This was not the lead story I had planned for today’s Camdenist.

That’s partly as the fabulous tale I did have, all ready to send - involving a risqué intergenerational local cultural escapade - has necessarily been put on hold at the 11th hour (more on that soon, I hope).

But also because, a decade deep into planning, news dropped this week that Camden Highline, the ambitious project to turn abandoned railway lines running between Kentish Town Road and King’s Cross into an elevated public park, was also having to be paused - indefinitely.

Apart from obvious strong local support for such potentially dynamic new green space, the idea has always been particularly close to my heart, as it was inspired by a cover story I wrote exactly 10 years ago this month, back when we published Kentishtowner as a monthly print newspaper for the area.

I’d been researching a series of exciting mooted suggestions for local public realm improvements, including a walking route up to Hampstead Heath alongside the railway tracks from Kentish Town station, turning nearby Wolsey Mews into a live/work designer-maker alternative high street, and even outlandish suggestions to bring the decommissioned Kentish Town South tube station back into service on the Northern Line.

(Ten years on, it’s worth noting that none of those plans have got off the ground, although the Heath connection does feature in the longer term redevelopments of Regis Rd, now dominated by the more recent announcement of the Camden Film Quarter).

I stumbled upon some research by UCL geographer, Oliver O’Brien, who had identified a number of terminally disused sections of Network Rail infrastructure in his quest to see whether London could produce its own answer to the highly successful New York Highline.

His work suggested the Camden section was by far the most doable of the lot.

“Should the route remain abandoned, eventually Network Rail will have to maintain or demolish the bridges, which will be expensive,” Oliver said when I first called him up, back in May 2016.

“So, if that expense is on the way, then it might as well be used for something constructive, such as opening up this route. In a place like London, which is growing all the time in population terms but not in footprint, every spare space should be used for something, not allowed to sit and rot quietly.”

The good folk at local business tubthumping organisation, Camden Town Unlimited, picked up on the idea, and only bloody well went and attempted to see how far the could actually take it, attracting top architects, the support of City Hall and numerous small doners, volunteers and enthusiasts in the process.

I had begun to dream of feeling a soft radiating glow of pride when walking/doddering along the verdant strip at some point in the future, finally content with the knowledge that, while producing local media ain’t exactly a pot of gold, it still has the power to inspire and help germinate the biggest of ideas.

One month after the cover story ran, Brexit became a thing; just the first in the rolling sequence of national and global shocks and setbacks that haven’t exactly helped get the project off the ground, particularly with a £50m price tag required for completing just the first section. And I believe that was the pre-Covid quote!

So this week’s announcement, while probably the least shocking of the endless financial shocks, is still a bitter blow for everyone who had their own dreams of walking through the magically finished park, one day.

Rightly, there’s a never-say-never approach to the end of this decade-long chapter, in the words of Richard Terry, Chair of the project’s trustees, who says: “The work is not lost. The planning, creativity and imagination that brought the Camden Highline this far will be carefully preserved by the trustees, so that whether it is us or others who one day pick up the mantle again, the project’s achievements can be carried forward for the future.

“It is, in that sense, a time capsule: a record of what has been imagined, designed and built in partnership with the community, waiting to be reawakened when the time and conditions are right once more.”

We’d better hope (and dream) that Network Rail will maintain the Victorian infrastructure that long, as our general state of perma-crisis sure doesn’t look like abetting accommodatingly any time soon.

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STAGE

We’re are getting lots of lovely new theatres though!

Happily, new stages are arriving all around us like the proverbial busses right now. First up is confirmation of the opening of pop-up 594-seater right by Marble Arch, to host the Arts Theatre programming while that West End venue undergoes a major 2-year refurb.

Snappily nicknamed Marble Arts, or rather ‘The Arts at Marble Arch powered by TodayTix’, to give it the official mouthful, it opens in July with a big new version of Christina Aguilera’s stage show, Burlesque.

The project has been conceived by Louis Hartshorn and Brian Hook, who locals may know previously ran the Peaky Blinders immersive show, Farrier pub and Lucky Club cocktail terrace at Camden Stables Market.

