We all know that London is constantly changing, and not always for the better. This week, London indie band Lucky Elephant explore the consequences of redevelopment with ‘The Rainy Kingdom’, a special multimedia show at Battersea Arts Centre to launch their album of the same name.
Urban change isn’t a new thing, of course. In 1972, Ken Ashton’s documentary ‘We Was All One’ went into pubs, boxing clubs and houses on Tower Bridge Road to capture the cockney way of life. ‘We’re all one family, all us Bermondsey lot,’ says one elderly woman – but that ‘family’ was rapidly being broken up, as its neighbourhoods vanished. ‘We Was All One’ shows terraced streets being pulled down and replaced with concrete flats – ironically, the same modernist estates in Elephant & Castle that are now being demolished in the name of regeneration all over again.
Lucky Elephant’s elegiac live show incorporates footage from ‘We Was All One’ alongside material from BAC’s archives and stories contributed by locals. The result should be a moving requiem for a lost London: a chance to get a fascinating glimpse of the city as it was before the bulldozers really started to move in. It should also get you thinking about how decisions made in the name of progress today will change London tomorrow.