Carnaval del Pueblo

Published by Peter | Filed under Events.

Lots more photos of the Carnaval are available in this Flickr pool, but most of them have restrictive licenses so I can’t display them here. Boyd Tonkin in The Independent gives it the thumbs up.

On housing and squats

Published by Peter | Filed under Development, Events, Nearby.

An article in one of the London freesheets (and remember, you get what you pay for) this week featured the tales of squatters, including an 11-bedroom Victorian pile here in Camberwell. Wha? Where’s the 11-bedroom house around here? Does anyone know about this? The other two featured were in Peckham, so our neck of the woods is now firmly fixed in the public conscious as populated by work-shy blaggers.

On the subject of housing, I took a pass through the St George development at Vauxhall last weekend; it was horrible. Empty and vapid, it seemed like there was maximal development on the allowed space and minimal planning; the blocks loomed over central courtyards and made them cold and dark on a sunny day. I hope the staunch opposition by the Camberwell Grove mob has been enough to ensure the same doesn’t happen here.

Been out for a bit of tennis up at Ruskin Park; they say you have to pay to reserve a court, but no-one enforces it so even if you do the right thing and make your booking, chances are that someone will be on the court already. Very unrewarding. Had to throw a father and child off last time; felt evil, but rules are rules. That didn’t seem to stop the boy from crying.

Goings-on: Last Saturday was Bonkersfest! on the Green; as is my annual tradition, I missed it. It’s not my fault that a lot of my friends were born in the summer. Lots of photos on Flickr if you want to see what it’s about. Carnaval del Pueblo is on in Burgess Park on August 3; I’ll be at a football match that day. Honestly, it’s kind of ridiculous.

I’m still looking for more people to contribute here; Drew’s post was excellent and highlighted (highlit?) events that may otherwise have gone unreported. That’s the kind of thing I’m after. If anyone wants to have a go, just let me know.

Camberwell Arts Festival

Published by Drew | Filed under General.

Drew writing today, standing in for Peter, wearing my “Chairman of Camberwell Arts” hat [and high-visibility gilet]

Nelson Mandela is in London this week, and I offer Madiba an apology in advance for paraphrasing the song he hears most often - Nkosi Sikelele Camberwell [May the sun shine ever bright on Camberwell]. And I say without fear of sucessful contradiction that SE5 has a fine crumbling beauty in the summer sun…

Last week, for those of you who live in our environs, was Camberwell Arts Festival week, and what a week it was. On the preceeding Thursday we had the opening preview drinks at House Cafe gallery, bringing together the board, the artists, the volunteers, the sponsors, the local partners and big-wigs, and the gentlemen of the press to drink some wine and share scurrilous rumours.

On the opening Saturday I popped along to The Bear to take in the small show It’s Your Round in the new art space on the pub’s top floor. It was loosely on the topic of drinking, and rarely for an gradute art show, was very funny, in fact I laughed more than I have in an art gallery for a while, especially the exhibit with Buzz Aldrin’s shoe grit and Posh Spice’s pregnancy test. I was collared by one of the market testing evaluators on the walk down to The Sun and Doves, who asked me a series of increasingly complex questions about the perception of the arts in Camberwell. Only later did I discover that ‘Felicity Mukherjee’ was in fact local artist Lucy Panesar in a personal face to face performance questioning the perception of the arts in Camberwell. Fortunately I avoided the pitfall of praising the festival to the heavens with the exception of self-indulgent artists, having been taken in completely.

 The big opening event was Pub Crawl, set across four venues, and examining the social interactions that come to play in the traditional public house; I made it in time for the second round of Yara El Sherbini’s multicultural pub quiz, which was packed out, and just in time to see the paticipants in the first round moving on to see the Dulwaich Ukeleles. The quiz was funny and pertinent, and although i did not recall the names of the chiuckle brothers, and didn’t know that isac newton invented the catflap, i did know that pakistani actor Art Malik played characters of various nationalities, simply because he is asian. Unfortunately this over-ran a little, so I turned up at The Castle just in time to see the Dulwich Ukes leave the stage in a packed and hipped up bar crowd.

Mrs Mishmash and The Wee Guy went to ‘Paint the Town Green’ on Sunday afternoon, and had a whale of a time, or should i say a dinosaur of a time, printing a self made stencil of a stegosaurus on a t-shirt, and then made an heirloom cast of his beautiful fingers. You just can’t beat sending kids home with something they’ve designed and made themselves. This event was sponsored by Cowling and Wilcox - if you haven’t been in there yet, you’re missing out.

I’ve been lobbying hard since I took over as Chairman to get more classical music in performance during the festival week; and on Thursday i went to the Music for the Mind concert in the Institute of Psychiatry. We heard some exciting contemporary compositions and a delightful Mozart piano quartet, and scoffed a delightful sandwich buffet; I counted easily fifty people there, all gently soothed and restored by Kate Halsall’s wonderful playing.

On Friday night I went to the Hermits Cave to join in CalumKerr’s Stone Cold Sober. This was conceptual situationism at its maddest; hardenened drinkers were asked to take a pledge, and this pledge was revealed to be a randomly chosen drinker’s aphorism [mine was Brendan Behan] and to invoke their name whenever we needed permission for another drink. All in the best possible taste.

