A first for Book Mongers

How Cressingham Gardens images inspired a novel

What’s going on? Not one, but two book launches on the same night in Brixton. A novel at Book Mongers, and, at International House, a practical look at how to revolutionise work experience. Alan Slingsby reports

Book Mongers may have been a vital part of Brixton’s literary scene for getting on for 30 years, but novelist Howard Cunnell was the first to launch a book there – the paperback edition of his novel The Painter’s Friend.

It was an appropriate setting. His novel was inspired by an intervention in one of the great local controversies: Lambeth council’s plan to demolish and rebuild the Cressingham Gardens estate.

Photographer Mark Aitken’s three-metre portraits of estate residents were originally meant to be on its walls for a few weeks in July 2017 as part of an Arts Council England funded project, but they are still there.

When Howard Cunnell saw them on one of the tours of the photographs that Mark conducted, they gave him the idea for a novel and he asked the photographer if he could use it.

“Seeing Mark’s photos on the walls outside Cressingham Gardens that day was the moment where I think the book kind of came together in my mind,” said Howard.

The book is about a painter who finds himself in an island community threatened by a rent increase and wants to use his art to show its fight for survival.

Explaining why he created the photographs, Mark said: “I realised that being angry with the council is not only unproductive, it’s very upsetting; it’s kind of wasted energy really. “So then I came across this idea of taking photographs of people on the estate. I thought, well, I have to be careful that this work doesn’t get subsumed in the campaign, which is a different thing. “I’m not an activist, but

I really admire people who do that. We need activists and we need campaigns and campaigners, but they have to be quite simple and straightforward,” Mark said.

“One thing I thought about was that all of our lives on this estate are very complex.

“You hear somebody’s life story and you think, well, you can’t reduce them to a victim – more gentrification from a Labour council. So I really wanted to keep that separate.

“I made five applications to the Arts Council. I needed the money, but I also wanted the Arts Council name on it.”

Mark remembers Cressingham Gardens on the day the images were revealed and a “fantastic moment” as people walked around saying: “Oh, I know that guy. Oh, she lives next door to me.”

“It just said ‘We exist’. Nothing more than that: ‘We exist’.

“So it wasn’t about that we were victims of gentrification or that we were angry or we were in any kind of big struggle just ‘We are here’. This is it.

Howard Cunnell reads from The Painter’s Friend

“I love the modesty of that and it’s very powerful. And also, I think, it’s political.

“It’s also complex. It’s not simple, so maybe it could assist the campaign, but I don’t think you could have something like that central to the campaign.” Mark Aitken introduces Howard Cunnell

Anger and grief

Howard said his book was born out of anger and grief.

“Seeing Mark’s photos on the walls outside Cressingham Gardens that day was the moment I think the book came together in my mind in a way that I’d been struggling to make happen,” he said.

“It just fell into place for me. I then needed to pluck up the courage and say to Mark: Could I nick his idea? He was very generous about it.”

Howard read the stunning opening of The Painter’s Friend and then discussed the problems of working class artists like himself.

Answering questions, he said: “The problem with the publishing industry in this country starts with Caxton and the development of the printing press.

“As soon as you develop a printing press, you marginalise or ignore all of the oral storytelling cultures that we’ve had for centuries in this country.

“You’re not interested in that at all, because if you’ve got a printing press, you need to print something.

“And if you’re going to print something, you need people to read it.

“When the printing press is established, only a very small number of people can read and have the leisure time to read and have the money to buy the products that are then produced.

“So the publishing industry kind of begins and develops as an industry run by and for middle class people to read stories about themselves.”

He said the great American writer Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, had called in that book for “time, cash and patience”, adding: “If you don’t have those things, it’s a struggle to make art.

“The publishing industry will accommodate certain kinds of working class narratives.

“They tend to be narratives that are about escaping from the working class into something else – Dickens, right?

“If you are a working class writer, if you want your work to be known and to be out there, you have to be engage with the publishing industry, which is essentially – hostile might be a bit strong – but alien, certainly.”

A Mark Aitken’s images are available in his book Sanctum Ephemeral, with words by Howard Cunnell, available in Book Mongers at £19. A The Painter’s Friend is available from bookshops and online at £9.99.

Access to Brixton’s brightest teenagers

Young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, are not being equipped for the world of work according to a book by Abigail Melville, founder of Brixton social enterprise, We Rise. She says that the modern workplace demands modern skills, so employees must be creative, entrepreneurial and flexible.

But, she points out, outdated systems of education force young people into compliance with “linear thinking”, concentrating on exam skills and university.

We Rise developed an innovative approach to work experience, giving young people the opportunity to develop skills they are unlikely to learn from school. It focuses support on young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are less likely to have access to professional networks, inspiration and mentoring.

In The Work Experience Revolution, launched in Brixton’s International House, Abigail Melville explains how We Rise used imagination and collaboration to find new ways to give young people the exposure and experience they need to thrive in a rapidly changing world of work. She calls for: ● Opening up learning places – identifying more spaces where young people can collaborate and learn in professional working environments. ● (Re)discovering a mentoring habit – making sure every teenager has access to good quality, sustained mentoring to help them develop their talent and build connections with the world of work. ● Creating opportunities for real work and

platforms for young people to showcase their talent

– providing more real world projects to give young people 21st century work experience.

“We Rise is now able to offer organisations access to the minds of Brixton’s brightest teenagers,” Abigail Melville said.

The launch event also saw the unveiling of the We Rise Edit Box – an editing suite on wheels. We Rise partnered with Clapham Film Unit, a collective of local film-makers, to improve its media output by building the box, with funding from the LHC Community Benefit Fund.

We Rise in-house architect and chief operating officer Polly Waterworth designed the three-metre-square box from salvaged materials. It can be moved around and partially opened for screenings. The box provides on-site editing for the Clapham Film Unit and for members of the community, especially young Lambeth residents. A The Work Experience Revolution is available online at £8.99 in paperback and £0.77 in ebook.