The Secret History of Our Streets
The concept of this BBC series — in partnership with the Open University — is taken from Charles Booth’s ambitious plan to visit every street in London and document the social conditions of people who lived there. Taking 17 years to complete (he began the project in 1886), it built a comprehensive snapshot of life in London; including Deptford High Street and the surrounding area. This series revisits six of the streets, beginning with Deptford High Street, to see how they’ve fared in the time since.
The press release states:
Featuring compelling accounts from residents, including one family which has been trading on the High Street for 250 years, the film tells the story of transformation and endurance as the people themselves tell the history of their own past and the street they lived in. Through these deeply personal accounts, of huge extended families living together in a single street, the bigger story of slum clearance and the unraveling of the old ways of life will emerge; a change which shaped the lives of tens of millions of British families all over the country.
The TimeOut preview of the show seems to paint a rather worryingly depressing view of how the High Street is now, and while I doubt many could argue with the fact it can no longer be seen as ‘the Oxford Street of south London’ which it was in the late 1800s, to be honest, I don’t think I’d want it to be.
What makes Deptford High Street a place I want to live near is the fact that there aren’t mainstream shops running down its whole length, and that independent businesses are at its heart. I hope this documentary illustrates how we should cherish and work towards strengthening local businesses to encourage “beautification” — if even that’s the right term — rather than “gentrification” of the area, whilst still supporting the diverse communities which live here.
In conversations about the show on Twitter, the industrious folk at Deptford Film Club have organised a screening, with hopefully an introduction or Q&A to the programme from the film-maker Jaime Taylor (via Skype).
If you can’t make it to the pub, then you can watch it when it broadcasts on BBC Two at 9pm on Wednesday 6th June.
The Bird’s Nest Pub will be screening the show (for free), with an introduction via Skype from film-maker Jaime Taylor from 7.30pm on Wednesday 6th June, 2012.