So that was my Festival, and I have to say I enjoyed it immensely, more than I have in past years, and not only becasue I’m on the board. The one person above all others I would single out for thanks is the superb Director, Kelly O’Reilly, who seemed to attend everything in the whole programme; it is no exageration to say the Festival this year is largely down to her hard work. If you see her, buy her a well earned drink.

I’d love to hear from any of you who attended other events e.g. Perunika, Chutney 11, the Walks, Open Studios, In at the Deep End, films, and also anyone who has any suggestions for inprovements for next year, this being one of the obvious places to do so.

North is pretty, Green is vile

Published by Peter | Filed under Events, Places, Shopping.

I’ve changed my route to work in the morning, now cutting across Burgess Park and down Portland Street. I’d never realised how nice it is down there; behind the Aylesbury Estate there is a mass of social housing built, if I’m not mistaken, at the beginning of last century, and all beautifully cared for. Also lots of little parks and gardens. It’s a really pleasant street to cycle down, much better than the Walworth Road route I’m used to.

In stark contrast, however, is the bottom of Denmark Hill and around the Green. On the bus back from Brixton last weekend* I noticed that the whole area’s getting scruffier; a few more of those open-fronted yam shops and a few more stalls selling cheap tat starting to spring up, plus the ugly metal grill on the front of the former Kennedy’s and the empty units scattered about. Really, it’s dying on its arse. It’s quite sad to see. Every month sees a decline in variety and (perhaps) quality; anyone who thinks high street chains are going to open here is likely to be disappointed. It’s becoming fragmented. I’m sure this is a subject that deserves more analysis, so please feel free.

But all is not lost! Away from the centre we still have lots of social diversity, and pretty soon we have Camberwell Arts Festival 2008. You should have received some lovely leaflets and guides through your door recently which explain all the events, but if not you can visit the Camberwell Arts website and decide for yourself what you’d like to attend. It all kicks off on the 14th June, which is next Saturday, and goes on until the following Sunday. I will most likely not be attending anything which could loosely be described as performance art, as it makes me grind my teeth.

On an admin note: first, I’ve just updated the software that powers the site, so if anything behaves weirdly please let me know. Second, I haven’t had the time to keep the site updated as frequently as I’d like, owing to work and some potentially interesting developments therein. If anyone would like to help me out for a little while (or even permanently) by writing here, you’d be very welcome. No salary is involved, but you will have the opportunity to take a load of personal abuse from tossers who think they know all about you, despite having never met you. Sound attractive?

* I went to the Ritzy to watch Indiana Jones; it was… um…

And here’s the stuff I was going to post

Published by Peter | Filed under Development, Events, Nearby.

Herne Hill has a new baker’s shop. I realise that we don’t live in Herne Hill, but I mention it because I passed there a few weeks ago and I noticed that there is a row of shops with a baker’s, a grocer’s, a fishmonger’s, a butcher’s and a delicatessen all next to each other. It’s what I dream of having in Camberwell. Here’s an article from the Guardian, also not about Camberwell, but about the balancing act of regenerating an area without pricing existing residents out, which is what I believe we face here.

News from around;  it seems that we had our own little Cans Festival here, on Camberwell Passage. You can go down and see some of the artworks still, I believe.

I had a somewhat boozy few games of pool in the Cadeleigh recently, and promised Mary (the landlady) that I would mention that Dermot (the landlord) scored a hole-in-one at golf. He is very proud, apparently.

Lots of websites: Loughborough Junction looks to be the result of one man trying to promote the area to increase his house’s value (not your friend the piano man is it, Alan?). Sorry, that was quite mean of me; it’s actually a look at places and services around the titular area. People’s Republic of Southwark is a migraine-inducing site with social and environmental tips and articles; Creative Camberwell Network is a hub for artistic endeavours in SE5.

The SE5 Forum website is back online at the correct address now, although I have some stuff I need to do to rescue it completely. No, I’m not the admin again, I’m just a caretaker manager.

I had some other news which I kept reminding myself to write down, and didn’t, and forgot. Again.

How I killed SE5Forum.org (and revived it later)

Published by Peter | Filed under General.

Just a flying update, this one; I’d intended to write more, but it’ll have to wait.

A few people have mentioned the SE5Forum website being offline, and I have to take responsibility for this. There are changes ahead for the website, and as an interim measure I was asked to move all the files to a different web host in preparation for the changes. However, I didn’t manage to do this in the timely fashion that was needed, and the old hosting deal expired.

The forum area of the site is actually now online again and available to use; it’s hosted at:

http://89.21.3.60/~se510000/forum/

Which isn’t a very memorable address, but will soon be relocated at the se5forum.org domain as usual.

Update: The se5forum.org address is currently updating on internet servers, so the site may appear wacky for the next day or so.

In the meantime, if you wish to use it you should be able to log in with your existing username and password.

I’m not any kind of spokesman for the forum (and, indeed, have no official involvement with it at all), I just wanted to let people know that the only reason it’s not available is tardiness on my part.