Category Archives: events

BCO Christmas Estates Tour

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Orchestral music is often inaccessible to many people for a variety of reasons, but this weekend we’re about to be blessed yet again in the Brandon and China Walk estates for Christmassy concerts which are free and open for everyone (that means you)!

Brixton Chamber Orchestra is a diverse group of 25 Brixton based instrumentalists who provide and create music across a range of genres including…wait for it….classical, disco, gospel, grime, rap, swing, pop, drum & bass and others, and often have guest vocalists. They usually ply their trade in community halls and churches in Brixton, but two times a year they hoist their trumpets northward to grace our soil.

Funded by Arts Council England and, surprisingly, by Lambeth Council, BCO is in the midst of a Christmas estates tour of 11 estates in Lambeth. They will be gracing us with their presence on Saturday at Jack Hobbs Hall in Brandon Estate (those large buildings at the back of Kennington Park) and inside Chandler Hall in Lambeth Walk.

BRANDON ESTATE
Sat 20th December @ 3:00 PM
Jack Hobbs Club Hall
Maddock Way, London SE17 3NH

CHINA WALK ESTATE
Sat 20TH December @ 7:00 PM
Chandler Hall 
15 Lambeth Walk, London SE11 6DU

These events are indoors but might be chilly so dress accordingly and buy your warming tipple from a local corner shop.

We attended this event in 2023 and it was great fun. Each show is unique and they’ve been known to feature guests musicians. They also encourage folks to get up and sing along, which should be made easier with that bottle you bought from the offie. And if this is sounding like a kids event, trust us it isn’t. Not that there is anything wrong with kids, as a few Observer staff were once kids themselves. If you can’t make it or shockingly don’t live in Greater Kennington there are more dates on their website.

Did we mention it’s free? Did we add that we love free? The clip below is the streetband gigging around Brixton recently, which we equally love.


Cleaver Square Charity Carols 2025

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If you like carols, or indeed if your name is Carol, you’ll be please to know that the annual Cleaver Square ‘Carols in the Square’ takes place this Tuesday (16th) from 19:00 and the best part is that you don’t even have to live in Cleaver Square to take part! Or even look like you live in Cleaver Square. It is open to everyone and has raised over £10,000 over the years for local charities, so bring a few extra pounds if you can, but they also have a card reader. Also bring your mug to save the hard working volunteers a bit of time.

We attended the Carols last year and it was great fun. We were treated to homemade mince pies, mulled wine, and sang along with the lovely Fever Pitch choir, who will be performing at 19:30. One of the traditions at the Cleaver Christmas Carols is funny hats. We’ve used funny hats and glasses to deflect from the tedium and underpayment of Observer life for years, so you can imagine we’ve accumulated quite a few. Office staff will be sporting these on the night so good luck spotting us. If you’re struggling locate the team, one of the hats retains bloodstains from last week’s Christmas ‘do  when Phil from accounts face planted in Kennington Lane after downing five Spicy Palomas.  

Lambeth Country Show 2025

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It’s our favourite weekend of the year at Observer towers! But unlike our other best weekends of the year this involves owls, bouncy castles for adults, and potatoes that look like Taylor Swift. Clutch your pearls folks, as we’re about to recommend something that involves leaving Greater Kennington.

The Lambeth Country Show (the term ‘country’ being used loosely as it’s in Herne Hill) is a yearly event held in the hilly enclaves of Brockwell Park and will be on Saturday and Sunday, 7&8 June, 1pm to 9pm, and it’s great fun. The fair is a wonderful mash up of Lambeth life including an eclectic (and loud) live stage featuring Jazz, disco and reggae. It has a fun fair for the kiddos, locally produced things to buy, and is totally free.

A real highlight of the show is the marquee featuring award winning vegetables, flowers and plants. If you see a scrum they’ll likely be huddled around the puntastic figures which depict topics of the day in veg form, and are so famous even the Gardening Museum is in on it.  We had a particular soft spot for Tina Turnip in 2023. If you can’t make it to the fair until the end of a hot Sunday afternoon then I’d give this tent a miss as the award winning veg starts to resemble something you’d find in the back of your fridge after 5 weeks.

The animals are another real treat of the show and something we rarely get to see as urban dwellers (especially the kids). Sheep, owls, birds of prey are on hand to see and, umm.. smell and you might even get to play with them. And if you get homesick and forlorn when you’re down there just visit our friends at Vauxhall City Farm who usually have their alpacas

You will be cheating yourself if you don’t partake in a bit of jerk chicken action when you’re down in the park, as there are a million options and all the vendors are local. Having said that, its also a good idea to take your own food and drink to save time and money.

TOP TIP: We take the Number 3 and get off one stop after Brixton tube and then walk it.

