Who we are

The COVID-19 pandemic leads to the shutting down of schools, workplaces and leisure facilities across the country. Peckham Platform responds by developing and distributing art boxes with Meals on Wheels to support and encourage community cohesion and creativity.

Peckham Platform continues to work off-site, developing partnerships with Frieze London, Horniman Museum, Flat-Time House and being one of the founding associates of Tate Exchange.

The organisation moves out of the gallery. The last show in the old building is Peckham Platform Retrospective, celebrating over 20 commissions of artists working with communities across Peckham.

London Borough of Southwark puts Peckham Square up for redevelopment, meaning that the gallery is to be demolished and rebuilt. Peckham Platform win the public tender to be the operator of new venue when it is complete.

Peckham Platform is awarded National Portfolio status by Arts Council England.

Original artworks by Bob & Roberta Smith, Jeremy Deller, Janette Parris and Fatima Begum are shown in the gallery as part of Vote Art, a national campaign encouraging people to vote in the 2015 UK general election.

The organisation launches its Social Art Map, the start of a resource and budding network for those interested in research and practice of social art.

Peckham Platform’s Youth Platform is launched.

Peckham Platform launches as an independent charity, opened by MP Harriet Harman.

The organisation works with mental health service-users for the first time, commissioning Kathrin Böhm to co-create the interactive exhibition Money Distribution Machine and Other Useful Contraptions. It is Peckham Platform’s most popular exhibition with over 4,000 visitors in 10 weeks.

Kimathi Donkor’s ‘Daddy I want to be a Black Artist’ examines Black representation in national art collections. It is Peckham Platform’s first time working with Tate and its archives.

Sarah Cole’s TRIBE fills the gallery with real turf and puts loudspeakers and an ice-cream van on Peckham Square for an exhibition created with Southwark’s Young Women’s group exploring their ideas of place, safety, language and disguise.

Garudio Studiage work with Southwark Youth Council to commemorate the riots with the Peckham Peace Wall permanently installed outside the gallery on Peckham Square.

Peckham Platform commissions Barby Asante, working with Leaders of Tomorrow, to create the South London Black Music Archive. The gallery becomes an open archive, inviting the public to send in their memories of nights out in musical venues across south east London – these are then broadcast on a tickertape and added to an interactive map. A call for personal items to be added to the archive leads to over 100 donations – from tshirts to gig ticket stumps.

Peckham Platform starts using its community led co-commissioning model, inviting communities to be involved with setting the brief and appointing artists. The first commission is Sonia Boyce with Southwark Children’s Services’ Young Women’s Group to create Network, a multi-screen video installation.

Shops in Peckham are burnt and looted during riots which take place across London in response to the killing of Mark Duggan by police. Hoardings go up over shopfronts and local people cover them in positive messages of peace and pride in Peckham. Peckham Platform collects the messages for an artwork when the hoardings are removed.

The inaugural exhibition opens with new artworks by Rachael House, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Clegg & Guttmann and Southwark TV.

“I felt excited to come to the opening. Like something was open to me. It is enabling and bringing together and it was respected by the art establishment and it had a respected position within it. It wasn’t just ticking the box about social engagement. This comes from the heart.”

Tracey Smith – local resident who worked front of house in the gallery.

The design and construction of the new gallery begins with Penson Group as architects supported by local councillors who join the breaking ground.

Emily Druiff is appointed as Director and starts commissioning artists to work with communities in Peckham as an offsite programme, whilst the venue is developed.

The first artist to be commissioned is Harold Offeh who develops Peckham TV, exploring the area’s potential and future with young people.

“In Peckham Square you had less of the art world infrastructure but you had a completely open model…Working in that location in that way was a mixture of feeling vulnerable and not knowing what to say. But regardless of what people have to say, they are interested and I felt like that had to be reciprocated”

Harold Offeh, artist

Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London and London Borough of Southwark begin planning the creation of an accessible cultural space on Peckham Square, London SE15.