Rae of Light

11 Months ago Ruskin Readers , along with several other community groups, were ousted from Carnegie Library by Lambeth Council.  The council had made little effort to engage with the groups to ensure they would be safely housed and accommodated elsewhere. It was left to the community group leaders to find new premises and endure the agony of how they would do that with limited funding or none at all. As a Ruskin Readers tutor I found myself in the midst of the anxiety faced by our Lead Tutor (Caroline Knapp).  I was angry and astounded at Lambeth for their lack of thought regarding this matter.  And you know from my Private Protest post in January how I went about dealing with my anger.  But the fact still remained that Ruskin Readers was effectively homeless. At The Cambria For a while we had to split the club into two with the Monday night group putting up shop at The Cambria and the Wednesday group parcelled off to Norwood Library.  Our ...

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...

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...