Storyverse has recently initiated a project located in Brixton’s Somerleyton and Brixton Market. Brixton’s cultural roots flowered in Brixton Market (est 1870), a historic and present-day focal point for the Windrush Generation community. Saved by local traders from corporate developers in 2010, the site became a bustling and eclectic success story. Now, in 2014, with soaring rent prices, Brixton Market is at a pivotal tipping point of gentrification.
The Storyverse Brixton project seeks to engage with and support around a dozen participants in their teens and twenties from the local area to make and share untold stories, and make heard the voices of their communities.
Storyverse aims to find and work with the next generation of cultural producers and makers from Brixton through a process of mentoring, engagement, and a total of six workshops that culminate in two public facing events in Brixton and at King’s College London. Each workshop will be facilitated by the project leads and will include a range of artists, technicians, and an archival specialist to support, mentor and train the participants.
Professor Sheila Anderson
Professor Sheila Anderson is based at the Centre for e-Research in the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London. Sheila has a long-standing research interest in digital archives and archival practice.
Marc Boothe
Marc Boothe is the Founder/Creative Director of B3 Media. B3 Media is an award-winning network that makes connections between Britain's multi-cultural communities and the UK's creative industries.
Francesca Beard
Francesca Beard is a spoken word artist, performance poet and writer. She has been based in London for much of her adult life and cites the city as a major inspiration in her work. She has represented contemporary British literature all over the world, from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria to Colombia, in all sorts of venues, from a Moscow library to a Melbourne jazz club.
London Tales Trailer
Storyverse Brixton R&D
For R&D into a Brixton ‘Village’ Storyverse event, we went down to Somerleyton Road street party to talk to young people about community identity. A free event, Spoken Word with Storyverse: Gentrification, History and Social Change took place on 22 May at the Black Cultural Archives. It was aimed at young people aged 16 – 26 years old who were interested in coming together to explore and express Black heritage and culture in Britain.