👯‍♀️ Meanwhile, the former Proud Cabaret spot on the Embankment, now reborn as Emerald Theatre, is about to start an ultra-limited 6-show London run of Sinematic, a cabaret extravaganza where every act is inspired by an iconic movie moment, and which exploded in popularity on its debut in LA, when Quentin Tarantino visited and gave it his thumbs-up. It will be showing on Friday nights only, from May 22nd.

🎤 While we’ve got to wait until next year for the biggest new theatre opening in the capital for 50 years, the 1,575-capacity British Airways Theatre at the impressive reinvented Olympia, its sister live music venue, the British Airways ARC, a 3,800-capacity monster operated by AEG Presents (another branding mouthful there), opens next month with Mercury-Prize nominated Self Esteem headlining the first two nights.

🎭 News also landed this week about the return of The Yard Theatre, out on my other beat of Hackney Wick, which has been totally rebuilt, after the original scaffolding and pallet-built DIY incarnation finally gave up the ghost. The new space has risen in its place in only a year, and has delivered a launch coup by announcing Ian McKellen in LEAR, which sees Shakespeare reimagined by playwright Simon Stephens and The Yard’s Artistic Director Jay Miller, due in November.

🌃 And Troubadour Theatres, who have already plonked big new immersive show spaces at Wembley Park and Canary Wharf, and preparing to open a huge new venue at Greenwich Peninsula later this year, boasting not one but two 1,500 capacity auditoriums, phew!

🌟 Finally, at the opposite end of the scale, with just 55 seats squeezed in above a pub, Hampstead’s recently opened Circle & Star continues to punch well above its weight when it comes to putting on delightfully intimate shows with big name stars.

CAMDEN CURATED

A few human-picked local highlights for the coming days

SHY

MUSIC: 🎸 Join local 6-piece band SHY at MAP Studio Cafe on Fri 22nd May as they draw on tales of their own escapades, local cab drivers and more for their genre-bending sound that promise to take you on a journey through the streets of London. With support from Leisure Centre, too.

FESTIVAL: 🍻 Who am I to say it’s optimistically a touch early for a summer fair, when the mighty Primrose Hill Summer Festival returns to pack out Regent’s Park Rd and surrounds this Sun 17th May. It comes with the legendary dog show, with celeb judge Gail Porter, too.

MUSIC: 🍺 The prolific DJ crew Dig It Soundsystem are celebrating the reopening of The Star pub in Chester Rd on Sat 16th May with one of their classic local backroom boozer hoe-downs and it looks set to be a bigg’un.

CABARET: 💃🏼 Drag star Honey Foxx kicks off The Foxx Den, her ferocious and feral new affair at The Black Cap, with assorted guests, showing late night tonight Fri 15th May.

CLUB: 🎧Esteemed producer, Ibiza legend and global DJ Nic Fanciulli & Butch, the German tastemaker in his own right, both touch down at KOKO tonight, Fri 15th May for an all night house and techno session.

MUSIC: 🛢️ Chalk Farm’s lovely Spiritual Bar move up the road to the larger room of Camden Assembly for the 20th edition of their Spiritual Records Spring Festival 2026 featuring 12 bands from afternoon into the night on Sun 24th May.

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Jung Festival scran

Last week - as always, right? 😉 - Camdenist posted the usual punchy, curated Friday morning list of hot events and cool places; the ones I feel you readers may well want to go check out over the weekend.

Well, did anyone try the recommended Jung Festival King’s Cross?

From the scroll-deluge, it was clearly a huge success. But seeing as waiting in line for up to 5 HOURS was the metric, I’m not entirely sure every customer would see it that way…

Unless they are a self-identified ‘influencer’, of course. In that case, the beyond-ludicrous queue - which at its peak snaked along the canal to quite comedic lengths (see below) - is exactly the kind of viral content they seek. Forget the generic crunchy chicken chomping, or oozy kimchi ‘n hot sauce close-ups, the comatose stares of overheated people waiting in a row for hours in the hot sun, simply to eat a spicy burger(!), is the real dynamite.

Instagram post

In today’s food game, ‘going viral on the socials’ is how you hope your marketing will pan out, luring in a profitable perma-stream of punters, each seemingly desperate to part with a wedge of their hard-earned cash in exchange for the chance to upload a shot of a visually compelling dish into the social media abys.

