviewed.

Hush House Supermarket 24 August 2013

Hundreds of people thronged to Hush House Supermarket at the Bussey on Saturday, on three floors. In the courtyard all day, delicious enterprising savoury and sweet food was cooked on the spot. There were four packed out talks on key topics for small creative enterprises, alongside a wide variety of stalls with the output of many creative small businesses. Pop up opportunities like this are what Peckham micro enterprises need, as well as providing a good new shopping experience in Rye Lane.

Copeland Cultural Quarter full of life


book fair in Bussey Passage

Royal Court’s Theatre Local is having a very successful second season at the Bussey building. It is wonderful that the building and the Copeland site, saved from demolition by Peckham Vision’s campaign, are now the home to so many creative activities and enterprises – theatre, art, music, dance, studios, workshops, community meetings and more – with further potential. The Copeland Cultural Quarter, now organically materialising, must be nurtured and not destroyed by property development plans. This is a key for the town centre future. Read more…

Peckham community celebrates town centre achievements

Peckham Town Centre Forum

Peckham Town Centre Forum

This was a fantastic community meeting celebrating recent achievements for Peckham town centre. Over 200 locals from Peckham’s diverse social, economic and ethnic communities crowded in to the CLF Art Café in the Bussey building, to hear the latest news from Peckham Vision and the Council. Senior figures from Network Rail, Southern Railway and the Railway Heritage Trust voiced their support for community initiatives at Peckham Rye station in Peckham town centre; see video clip. Read more

Royal Court at the Bussey building, Peckham


From Sep to Nov 2011 the Royal Court theatre, based in Sloane Sq, brought its Theatre Local to the Bussey building in Peckham with two plays Truth and Reconciliation and The Westbridge . The two month run was so successful it caught the BBC News on 15th Nov 2011:

* BBC1 6.30pm TV News

* BBC Breakfast Show – Radio with Paul Ross + Gabby Roslin

See also Guardian.co.uk

The plays were very topical, and thought provoking. Advance tickets were sold out: the 30 tickets kept back for local sale at the door from 5.30pm each evening were in great demand. The Westbridge which premiered at the Bussey has now transferred to Sloane Square.

It is wonderful to see our very own Bussey building showing how adaptable it is. A great place for theatre as we always knew it could be. The space was provided by the CLF Art Café in the Bussey working in partnership with Peckham Vision to encourage the Royal Court to come. We hope it will lead to continued work in the future with the Royal Court.

Introducing the new Montmartre: it’s Delboys manor, Peckham SE15

It’s not as odd as it sounds – the deprived south London area is rebranding itself as the capital’s contemporary art hub, much like the Parisian district during the 19th and 20th centuries  By Simon Tait   27 March 2011

Scarred by tragedies like the murder of Damilola Taylor, and laughed at as the home of the Trotter family of TV’s Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em, Peckham, Southwark, is defying its image to become London’s new Montmartre.

Artists are the fulcrum of a ten-to-15-year plan to be launched in May for Peckham’s rebirth as the capital’s cultural heartbeat, perhaps an embodiment of the Big Society in which residents, businesses and the local authority have come together. “Peckham is the place” says gallerist Hannah Barry. “It’s where people are coming to find the best in international contemporary art”.  read more Continue reading “Introducing the new Montmartre: it’s Delboys manor, Peckham SE15”

Peckham’s art scene

by LAUREN HOUSSIN formerly on laurenetcaetera.blogspot.com  22 December 2009

From New York’s Meatpacking district to Berlin’s Mitte or Paris’ Montmartre, dirty corners of cities all face the same destiny: they are pioneered by young artists, and later colonized by the trendy bourgeoisie. The rents soar, and the starving bohemia has yet to migrate again.  Take the case of London. After Ladbroke Grove in the 1970s and Camden in the 1980s, the East End was conquered in the late 90s. By the early noughties, Brick Lane, Shoreditch, even Dalston were out of price. Artists soon decided to move south of the river, to Peckham. Known to most people for its gang warfare and knife crime rates rather than its culture, Peckham is home to a burgeoning art scene. Because of its empty industrial spaces and proximity to art schools, the bloody district is now an area of choice for young up and coming artists.

“An advantage of working as an artist in Peckham is that there is an audience for art in the area,” said 26-year-old Bobby Dowler, whose paintings are currently showcased at the Hannah Barry Gallery, one of the great pioneers of the area’s scene and one of the most dynamic new art galleries in Britain. “There’s an extremely good dialogue between people,” the young artist added, “and a seriousness about what they’re doing, a kind of belief that it’s important.”

Located in a former cricket bat factory at the end of an industrial road populated by factories, the Hannah Barry Gallery was invited at this year’s Venice Biennale to stage the first Peckham Pavilion. Ms. Barry founded her eponymous gallery in 2008 with Sven Mündner, and works with 32 artists, all aged between 21 and 35. Whether they are showing paintings, installations or photographies, their aim is to always show the work in-depth, in order to best represent the progress of the artist.

“Peckham is the land of freedom and opportunity,” said Ms. Barry. A hallmark of the area’s art scene is its large-scale and high-reaching projects: the spaces available can accommodate shows and works that could not take place in typical West End or East End galleries.