Flourish Fest at Roots and Shoots

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Roots and Shoots near Kennington Cross is a registered charity and vocational hub dedicated to educating young people facing multiple challenges in Lambeth and Southwark and preparing them for the world of work through internships in horticulture and retail. It’s also a green space for urban biodiversity and is frequently visited by school groups. In addition to all of this good work, it’s open to all for a wonder around its verdant and leafy half acre. And did you know this verdant patch is UNESCO award winning?

On Saturday Roots and Shoots will be having their annual community open day called ‘Flourish Fest’ and we’re all invited! In addition to giving you gardening tips, looking at the activities from last year there was the suggestively sounding pond dipping, butterfly sessions, bug drawing, cyanotype printmaking and chalk painting which was for all ages to enjoy. The event featured delicious tacos (yes!) with storytelling by their education staff. The day also featured live music scattered throughout the site. This all sounds great, but to us frankly it seems aimed at kids. Don’t get us wrong, we love children. In fact a few Observer staff were once children themselves. So we reached out to Roots and Shoots and its certainly adult friendly.

In addition to the frolicking fun listed above,  they also have a very busy apiary on site. When we first read this we excitedly thought it had something to do with apes. As it turns out its where bees live, and beekeepers will be showing off their craft. There will also be a masterclass in creating floral crowns which will be perfect for our upcoming team building weekend at Glastonbury, provided we don’t trample over it at 4am in the Silver Hayes dance tent.

Roots and Shoots is a vital charity, and on the day they can tell you how you can volunteer, for example tending their gorgeous Doorstep Green in Fitzalan Street. On a visit for this article we saw a group of young people with additional needs attending a lecture on potting plants and a second group who were proudly harvesting vegetables. Helping them could be another way to show your support.

Guided Walks Around Greater Kennington, Some Free!

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As we hurdle through spring and into summer it’s time for us all to get out and explore our beloved patch of land and they rich history it contains.  The Lambeth Local History Forum have for years put on a range of fascinating walks all around Lambeth and we’re here to tell you about upcoming walks in Kennington/Vauxhall/Elephant/Walworth which you can attend and enjoy. And by ‘you’ we mean not ‘us’, as we are stuck in an underground warren in Kennington Cross, only seeing the light of day to get a Tesco meal deal while almost being hit by a concrete mixer on its way to Oval Village. Some of these walks are FREE (and we love free) but they do expect a tip at the end. Do tip, as we know what you lot are like.

11 May, Sunday 11am – VE day 80th: How Kennington Brought Victory.

19 May, 15 June, 3 July, 12 Aug.10 Sept. Various times – Doing the Lambeth Walk. 

7 – 9 June Lambeth Country Show. This is actually in Brockwell Park but we’re putting it in here as its great fun and you can see an aubergine dressed as Nigella Lawson and get hit in the head by an enormous owl. No need to book. 

7 June, Saturday 11am – Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens: Dance Through the Ages. 

5 July, Saturday 11:30am – Vauxhall Pride: A Walking Tour Through the LGBTQ+ Heart of London. We think this would be much more entertaining if it was taking place at 6am on a Sunday, when people are leaving the nightclubs.   Booking gapingill@yahoo.co.uk

15 July and 3 September – Various times. Unseen Vauxhall: Vanished and Unnoticed. 

So sign up and put these dates in that sparkly, jewel encrusted diary that we’ve been imploring you to get for years. As if you ever needed any more proof as to why you don’t need to leave Greater Kennington. 

Gasworks Gallery. Or is it a Mirage?

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When we take a needed break from our subterranean office beneath Kennington Cross we like to inspect the offerings at the never boring Gasworks Gallery in Oval. Previous exhibits have seen the space transformed into a gay cruising area, and another featured a giant Styrofoam coffin. The current show is called ‘Mirage’ and was created by Indonesian artist and filmmaker Riar Rizaldi.

The exhibit is composed of two film reels, and the first is Mirage – Eigenstate. It weaves together analogous investigations into the nature of reality, positioning western science as just one of many worldviews. The film then explores different interpretations of reality, from Sufi mysticism through to theories of quantum mechanics. We frankly have no idea what any of this means but the film is certainly nice to look at, with lots of Arabic fonts and words spinning around. 

The second film is called Mirage – Metanoia which is set in a kind of 1970’s Hanna-Barbera retro cosmic animation, where astronauts survive rocket crashes and pixie/cricket creatures wax philosophical about the presence of god in atoms, as you do. Again the artist visits Sufi metaphysics by means of a lady crawling out of a crater. Both films are presented in an immersive setting which includes a lovely Persian tiled floor and a wall mural based on the teachings of a Persian mystic. 

If this sounds like your kind of thing, and we really have no reason why it wouldn’t,  Gasworks are putting on a symposium called ‘Strangelet’ over the weekend of 16 – 17 November and tickets are available on their website. The press release describes the symposium as ‘a weekend of presentations, talks, screenings and performances that are categorised as gharib which means ‘weird or strange’ in Sufism (no, we didn’t know that off the top of our heads).