But, tickling the algorithmicly-driven herd instinct - which is apparently the jackpot - can easily tip things into overdrive. And the enthusiastic campaign of the Jung Festival’s organisers proved way too effective for it’s own good.

“It was literally a turnout beyond our imagination,” says the event promoter, Rollin Lee, in an awkward-but-enlightened post, following the queue carnage which dominated last weekend.

His deft manipulation of online foodie trend-whoring types (and some very nice other people too, of course) with all things Korean, pulled in far more day trippers than the Canopy Market food trucks could possibly contend with. It’s a nice problem to have, especially if some of those very people actively want to showcase ‘The Queue’, (as many did) but clearly things were stretched to the limits of operational security.

It highlights a real dilemma of the attention economy, as experienced at the local level. If we’re told that grasping for global-scale trends or hooks is the secret to success, how do we manage the fact that driving huge like/share counts can quite obviously brim over to uncomfortable numbers of customers, confusion and complaints?

Wandering past the now-standard queues outside Camden-based restaurants like Dim Sum Duck, Swiss Butter and (pioneers of the genre) Dishoom, I can’t help but feel a little uncomfortable at the gleeful uniformity of the patient waiting experience.

Are these customers perched at the cutting edge of restaurant culture when stood in that line-up? Or are they more like suckers in plain sight, hoodwinked into a lengthy commercial transaction, for which they are encouraged to provide free promotion, too?

It’s really down to whether you enjoy standing in the damn line, which has become a real world social experience of value to many in today’s atomised society. And there’s really no denying (from daily visual evidence) that thousands of tourists actively want to spend a chunk of their London city-break standing in the drizzle waiting for some fried potatoes squirted with gloopy sauce at Funky Chips on Chalk Farm Rd.

Targeting this video-based promotional juggernaut is clearly a very decent business decision for some, especially when you spot that a nominally identical (perhaps a lot better) kitchen can languish in obscurity nearby if they don’t ratchet up their own TikTok cheese-pull game.

All this makes ‘The Queue’ a nuanced cultural phenomenon to hold an firm opinion about. Eager lines of customers, interacting socially, and generating wild turnover success are fantastic news for beleaguered hospitality venues and lonely Londoners/visitors alike. But food-lovers also need to remember why they are driven to such extremes - five hours?! As was pointed out in the BTL fury of people who didn’t get into the Jung Festival at the weekend, most of the operators there have restaurants fairly nearby where you can eat the same food another night of the week.

If, as many commentators have suggested before me, that there’s an element of 'peacocking’ in joining, then documenting, the queue, (see David Beckham winning at filing past her Majesty alongside the plebs), and one which is more affordable than securing a table at a two Michelin-star Mayfair affair (most of the queues you’ll encounter are for street food), then hey, let’s celebrate it as a cultural artefact of its own.

But if it is simply down to lots of suggestable people being fed the same hype at the same moment, the we should actively fight The Queue… by going somewhere different.

Otherwise, basing what and where you eat around your next Insta story, work blag or trend-driven burger lust, does not a satisfying meal out make.

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REVIEW

Rum makes everything spicy

As some of you know, I tend to end up finishing writing Camdenist quite late on a Thursday night, against my better judgement. This week, the reason I’m burning the post-midnight oil is down to a little visit to Rum Kitchen on Inverness St.

It’s the new Caribbean party joint from the longstanding Cotton’s crew, serving up seriously juicy jerk chicken and assorted bites like salt cod fritters and oxtail croquettes, which we happily wolfed down with various cocktails.

The venue is mighty loud, making meaningful chat quite hard, but overproof aged rum concoctions like the Rude Boy and the watermelon and vodka punch Sunset Bay can sure smooth out the jarring edges fast. By 8pm the place was jumping, and it’s a nice reminder of what fun there is to be had on that strip, full of the kind of spots you’d find fantastic if you were on holiday - so a great quick escape from the daily grind to remember for locals, too.

