Local people, past and present, will be celebrated with a varied month-long programme of activities in and around Brixton this September, as the Lambeth Heritage Festival returns for its third year.
Programmes are now available to pick up in all Lambeth Libraries and at the Town Hall or you can download yours online. Here’s our round up of the Brixton highlights this year.
1. Lambeth Archives Open Day
Saturday 26 September, 10am-5pm, Lambeth Archives
Free to attend.
With Minet Library facing an uncertain future, there’s no better time to nip down to Knatchbull Road and appreciate all that this fantastic local resource can offer the community. Throughout the day they’ll be a selection of talks on local history including one by Hannah Walker, the Editor in Chief at South London Press, talking about 150 years of writing local news. They’ll be an exhibition of Lambeth Archives materials chosen by the staff, a book sale and a film screening too.
2. Lambeth’s Golden Jubilee Walk
Friday 11 September, 2pm, Meet at Lambeth Town Hall
Free to attend. Booking essential.
Local historian, Len Reilly will be leading a guided walk marking fifty years of Lambeth as a borough. The walk will explore the key sites of Lambeth’s municipal past.
3. 40 years on – the history of the Brixton Society
Thursday 10 September, 7-9pm, Vida Walsh Centre
Free to attend. Light refreshments provided.
An evening celebrating our much-loved historical society, without whom Brixton Blog would not have had half the facts available for projects like our Brixton Buildings series. The evening will include an illustrated talk on the history of the society.
4. Ted Hollamby and the architecture of post-war Lambeth: walk
Saturday 5 September, 2.30pm, meet at BCA
Free to attend. Booking essential.
Coinciding with the publication of a new book by Edmund Bird and Fiona Price, Lambeth Architecture 1965-99, Ian McInnes of the C20 Society will lead this walk looking at the social housing which has shaped Brixton, The walk is good exercise too at 3 miles long and finishes up at Herne Hill Station.
5. Remembering Somerleyton Road and Geneva Road
Thursday 24 September, 6pm, BCA
Suggested donation of £5 for this event. Booking via Eventbrite is essential.
Join Kelly Foster, Donald Hinds and George Fowokan Kelly as they remember the buildings and communities of two streets at the centre of the Carribean community in Brixton.
Read our interview with Kelly Foster, talking about Brixton’s heritage here.
6. Black Georgians in London – Friends of Francis Barber: talk
Thursday 17 September, 1pm, Black Cultural Archives
Free to attend.
Jamaican manservent Francis Barber lived in London from 1952 and served Dr Samuel Johnson until his death. Celine Luppo McDaid will draw upon materials from the BCA to discuss the friendship between the two men, which resulted in Johnson leaving his estate to Francis.
Further afield …
And if you’re happy to venture a little further afield there’s a talk about ‘The River Effra’s vanishing act’ at West Norwood’s Portico gallery (Friday 4 September, 7pm); an evening of Portuguese wine and music at Tate South London Library (Wednesday 23 September, 7pm) and a workshop on the changing face of local news in the area at Streatham Library, led by the Assistant Editor of the South London Press (Tuesday 15 September, 6.30pm) – definitely one for us keen bloggers!