“Everbody has their own possibilities,” she explained, “and for us the space that we have here allowed us to do the shows that we wanted to do. It would have been a different price in the West End, and perhaps not the kind of price that a young gallery can afford. Being in Peckham has enabled us to do things on a scale that we wouldn’t have been able to do over there.”

Although East London is an established part of the city’s gallery circuit and houses the highest population of artists in Europe, it is no longer what it used to be. Its charm and character seem to be lost since property developers have taken advantage of its popularity. As rents have rocketed, many younger artists have in fact headed south of the river in areas like Peckham, where rents are more affordable.

Situated inbetween two of London’s leading art colleges, Goldsmiths School of Arts and Camberwell College, plenty of young, artistic and imaginative people are challenging the negative stereotype that is still all too-often applied to the area. “A lot of students live in the area and continue living in the area after they graduate. I have done so and I graduated in 1998,” said Emily Druiff, Director of the arts initiative Peckham Space.

Through annual commissions, workshops and public events, Peckham Space supports art practice that forges sustainable links between the arts and the local community in south east London, and aims to provide professional development opportunities for artists. The organisation is also plans to open an art venue in a raw space in Spring 2010, showcasing artworks made in conjunction with and in response to the locals of Peckham.

Peckham is home to 25,000 people from all over the world, and has the highest proportion of people born elsewhere compared to the rest of Southwark. One of the best metaphors of Peckham is the Bussey building, that from the outside looks like a run-down factory in a dodgy back alley. But penetrating the almost historic monument -it was built in the early 20th century- and looking closer, it is occupied by an aggregate of over 60 artists, faith groups, exhibition spaces  and small businesses, all existing and working happily alongside each other.

Turner Prize winner Antony Gormley and his fellow Royal Academician Tom Phillips, who both have their studios in Peckham, decided a few years ago with a clutch of others to do an artistic makeover of the run-down neighbourhood’s landscape. With this street art initiative, residents now enjoy some of the most original street murals, barcode-patterned pavements in the city and twisted or heart-shaped lampposts by the fashion designer Zandra Rhodes.

Just a step out of Peckham Rye station is a wooden sculpture of a phoenix with splatters of paint on it. According to legend, the Phoenix is reduced to ashes at the end of its life, from which a new, young phoenix is reborn to live again. Using the metaphor of destruction and creation, the sculpture aims to communicate a message of rebirth among the community and the role played by the young art scene in this rejuvenation.

Most people will hear the word ”Peckham” and they will just picture graffiti, dirty pavements and urinated phone boxes. But aside from the drama that the South London area evokes, a few pioneers have managed to raise up the profile and status of the place for everyone, bringing new audiences to the area, creating people of different ages and backgrounds mixing in the same place and causing the area to now easily betray people’s expectations.




Emerging Artists Find a New ‘Blank Canvas’ in London

Special Report: Contemporary Art New York Times  By Alice Pfeiffer: October 14, 2009
Peckham, a run-down district of London, south of the Thames, is said to have the capital’s highest concentration of knife crime, hairdressers and gospel churches.
Now, add up-and-coming artists: in easy reach of some of the capital’s leading art schools, the area’s low prices and vast, empty industrial spaces are attracting experimental avant-garde collectives, studios and galleries — a countercultural challenge to the established North-of-the-river world of the Frieze art fair and the gentrified East End.
“Peckham is the land of the free. It’s like a blank canvas,” said Hannah Barry, an enterprising 26-year-old who founded her eponymous gallery last year in a warehouse of a former cricket bat factory.  At the end of an industrial road populated by factories and faith groups, Ms. Barry and her co-director Sven Mündner, 31 — both graduates of Cambridge — put on 15 to 20 shows a year, showcasing young emerging artists. Ms. Barry and Mr. Mündner have also put on an annual sculpture show since 2006, on the roof of an abandoned parking garage nearby. “We felt there was room for an ambitious sculpture park in London,” Ms. Barry said. In June, she and Mr. Mündner took Peckham to a global audience, with a show, the “Peckham Pavilion,” on the fringes of the Venice Biennale.  read more …

A Collision in the Bussey Building

On Sat 22 August 2009 in the Bussey Building the fourth annual Collision event will be taking place including appearances by Genetic Moo.

“…a creative experiment in which artists and audience will simultaneously engage in a form of social interaction based on game theory… Alongside a collection of site specific works, artists and performers will facilitate altered versions of familiar social situations and games in which the audience is invited to participate…”

Read more…

Copeland Cultural Quarter – two art exhibitions in parallel

Bussey Artists: “Plagiarise” 19-24 June, 1pm-6pm
“… devised to question originality and newness within fine art…”
Opening reception: 18 June, 6.30pm-9.30pm. Amy Smyth will perform “Suite” at 8pm.
Entrance: Bussey building, first floor, 133 Rye Lane, SE15
Read more

Hannah Barry Gallery: “The Making of Ashes” 16 June-5 July, Thursday-Sunday 12-6pm
James Balmforth’s exhibition of four sculptures selected works
“… a very mesmerising show…”
Opening reception: 16 June, 6–9pm
Entrance at 133 Copeland Road, Peckham, SE15 3SN
Read more