The restaurant is in the former Bar Vinyl, scene of many a raucous music-led night in Camden Town a very long time ago. Those rum drinks and the soundtrack might do a good job of temporarily transporting your mind to the sunkissed West Indies, but your soul will very much feel at home.🍹

CAMDEN CURATED

Check these…

Sophia comes to Regent’s Park Rd

FOOD: 🥐 While the concept of a pink-hued, sourdough-focused Insta-girlie lockdown spinout bakery might jar a few purists, you can’t argue that Sourdough Sophia has smashed it when it comes to selling prime pastries and loaves in destination retail hubs. Her latest outpost is - where else, really? - on the bakery and café mile of Primrose Hill’s Regent’s Park Rd. It opens fully today, and the first 100 of you through the doors after they open at 8am get a gift worth £30 - so go. Now!

MUSIC: 🎚️As part of the Soho 73 photography exhibition we tipped you last week, famed film, stage and TV actor Ben Miles; Simon Lee, of acclaimed Nu Disco outfit Faze Action; and exhibition curator and DJ Ben Osborne of Noise of Art and Slack City Radio, bring the travelling post-disco vinyl night and radio show, White Trash, to Soho's much-loved Berwick Street boozer The Blue Posts on Sat 9th May, with free entry.

DRINK: 🍻 Despite a calendar of sold-out ‘Desi’ party events later in the month, these are the final days of King’s Cross micro-brewery Babel Beer House, who have announced that they will closing for good on Sun May 18th. It’s therefore a last chance to catch this bright and airy beery space, before it becomes something else. Following the similar failure of Little Creatures on the same spot, that might not involve brewing beer - but you never know…

MUSIC: 🍺 The prolific DJ crew Dig It Soundsystem are celebrating the reopening of The Star pub in Chester Rd on Sat 16th May with one of their classic local backroom boozer hoe-downs.

COMEDY: 🎭Midweek laughs in King’s Cross are assured at Comedy Freaks stand-up night on Wed 13th May at 26 Caledonian Rd, for another big line-up - and check out the drinks deals too.

MUSIC: 🛢️ You’ll enjoy a night of roots reggae with the rare London appearance of Virgin Island’s legends Busspipe and Tippy I at The Jazz Cafe this Sun 10th May.

FOOD: 🍷 Cult lunchtime destination, The Yellow Bittern, on Cali Rd is opening for dinner service the very first time tonight. You’ll need to book ahead, but they promise a summer-long season of single seatings, copious wines and effervescent conversation, so well worth your commitment.

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In one form or another, King’s Cross has been a multi-sensory adventure zone for Londoners for hundreds of years.

Be that the bucolic babbling of the pre-industrial River Fleet, the all-out assault of noise, steam and heavy, fish and coal-scented rolling stock in the Victorian railway yard boom, or the mind-expanding music, crowds and chemical enhancements of its nightlife years.

Nowdays, it’s the permanent and pop-up public art installations that really tweak the synapses, offering an ever-changing backdrop to any casual KX visit, or reason enough to embark upon a dedicated trip there.

And so it came to pass that I sat for coffee and pastries at Caravan with French artist Delphine Dénéréaz bright and early one morning last week. She’s the latest practitioner to be invited to create work specifically for one of the estate’s event programmes.

The resulting piece, Dandelions Always Return, celebrates a medieval weaving technique that’s rooted in fabric reuse, which Delphine has crafted into a joyful little house, offering very bold colours and environmental messages (it also arrived here on Earth Day) alongside the cosy playhouse domesticity.

It’s a key part of this springtime’s Super Nature season, which offers a regular events programme, low-impact shopping and eating options and free activities (including a guided family nature trail) running throughout May.

Dénéréaz chose Dandelions to represent the way that a simple plant (and a vital pollinator, at that) has the ability, no matter how much we may have paved over or polluted the land is emerges from, to crop up regardless.

During our chat, the house - which is set atop Granary Square’s equally colourful and popular summertime sprouting of the ‘grassy’ suntrap steps - draws loads of comments, particularly from the chattering infant school group passing by on their way to swimming. It’s messages of careful textile reuse and engagement with the natural world effortlessly serving their purpose; a momentary reflective pause from the urban hustle and the pinging notifications of the rest of our day as adults, too. It’s enchanting.

“It grew from my fascination with how textiles carry memory, with each knot and each thread holding traces of the past,” says Delphine. “The dandelion mirrors this for me: it scatters, disappears, and always resurfaces.”

