We Love Peckham

Woah. It’s been yet another rollercoaster of a month.

It started with a surge of media reporters.. The Guardian was the first one through (after the local press), then a group from the British Film Institute, then the BBC News. It’s mad times.. ‘selling’ the Spike.. it is an incredible thing but it’s always been left down to whatever the individual interprets the place as. Then we were filmed for Sunday Life, a Sunday morning Lifestyle show. The producer, Cathy was lovely and they came whilst we were having our first attempt with the cob oven, which worked!

We got a big response from that feature. People were getting in touch from all over the Country showing there support. One woman is making Spike hula hoops to help raise money to buy the place. A guy is buying a cruise for a Spike fundraising raffle. It’s beautiful and heart warming.

TimeOut was a good one. We were their campaign. They’d managed to get a quote off Councillor Tim McNally (Southwark’s executive member for resources) saying ‘Where the costs far outweigh the benefits, we have a policy of selling property and ploughing the money back into making Southwark cleaner, greener and safer”. He hasn’t been here. We hope he realises the incredibly talented and genuinely giving and inspiring community that uses Spike as a base.

So it was good we had the opportunity to take the Spike Surplus Scheme out last Saturday – to the Canal Bridge (Peckham) Green Fayre - where some of them would have seen us. It was a huge success. The sun was out, fortunately, as The Spike provided the main stage – fully solar powered, some bands, Generator X’s Solar Cinema, a vegan café, a kids craft area, a very popular wellbeing (healing) space, an info stall... and of course smiles and décor. Everyone did it voluntarily with our pay going towards buying the place. Even Southwark’s Regeneration department, who were there with a stall, said they are excited by what the Spike community is doing and had some suggestions of bringing school groups round.

If the Green Fayre were compared with Southwark’s I Love Peckham festival, I think people would probably say the former was better. Leslie, one of the Green Fayre organisers, made sure that as much of the money as possible went back into Peckham for one thing. And there was a really united atmosphere. There was a letter in the Southwark News about the last Spike open day which was part of the I love Peckham festival. We weren’t in the promotional material for one reason or another, but we went ahead because we do love Peckham. It’s even written in huge letters on the roof ready for Google Earth to come over again (the image they’ve got at the moment is about 2 years old). We had a great day. The letter seemed to suggest that it’s not that easy to find community elsewhere in Peckham. So I don’t understand why the Council is being so heavy with this one.

Yesterday we get a new letter from the legal department. A really scary one going on about the deadline on Friday and proceeding with eviction procedures. Oh my. We’re waiting for them to confirm a meeting. There’s a lot of things to settle before we hand over any money.

Anyway, here’s a better glimpse of the Spike Surplus Scheme.. we quickly put this film together.