Join us – we are in the September Open House London Programme and open at weekends – see our times here.
Join a guided walk with a difference ‘Emergencies And Disappearances’ by cultural theorist Professor Esther Leslie – local resident, academic, activist – you won’t get this level of in-depth insight on your average tour! Sunday 11th September at 4pm at the People’s Museum Somers Town, 52 Phoenix Rd, NW1 1ES. Please BOOK here. More below.
Another highlight is our unique ‘Radical Screenprinting‘ is back – on Saturday the 17th at 2.15 pm at 52 Phoenix Rd, NW1 1ES.
Print motifs on paper or textile and learn local radical history.
Bring clothes and T shirts to Upcycle or we can provide some. It’s on donation to cover our costs.
Please BOOK to avoid disappointment.
Emergences and Disappearances
Somers Town is an extraordinary patch of land in the centre of London. What is today a confined blotch squashed between fast roads has witnessed much over the years. Adjacent to what many believe to be the oldest Christian site in Europe, tucked away behind railway termini, it saw waves of experimentation in housing, from the eighteenth century Polygon to every type of social housing of the twentieth century; it is home to the birth of anarchism and from where the author of Frankenstein emerged; it housed hosts of refugees from France in the eighteenth century and others since; here the Pearly Kings – the first, Henry Croft, a costermonger in iridescent garb – began their charitable fundraising; it was the site of a progressive theatre, and where community life was pursued through priest-owned pubs and Mums’ Club pantomimes. Its inhabitants include the more or less well-known names of William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, John Wolcot (aka Peter Pindar), Mary Ann Sainsbury, Charles Dickens, Andrés Bello, George Padmore, Doris Lessing, Joe Cole, Mike Leigh, Aidan Andrew Dun, Fred Titmus, Robin Farquharson, Jeremy Hardy, and countless others, family names that recur, newcomers, interlopers, waifs, strays, long term stayers, transient wraiths.
For more…