“I can tell you without diversity, creativity remains stagnant.”
Edward Enninful
Introduction
Brixton has long been a place where the wealth and vibrancy of black culture have flourished. The gorgeous aroma of mouth-watering food, the bright colours of exotic fruit and vegetables, the music filling the streets and clothes that range from leisure wear to Sunday best. Since the Windrush generation came to our shores in the 1950s, Brixton has been an epicentre of the vibrancy of Caribbean life. A crackling record and a nip of rum accompany the domino games. A place where the Indian, African and West Indian communities lived as one despite the rage of prejudice that engulfed this country in this bygone era.
Buskers and barrow boys lined the famous market amongst the pots of jellied eels, pink and white coconut ice, chocolates and sweets that included jagged broken toffee and coloured boiled sweets. All were weighed and sold with a brass shovel. Men selling this produce would endure the cold and heat, wiping their brows with a colourful handkerchief to wipe away the long hours of their toil. The million-pound houses that now line the streets were once freezing homes. Several families would share a house with flaking paint, dampness, and windows that dripped with condensation. Families would huddle in one room, the front room, the pride of the house, adorned with the best they could afford with their holed weekly pay packets. A sofa, a few chairs, some pictures of their relations and homeland as creature comforts and a record player their only source of entertainment. They made the best of what they had. Resourceful, talented and smiles that hid the pain of homesickness and the racial attacks that rained down on them. They were tired from their shifts as bus, Underground, factory and hospital porter workers but determined to make a better life in this alien land that the government had asked them to live and work in.
The Brixton Way
Electric Avenue, Brockwell Park, and Brixton Market all house the ghosts of its past. The tensions of the Brixton riots in Thatcher’s era. It was a time when the police and the establishment singled out the black community as a target for brutal enforcement, with many still bearing the mental and physical scars of a Metropolitan Police force that wielded shields and batons against them, throwing them into police vans with little evidence, based only on the colour of their skin and the false belief that they were the source of crime and violence in Britain. A vile and contemptuous dogma that caused suspicion and hate for the police for the police to this very day. A stain and mist of contempt that so many covered up and saw as a necessary evil.
Yet despite these terrible evils, Brixton survived and tried to heal. Many shunned the belief that Brixton was dangerous and opened their arms to this place of cultural diversity. Come out of the tube station, and the vibrancy of Brixton strikes you. The streets are full of residents, shoppers, and tourists who love this place this place. A South London metropolis where snooker players, musicians, artists, poets and writers have come and been inspired. Eddie Grant loves this place, and a mural of David Bowie adorns Electric Avenue. People come here to stock their kitchens with foods and spices that enrich their cooking. Clothes that light up a party, wedding or a family gathering. Yet, beware if you are a smoker because wardens patrol the streets and will heavily fine you if you stub your cigarette on the pavement.