Also on the theme of memories evoked by visual cues connecting us with our past, I received an email about a unique building that’s stood nearby for over 30 years. It’s one that I bet many locals have never really taken the time to pause over, despite it looking quite unlike all around it.

Below, local architect, activist and Queen’s Crescent Market champion, Tom Young, delights in finally being let inside to have a look…

➡️ More public art to see around King’s Cross

Guest Editorial: Tom Young on a very special Kentish Town co-op

The dreams of an architect belong to the time and place she finds herself in.

In my 30s, mine were about a creative home in a quasi-industrial building. I was responding to something in the air in the early 90s when the notion of live-work was bandied about.

In Shoreditch for instance, it seemed to be a way to lessen the tension between an old-style defined employment area prioritising jobs for inhabitants of local housing estates, and the newer Yuppie demand for living space in 19th-century warehouses.

Architecture records old convictions that might reconnect us to a meaningful life. For more than two decades, I have passed by a building at 115 Bartholomew Road in Kentish Town. It has always seemed to me that it must be the product of an association of creatives who had fulfilled my old dream.

The other day I met someone from the group who drew up the plan to build 115 back in the mid-90s, when it was first conceived as a complex of two live/work units and one workspace. They invited me to look around their building.

There are two entries. One takes you from the street into an airy hall nicknamed ‘the atrium’, the other leads into the front garden where cyclists can leave bikes before entering through a side door.

The atrium is the main architectural space; half of it is three storeys high and enclosed by a steel frame infilled with u-shaped translucent Reglit glazing. This crystalline, industrial lantern is the building’s public signature.

115 Bartholomew Rd

The main stair is an assembly of thick timber treads and white steel structure which climbs up the atrium walls and terminates on a landing high above the entrance, where the top floor consists of a single, long office that spans between the street and the back gardens behind the building. The ground floor includes a workshop (occupied by a joinery business) with openings onto both gardens. All six workspaces are distinct.

Next to the street entrance is a shared kitchen and eating area. Typologically, 115 is a house, not the terraced sort but more like a Victorian villa with rooms off a celebratory stairhall.

It is enriched with witty details expressing creative commitments. These include, along with the Reglit glazing, doorway reveals from polished cut concrete blocks, plywood wall lining in the workspaces and screens across street-level openings formed of welded mesh panels set in galvanised steel frames.

Beyond the many enjoyable, industrial Modernist inflections and semi-traditional typology, 115’s meaning derives from its self-made aspect. Doing it yourself succeeded here, between 1995 and 2002, because a stable group of founders found and bought a site, reached design consensus, got a bank loan and constructed a building.

Since that time the building has hosted a stream of 50+ creatives working in joinery, architecture, script-writing, graphic design, software, music and other spheres. Three of the initial group of four founders are still here. Membership is controlled to ensure the building remains a haven for creatives committed to doing "good work" that is "useful and delightful to others," environmentally aware, personally fulfilling, egalitarian, welcoming to apprentices or “assistants”, and concerned with detail.

The average length of membership is over 13 years, and my contact makes clear the importance of one of the founders, a publisher, who put up money to buy the site. I assume finance for construction was secured against land-value. 30 years on, members are now exploring ways to buy the freehold.

115 brings together themes of urban life: stability, creativity, independence, affordability, neighbourhood and genius loci. The site it stands on was a sawmill until the 1950s, then became a filo pastry factory before being sold as development land during the last stages of the de-industrialisation of London's backstreets in the late 90s.

Instead of becoming another expensive residential development to be repeatedly sold in order to cash-in on rising values, 115 has ensured continuity of productive activity on site.

The world which could have existed if more schemes like 115 had materialised since the 90s is a dream. Many neighbourhoods would be better if it had happened.

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CAMDEN CURATED

Festival season gets into gear this week, including music, boats, food, animals & culture-fests

IWA Carnival Cavalcade, Photo: Joe Dixey

FESTIVAL: 🛥️ Ok, Little Venice isn’t in Camden, however it’s surprisingly quick to get to on foot if you walk via Regent’s Canal towpath (certainly beating the bus or tube most days, if you walk at a decent clip). And the area’s biggest weekend of the year is upon us, as the Inland Waterways Association’s famous free Carnival Cavalcade brings loads of boats, food, drink and art together from Sat 2nd - Mon 4th May, with the lovely illuminated boat procession taking place on Sunday night.

