Peckham is cooler than Brixton now, yeah?

[teuchter]

In this new world order of hipsterentrification that we are going to have to accept now, I am wondering whether Peckham is going to come out of it all looking less embarrassing than Brixton...what do you reckon?

 

[editor]

Today a group of enterprising twenty- and thirtysomethings unveil their ambitious proposal to develop the 10-storey Peckham Rye car park into a permanent arts centre. For the past six years, it has been the site of Hannah Barry Gallery’s annual summer sculpture exhibition Bold Tendencies, and Barry, 30, and her gallery co-founder Sven Mündner, 34, are at the forefront of the plan to transform it into a year-round creative hub...

Campaigning under the title of Bold Tendencies — the name of Barry and Mündner’s non-profit organisation set up in 2007 to commission site-specific projects across sculpture, film, dance and music — Barry and the team plan a mixed-use reinvention of the building to incorporate the existing PeckhamPlex Cinema on the ground floor. “There will be light industrial spaces, studio spaces and we’re very keen on Kunsthalle-style [independent] galleries.”

The sustainable self-initiated new model for an arts building is, Barry believes, an embodiment of the Big Society where residents, businesses and the local council come together. The local community will gain an “uplifted environment”, social benefits and stimulated activity in the high street...

Arguably, the group’s great strength is that Barry can ask for help from a fluid network of young professionals and other collaborators — chefs, architects, engineers, lawyers. Many are old schoolfriends. Barry first met architect Gormley, 26, when they ran club nights together. Yancey Strickler, co-founder of crowd-funding website Kickstarter, is a friend.

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/...ham-car-park-into-an-arts-centre-8615243.html

(((Peckham)))

 

[teuchter]

I think I'd rather have an arts centre than a foodie village, really.

 

[editor]

I think I'd rather have an arts centre than a foodie village, really.

It's already got Frank’s Café and the usual supper clubs and I'm pretty sure there'll be no shortage of upmarket foodie stuff coming right along at the same time as the 'visual art hub' is created.

Today Boxer, now 26, runs The Brunswick House Café in Vauxhall. And Barry (one of the 15 people who will define the future of arts in Britain, according to the Independent), who now has a gallery on Bond Street, is about to move her Peckham space to a huge warehouse next to Peckham Rye station, as well as launching a new tapas joint, called the Peckham Refreshment Rooms.

 

[craigxcraig]

Top end of rye lane (even the arcade bit further down) I feel will be full of trendy food places in the next five or so years. Theres already a couple of 'cool' bars in Bar Story and one othr whose name I dont yet know so will just call it hip bar.

 

[RubyToogood]

I went to an electronic music event at Bold Tendencies last week. It was very good, and free. They've got a load of African cinema stuff going on at the moment, I think also free (but you have to book). http://boldtendencies.com/projects/2013/events/

 

[Yelkcub]

I went to an electronic music event at Bold Tendencies last week. It was very good, and free. They've got a load of African cinema stuff going on at the moment, I think also free (but you have to book). http://boldtendencies.com/projects/2013/events/

It can't be any good. They aren't from round these parts. And you are a traitor for fraternising with them. /u75

 

[Thimble Queen]

"The embodiment of the big society"

 

[RubyToogood]

It can't be any good. They aren't from round these parts. And you are a traitor for fraternising with them. /u75

It's urban's fault because I read about it on the Peckham Gentrification thread

 

[xslavearcx]

"The embodiment of the big society"

thats got to be ironic. surely..

 

[tbtommyb]

Peckham Pelican is incredibly hipster.

It annoys me that gentrification always involves people opening arsey food places. It would be fine if the foodies stayed away.

 

[Griffter]

Frank's Campari Bar is pretty good....On another note why do we associate half decent food with gentrification? In any other country it would be seen as part of the whole experience. It's the painfully high prices and exclusivity that grate but let's not start a war on food

 

[Fez909]

It's not good food that is associated with gentrification, it's a certain way of presenting that food and the costs that have to be charged which puts it out of the reach of ordinary people.

Lots of non-wanky places do good food. It needn't be that way.

 

[mango5]

Yep. "Peckham Refreshment Rooms" radishes with butter, a fiver.

 

[editor]

Yep. "Peckham Refreshment Rooms" radishes with butter, a fiver.

But the name makes it sound so awfully working class though, doesn't it?

 

[DJWrongspeed]

This kinda ties in with that previous Peckham thread in the London forum. Peckham doesn't have masses going on but the things it does are all high profile things e.g. Bussey and Car Park. The live events at the Car Park are a bit mysterious, where does the money come from? Was at a great PAN records night last friday, was busy and loud. It did feel like upstairs at the bar was hipster central.

Would it have worked at the old Pope's road car park in Brixton, hard to say.

 

[tbtommyb]

Frank's Campari Bar is pretty good....On another note why do we associate half decent food with gentrification? In any other country it would be seen as part of the whole experience. It's the painfully high prices and exclusivity that grate but let's not start a war on food

Because it's not 'half decent' food, it's wanky food that just allows foodies to bore on about the ingredients or some shit like that. Pure wankery. In fact I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some restaurant has the waiters ejaculate over your meal as a final serving flourish.

In other news, a friend posted on fb how there is now a 'hipster hairdresser' in Peckham.

 

[CH1]

Even Wetherspoon-wise Peckham has something to be said for it - unless you prefer the more "vibrant" Beehive atmosphere.

