A few months ago you might recall that we visited Lambeth County Court. Well it appears that it was unknowingly rented to Extinction Rebellion and was raided yesterday. Oh dear. The following below is  from Cleaver Sq. residents association.  A number of you will be aware of the current police activity outside the County Court in Cleaver Street.Offices in the County Court had apparently been rented out by a charity linked to Extinction Rebellion, and these ended up becoming the main storage depot for equipment destined for the major ER protests planned from Monday onwards. There were a large number of lorry deliveries throughout the day and evening on Thursday/Friday. I understand from the organisers that other more suitable warehouse space had failed to materialise.The ER team barricaded themselves in when police tried to gain entry this afternoon, but the front door of the court was broken through and several activists were arrested. Here are further details in BBC and Guardian news reports: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49946821 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/05/london-police-arrest-extinction-rebellion-activists-in-advance-of-environment-protest There has been liaison between us, the ER team and the police over the previous 36 hours to keep the situation peaceable, but we are now leaving the matter to the police. The manager of the building has been on site and will be securing the court building once the police have finished clearing the offices later tonight. Best wishes Penny Chair, Cleaver Square, Cleaver Street and Bowden Street Residents’ Association and Neighbourhood Watch

 

As busy Kenningtonians we sometimes forget that we have a massive, world class museum on our doorstep. To address this we recently decided to take a moment out of our exhausting cycle of  Murder She Wrote repeats deadlines to pop along to the Imperial War Museum to see their latest show ‘Culture Under Attack’,

Culture Under Attack is set over three gallery spaces and grapples with the  distinct ways in which our cultural lives are compromised during conflict. We spent the most time in ‘Rebel Sounds’, an immersive exhibition which deals with music censorship in four vastly different eras and cultures; Nazi Germany, northern Mali, Northern Ireland in the ‘70’s, and Serbia in the 90’s. The theme is how specific people or institutions sought to rebel against censorship and prevail. The Northern Irish story is told by record store owner Terri Hooley. The northern Mali story is told by the band Songhoy Blues, who now perform their music as exiles in the south of the country.

A second exhibtion is called ‘What Remains’, and focuses on how war kills not just the ones we love but also the cultural symbols which help make up our identity. The exhibit moves in time from the physical destruction of Hiroshima to the very conscious destruction of icons and art by ISIS only a few years ago. In each of these exhibitions you are invited to take a quiz about the importance of culture, censorship, and the protection of buildings.

The third exhibition is called ‘Art in Exile’ and it focuses on attempts by the IWM and other galleries to safeguard their works of art during WW2, and how at times these attempts failed. This exhibit also details the heroic and altruistic methods employed to protect other forms of material culture in times of conflict by undertaking activites such as concerts and plays. It poses several intriguing questions such as ‘to what lengths do we go to preserve culture’.

Culture Under Attack is free to all of us and open until 5 January. Get your good selves along this weekend as it’s a hell a of a lot better than thinking about Brexit or climate change.

I thew this up on Instagram a couple of weeks ago (if you don’t follow us there, please do!) and it seemed rather popular, so we’ll post it again here.

Have you ever noticed some strange looking railings outside a number of Kennington estates? Well they are actually stretchers left over from WW2 and have found a new life.  The smaller ones were probably used for children. An early form of ‘up cycling’.

Next time you are out and about in SE11, SE17 or SE1 look up and you might detect something slightly less fading than the value of your home. They’re called Ghost Signs, and we are the lucky recipient of fast least three of them (and I challenge you to find others). The most intriguing is for a motorbike shop called ‘Ariel’, and it once inhabited the small courtyard next to  Durning Library. The image below is old, as the sign now has now faded almost into obscurity. There are whole websites, blogs, apps and even tours dedicated to fading signs. The most comprehensive is called ‘Ghost Signs’, 

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There are two more Ghost Signs that we’ve found with images below. The top is to be found at the top of Brixton Road and advocates the virtues of smoking,  The other is to be found in Iliffe Street in Walworth.

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