Rae of Light

So Lambeth Council have presented an ‘ exhibition ’ of their plans for the future of Carnegie Library in the church hall of St Saviour’s on Herne Hill Road.  The word exhibition has been misused in my opinion.  The council have provided the community with poster boards which contain little more information than the leaflets of spin regularly pushed through my door.  So no change there.  I cannot even bring myself to provide a photograph of their display as it is so pathetic in my view.  But if you really want to see it you can take a look at the great pictures on Brixton B uzz . Evidence my response card actually exists To say I am angry about this is an understatement.  After all, it’s what I’ve come to expect from this borough’s handling of the whole abominable situation.  I’m now so distrustful of Lambeth and how they deal with the community that I even resorted to photographing my response card so that I have a record that it actually e...

It seems a lifetime ago that we were forced out of our beloved Carnegie Library but it’s only been 2½ months.  We’ve more or less settled into The Cambria but it is not ideal for our club as it is first and foremost a pub.  This was made very evident when a session had to be hastily rehomed in lead tutor Caroline’s house (living room, garden and kitchen) as the pub was having its floors re-sanded.  Our residency at the pub is further threatened by the arrival of Euro 2016.  Then of course, once the football is done and dusted Wimbledon will strawberry and cream its way onto the scene. We always knew The Cambria could only ever be a temporary solution and Caroline has been searching out alternative venues.  The best options have been narrowed down to a wonderful room in The Camberwell Bus garage or St Faith’s on Red Post Hill.  So we conducted our very own version of the IN/OUT campaign and voted for one of the venues. Sophisticated voting...

It’s now been almost a full month for Ruskin Readers without the vital support of the librarians and space which is Carnegie Library.  This is how things now stand. As you know, we’re currently housed in The Cambria for our Monday evening sessions.  One of the problems of a literacy club sharing space with pub punters reared its head recently.  The pub had scheduled a charity quiz night which cut across the timings we’d arranged for Ruskin Readers.  Teaching reading and writing amidst crowd buzz, clinking glasses, loud music, kitchen sounds and an MC was nigh on impossible.  I can’t blame the pub for this cross-over.  It is after all… a pub. One of our main problems continues to be access to our valuable resources.  After a lengthy talk with Jim Dickson last week, Caroline Knapp is still no further along with securing us a better interim venue or the reopening of Carnegie.   Now that we have our student folders and note...

Sean Cameron A longstanding student Ruskin Readers had its first session at The Cambria on Monday.  Without the books for loan in Carnegie library, our laptops, student folders and exercise books - we had to improvise.  And improvise we did.  Many tutors bought workbooks for their students, created resources in their own time and downloaded worksheets.  Lead tutor, Caroline Knapp, brought along a selection of Michael Morpurgo books as well as a pile of free newspapers for the reading section of the evening. The current situation for our homeless literacy group is as follows: Tutors getting their read & tweet on during the tea break Currently our Monday evening group are kindly being rehoused by The Cambria.  They reserved several great tables for us and we were able to avail ourselves of tea, coffee and juice from the bar.  One of our generous tutors paid the bar bill. Our Wednesday afternoon session has now moved...

So, Lambeth Council have gone ahead with their plan to shut Carnegie library so they can turn it into a gym.  But they weren’t counting on members of the community fighting back in a style of protest Mahatma Gandhi would be proud of.  Approximately 30 people, including two babies and several teenagers are occupying the library as of this moment.  They have been doing so since Thursday evening with the support of the community. Several Labour councillors have hit back with very personal and cavalier comments about the occupiers.  The most inappropriate of these being the cat tweets by the councillor Alex Bigham.  You can see his full twitter response on Brixton Buzz . Another complained that the occupiers were quaffing wine during their occupation and had scant feeling for homeless children.  As someone who has personally  housed a homeless person through a project with Centrepoint and donated one of those bottles of wine, ...