 

[not-bono-ever]

Because it's not 'half decent' food, it's wanky food that just allows foodies to bore on about the ingredients or some shit like that. Pure wankery. In fact I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some restaurant has the waiters ejaculate over your meal as a final serving flourish.

In other news, a friend posted on fb how there is now a 'hipster hairdresser' in Peckham.

my cypriot barbers on Rye lane still charge £6 and a trim yer eyebrows is included. No hipsters go there. yet.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Peckham's always been cooler than Brixton. Just got a bad press. And Del Boy didn't help.

 

[teuchter]

my cypriot barbers on Rye lane still charge £6 and a trim yer eyebrows is included. No hipsters go there. yet.

Have you considered the possibility that you are a proto-hipster yourself?

 

[Cat R]

Just saw the Bussey Building mentioned here in this struggle for the supremacy of cool. We've got a new play on there from 15 September - a romcom about internet dating, playfully remixing Dante's Inferno, where two Irish sisters in Peckham discover passion and perils in the dark forest of internet dating. And the men they meet consider running for the hills. We are into combining classics with modern plays set in particular parts of London, and would love our next one to explore Brixton somehow. Any ideas? The link for our play Abandon is http://www.clfartcafe.org/#!theatre/ck0q

 

[simonSW2]

On Peckham, and avant garde art, and gentrification and estate agents (sort of):..
http://thequietus.com/articles/13174-gentrification-art-london-contemporary-music-festival

 

[editor]

On Peckham, and avant garde art, and gentrification and estate agents (sort of):..
http://thequietus.com/articles/13174-gentrification-art-london-contemporary-music-festival

Can't disagree with this:

The debate around gentrification, then, can lack nuance on both sides. Advocates of regeneration tend to be too hasty in their claims that 'cultural hubs' and arts festivals can, as the saying goes, 'breathe life' into deprived areas. Against this, the belief that avant-garde work is a purely middle-class concern brings with it its own set of assumptions, and these also need to be challenged. When all is said and done, a better way to help inner-city communities maintain their identities would be a tighter regulation of the property market – rent controls can help a working-class family keep close to their roots far better than a blanket resistance to incursions by experimental artists. In this case, the finger needs to be pointed at policy makers and councils rather than at straw men.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Interesting article. What seemed apparent about the festival was that the programme was very much 'Avant-garde' c1960-80 rather than now, a kind of retro avant-garde, isn't everything retro now ! The Guardian was moaning though about the fluxus piano breaking piece->

Smashing and violating this instrument that gave so much over its life, at an (admittedly free) event high above one of the most deprived areas in London, is indulgence bordering on immorality. Before the festival, I suggested on Twitter that LCMF ditch the performance and give the piano to a local school instead; "that's a bit Daily Mail" was their response.

Don't quite get what is obscene about destructivist art. It was a free event that anyone could come along to. More inclusive rather exclusive. There are plenty of pianos past repair.

 

[RubyToogood]

Interesting article. What seemed apparent about the festival was that the programme was very much 'Avant-garde' c1960-80 rather than now, a kind of retro avant-garde, isn't everything retro now ! The Guardian was moaning though about the fluxus piano breaking piece->



Don't quite get what is obscene about destructivist art. It was a free event that anyone could come along to. More inclusive rather exclusive. There are plenty of pianos past repair.

Oh a friend was at this and according to him it was a decent piano.

 

[DJWrongspeed]

Oh a friend was at this and according to him it was a decent piano.

All the more intriguing i suppose, still, would those offended have been more upset if it was in a gallery in Mayfair?
On the original point Peckham was being gentrified long before the car park and Bussey started up. The council were actively encouraging it in the conservation zone west of Rye Lane. Area 10 were given free reign by the council and that seems like years ago.

 

[Hocus Eye.]

"Retro Avant Garde " My time machine cannot cope with that. I will have to walk home.

 

[RubyToogood]

I think, basically, I refuse to hate art on the grounds that it fuels gentrification.

 

[George & Bill]

I think, basically, I refuse to hate art on the grounds that it fuels gentrification.

It would be a mistake to hate art - but to offer uncritical veneration to anything that goes by the name would be equally unfortunate. Art is the quintessential chimera - vital mode of expression for those with no other means to speak, but also self-aggrandising intellectual white noise for egotists with nothing much to say; a weapon for the marginalised whose production is nonetheless usually monopolised by the privileged, and speculation on which is one of the most perfect means by which the rich accrue further wealth; a potent means by which both to flag up an unwelcome truth, and to perpetuate a convenient lie.

The point editor flagged up in the Quietus piece is a very good one (I and many others have made it previously ): when housing is marketised, and also in short supply, the interests of the poor automatically become opposed not just to those of active gentrification (landlords, property developers and speculators), but also to literally anything that will make the area more attractive to live in - like the conversion of a car park into an arts centre - even though such projects do not necessarily seek to gentrify or benefit from the wider process. You end up with the utterly miserable situation of poor people being incentivised to hope that the area they inhabit remains as run-down as possible, because that is their only hope of continuing to be able to afford to live there.

In the specific case of Hannah Barry, I have my doubts. Her gallery, and Bold Tendencies, are fantastic feats of organisation - with an overwhelmingly white, middle-class audience. Go to one of her events, and you'd be forgiven for not knowing you were in an ethnically diverse, mostly working-class area. That someone of such evident talent and intellect can - or at least it seems to me - fail almost utterly to engage with most of the inhabitants of her adopted turf seems to me either a huge missed opportunity, or evidence that she's more interested in climbing the greasy pole than really looking at the world around her. But of course she wouldn't be the first in any of those.