They are also hosting a much less strange sounding breakfast exhibition tour on 27 November and tickets for that on are their website

Riar Rizaldi – Mirage is on now until 22 December and is totally free. And they have a lovely, popup giftshop as well. 

Kachori, Betty & Joan

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Karchori 

It is now established dogma that a place is in trouble when they start to have bingo nights. And they’re in even more trouble if anything they do involves a drag queen. So when our friends over at Kachori, the newish Indian in Elephant Park that we checked out last year, announced they will be having a drag bingo night, we knew that something very dire was happening and here’s how you can help. 

Drag bingo is hosted by Party with Ginger and for £45 a head you have a two course, drag inspired meal (???!!) with free flowing prosecco. On top of a £10 admission this comes up to £110 a couple. Now we would never tell you how to spend your dosh, but for that kind of money we reckon you could get Ginger herself over to your gaff to rustle up a few curries while shouting out numbers. However,  this for a good cause so please support them if you can by popping in for a poppadum or a drink. Drag Bingo at Karchori is on 30 October and tickets can be grabbed on their website. 

Another reason we can’t allow Kachori to fall by the wayside is that its perhaps the only restaurant in London where you can eat the table wear. We kid you not. 

BETTY AND JOAN

Staying in Elephant Park and remaining on drag, a new bar and comedy club is opening and we couldn’t be more excited. The bar is listed as being gay, with cabaret and drag, but if that’s not your handbag the comedy appears to be more mixed. They’re having an opening party on 11 December and if you want to join the waiting list then enter your details over on their website. They fling open their majestic doors later this year, so stick that in the little sparkly diary we’ve been telling you to buy for ages. 

Local Heroes of Kennington

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This Saturday (5 October) is London Guiding Day, and we’re here to guide you about a fascinating walking tour around Greater Kennington that will be undertaken throughout the day, brought to you by the good folks at Lambeth Tour Guides  

Local Heroes Kennington is our representation for Guiding Day, and reading from the press release ‘The Kennington tour will introduce you to suffragette art students, the son of a slave who rallied the working classes, a Black Prince and a little tramp, ending at Oval with some trailblazing cricketers’. The press release also encourages people to leave the area in order to ‘discover more tours around London’. We don’t encourage this. 

The tour will include notable and notorious denizens of Kennington including Jemina Durning Smith, Charlie Chaplin, the Black Price, and a whole bunch of ancient people on Instagram who we don’t recognise but who must have been very important. We’ve been notorious in Greater Kennington for over a decade now, so it’s curious that no one knocked on the door of our subterranean bunker to interview us. And we, unlike the lot above, even have the distinct advantage of still being alive. But we’ll get over it.  

There will be six identical tours running on the hour and they meet at Kennington Station and can be booked here.  They are free, but these people are professional tour guides and a tip (a fiver will do) will go a long way to expressing your satisfaction. 

Fun Event This Weekend at Bee Urban

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We might be taking the word ‘fun’ a bit far here but this event on Saturday certainly sounds bonkers so of course we’re interested. Of the information available by the QR code, the event ‘is grounded in spoken and written and spoken language’ with live performances including a jazz band. This is all sounding a bit New Agey to us, which begs the question of bees actually getting involved in the event. We’re thinking along the lines of synchronised stinging.

Multipolyscripttoscribble (?) takes place this Saturday at Bee Urban in Kennington Park

The Lambeth Fringe 2024

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Frequent readers are aware that we make recommendations to travel outside Greater Kennington very rarely and do so with a profound amount of caveats. However, we’ve recently stumbled upon something that is both entertaining, localish, and supports up and coming independent creative types. 

The Clapham Fringe has been running for eight years and, based on its success, earlier this year they made a decision to expand its borders and rebrand it as The Lambeth Fringe. The spiritual home of the Lambeth Fringe is the Bread and Roses Theatre pub in Clapham North. However, with the expansion to over 150 shows, the venues now include a church, a bookshop, and a film school, in addition to purpose built theatres in Waterloo, Clapham, Norwood, and other Lambeth areas. The one local venue is a series of shorts being shown at the best museum we bet you’ve never been to, the Cinema Museum.  

Some of the writing at the Fringe is new, some adapted from Edinburgh Fringe shows, and others making the tour of fringe festivals.   In the mix at Lambeth are traditional plays, standup, drag, storytelling and music. We challenge you to take a punt on a show or two and you might be pleasantly surprised. Of course you might walk out thinking ‘what the hell was THAT’, but that’s half the fun. Anyone care joining us for Guru Dave’s Cosmic Shamanic Tantric Ego Trip?

The Lambeth Fringe is on now until 20 October. Explore the programme, including Guru Dave,  here. And you better act quick, as those Runoff wannabies Time Out are on to it!