Deptford Art & Gentrification Walk

Saturday, 26 May 2018, 12:00 -19:00
Deptford Railway Station, Deptford High Street, London SE8 3NU
Many thanks to Paul Clayton and Darshana Vora for their assistance

A day of discussions on art and gentrification, with a tour of galleries, studios, community spaces and landmarks along the streets, waterways, green spaces and new developments in Deptford. We will meet artists, curators and activists to explore how they are resisting or overcoming the displacement of communities and the shrinking of public and creative spaces.

Come along and share your experiences, meet us at 12noon inside Deptford Rail Station or join us along the way. Scroll down for the itinerary and a map of the route. Maps will be available on the day in case you wonder off and want to meet us later on.

I came to London, I was very lucky, at a time when you could still squat in central London and survive here and have enough space to have a studio to work. But now, young artists coming to London – where would they even start? The rents are unbelievable. It’s frightening. (Grayson Perry)

Gentrification concerns artists because their living and work spaces as well as their exhibition, event and social spaces are under threat by redevelopment and rising property prices. Artists are constantly on the move as they become displaced from one up-and-coming area to the next. But they also bear the brunt of criticism, as harbingers of gentrification. In his 2013 BBC Reith Lectures artist Grayson Perry announced that artists are the “shock troops of gentrification”. On closer inspection however, this claim holds little water. A recent study shows that “arts industries generally do not play a significant role in gentrification and displacement” because art organisations tend to gravitate towards areas with pre-existing creative industries in already gentrified areas.

The Marxist geographer Neil Smith argues that gentrification is a calculated strategy in capital’s search for investment opportunities on the “frontier” between expensive neighbourhoods and the “disinvested slums… where opportunity is higher”. Developers take the long view, waiting for the right conditions to exploit the “rent gap”, or the difference between the current value of a property and its potential value through redevelopment. Gentrification takes place when the rent gap can yield maximum profit. Although Smith cites examples of artists being used as “vehicles” or “fronts” for gentrification and displacement, especially in Manhattan where “gentrification and art came hand in hand”, he argues that ultimately it is capital and not culture that drives the process.

In February 2018, Rózsa Farkas, founding director of Arcadia Missa announced that she is moving her gallery from Peckham to Soho in an act of resistance against the gentrification of the area where she grew up, adding “I’d like to encourage everyone to resist”. Short of moving away, how can artists resist the redevelopment of community, social, cultural and creative spaces that are crucial to their activities? Considering the involvement of artists and art spaces with processes of gentrification, how can artists navigate the terrain of available opportunities and what alternatives are there?

ITINERARY

Bibliography

• Moodley, Kiran (2014). Grayson Perry: London needs affordable housing because ‘rich people don’t create culture’. The Independent, 21 Nov 2014.
• Perry, Grayson (2013). Playing to the Gallery: Nice Rebellion. Reith Lectures 3/4. The Guildhall, Londonderry. 29 Oct 2013, BBC Radio 4.
• Grodach, Carl, Nicole Foster and James Murdoch (2016). Gentrification, displacement and the arts: Untangling the relationship between arts industries and place change. Urban Studies (Dec 2016).
• Smith, Neil (1996). The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge.
• Farkas, Rózsa (2018). Arcadia Missa moves to Soho. Art Mirror, 26 Feb 2018.

Deptford Art & Gentrification Walk Pt. 2

Saturday, 29 September 2018, 13:00 -18:00
Deptford Railway Station, Deptford High Street, London SE8 3NU
Co-curated with Paul Clayton. Many thanks to D Vora for her assistance
Part of Deptford X (21-30 Sep) and Deptford Aint Avvinit (29-30 Sep)

Hot on the heels of the Deptford Art & Gentrification Walk in May 2018 we will revisit the people, places, problems, questions and expand on the outcomes of that sweltering day.

Join us for an afternoon of discussions and encounters on the relationship between art and the process of gentrification that is currently sweeping through Deptford. We will visit community spaces, galleries, studios and landmarks on a walk along the streets, waterways, green spaces and new developments. We will meet local residents, artists, curators and activists to hear about their experiences and how they are resisting or overcoming the displacement of communities and the shrinking of public and creative spaces.

Do artists have a measure of responsibility in the process of gentrification and what can they do to resist the successive waves of change that inevitably lead to their own displacement? How can local residents regain some control over the rapid changes in their environment and the impact on their lives?

We will address the controversial developments currently proposed or underway in Deptford and the responsibility artists have within the process of gentrification. How can artists resist the redevelopment of community, social, cultural and creative spaces that are crucial to their activities? How can artists evaluate the available opportunities and what alternatives are there?

Come along to share your own stories and contribute to the discussion. Meet us at 1pm inside Deptford Rail Station or join us along the way. For more information, the itinerary and a map of the route please visit the website. Maps will be available on the day in case you wonder off and want to meet us later on.

ITINERARY

In the first walk we held in May 2018, we kicked-off the discussion with an open forum in the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden about its history, its impending demolition and the campaign to save it. We discussed the measure of responsibility that artists have in the process of gentrification and what alternatives there are to partnering with developers in pursuit of affordable space. To listen to a recording of the discussion and/or read a summary please click below. Many thanks to Paul Clayton for the recording.

The Old Tidemill Garden was Deptford’s best kept secret, a wildlife oasis with more than 70 mature trees in the middle of Deptford, where the level of air pollution is six times higher than the limit recommended by the WHO. By handing the garden to property guardians, Lewisham Council withheld this public resource from the community. But now the secret it out! The Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign is trying to raise awareness of the garden’s existence and encourage its use by members of the community in an effort to save it from demolition.

Contribution from Donal Ruane

The article No Man’s land by Eula Biss is a fascinating non-linear essay exploring the issue of gentrification in America. I offer it here as one possible way of looking at the thorny subject of gentrification. In the essay, Biss attempts to make sense of gentrification and our collective fear of those who are unlike us, in this case it is the predominantly poor blacks that tend to inhabit the inner city neighbourhoods that have been gentrified in America. If we substitute the working classes for blacks in the American model we could pretty much use this essay to look at gentrification in London (in the UK it is less about race exclusively and more about class in general).

In addition to Bliss’s own experiences with gentrification, she explores the concept in a more academic way—using research about violent crimes, fear, and race—but she begins with Little House on the Prairie. Yes, in an essay about gentrification, she begins with pioneers. She writes of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s childhood on the frontier, and of her own fascination with the book as a child. Then she writes:

The word pioneer betrays a disturbing willingness to repeat the worst mistake of the pioneers of the American West—the mistake of considering an inhabited place uninhabited. To imagine oneself as a pioneer in a place as densely populated, as Chicago is either to deny the existence of your neighbours or to cast them as natives who must be displaced. Either way, it is a hostile fantasy … this is our inheritance, those of us who imagine ourselves as pioneers.

In the original event Sophia organised in Deptford, which is now available online I used a similar analogy of the myth of the American West as a useful prism through which the process of gentrification could be viewed. While my model tends to concentrate more on the different stages of the colonization and commodification of working class neighbourhoods by developers … using the wild west analogy it starts with the mountain men, who are followed by the cattle barons, the pioneers, the railroads, the banks and developers etc. (Serge Leone’s Marxist western Once Upon a Time in the West is worth looking at to understand this idea). Biss is more concerned with how the pioneers view, interact with and eventually displace the indigenous population before they too are displaced. I hope this is food for thought.

Donal Ruane, 28 September 2018