FOOD: 🍾 St Paul’s longstanding rooftop cocktail and dining institution, Sabine, has just taken over the NYX Hotel rooftop in the centre of Holborn, bringing the same mix of sharing plates, impressive drinks list and lively DJ-infused party nights, set to a twinkling urban panorama from the hotel’s 10th floor and terrace.

CABARET: 🌞 The Black Cap is well and truly back on the local night time venue circuit with a programme of drag shows, quizzes and outrageous performances to check out, following its eagerly-awaited reopening after an 11-year battle. And, just in time for the bank holiday weekend, it’s roof terrace, aka the Regina Roof Terrace, also reopens on Sat 2nd May. It’s named in memory of the late, great drag artist, Regina Fong, or Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess, and features a restored blue plaque in her honour.

FESTIVAL: 🐐 If you love a local goat encounter, or squeal with delight at the sight of an urban pig, the annual May Day Fair returns this Mon 4th May at Kentish Town City Farm, for an afternoon of music, maypole dancing, games, arts and animals. Oink, oink!

STAGE: 🎷 The challenges of being British, Iranian, and a Hip-Hop head collide in I’m Muslamic Don’t Panik where our storyteller, Bobak, invites us to join him on a physical, musical and emotional journey to accept his own heritage, set against a media culture which still portrays the Middle East as a frightening and dangerous place. See it at Camden’s People’s Theatre until Sat 2nd May. 

FESTIVAL: ✍🏼 Down at Fleet Street Quarter you’ll find a stream of top notch speakers from the worlds of journalism, books, podcasting and politics taking to the stage from Thurs 7th May at the Festival of Words. Subtitled ‘The Age of Wisdom and Foolishness’, 40 different talks and events look at where we’ve collectively gone wrong, and what on earth happens next.

COMEDY: 🎭 Dirty Minds sees comedian Kayvan Khazaee unleash what he says will be his dirtiest material as part of a shamelessly honest deep dive into his chaotic life on Sun 3rd May at Aces & Eights. So expect dark gags, gleeful filth, and emotional vulnerability.

MUSIC: 💀 I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Metal, but if I did, I’d be spending Sat 2nd May getting thoroughly stuck in from lunchtime until the early hours at Incineration Festival 2026, which bring deliciously name bands like Blood Fire Death, Hypocrisy, Internal Bleeding, Vacuous and Beyond Extinction to five Camden Town venues, with one wristband valid at Roundhouse, Electric Ballroom, Underworld, The Black Heart and The Dev.

FESTIVAL: 🍜 If you like Korean food but want to go deeper into the country’s dynamic food culture, London’s first Jung Festival is bringing 30+ traders serving all kinds of skewers, kimchi, fried chicken and beautiful desserts at King’s Cross Canopy Market, while inside UAL at The Crossing, there’s a dedicated cultural zone featuring fashion, accessories, art workshops, traditional Korean games and a range of craft and design pieces.
Runs from today, Fri 1st - Mon 4th May. 

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View from the QE2 Garden this week

I’d been wanting to write something on the chronic state of disinformation that prevails online about London being lawless/lost for some time.

Last week, following Sadiq Khan’s warnings on exactly that issue, I went for it, but it would have been bizarre not to mention that two murders have taken place in LB Camden in recent weeks, too.

By doing so, the purposefully culture-first agenda of Camdenist crossed the Rubicon into culture-war territory. Crime - particularly the murder of a young person - is a deeply emotional ‘worst nightmare’ scenario for most of us, so it’s certain to grab the attention over happier topics in today’s overcrowded information space.

That visceral response is exactly the stuff that social network algorithms and the very same online provocateurs and trouble-makers feed on. I really didn’t want to veer into their ‘for eyeballs and clicks’ game, yet this unavoidable part of the story landed me there, and inevitably the comments and poll responses flooded in, reaching record levels, I’m fairly sure.

It’s tricky, as anyone producing content of any type or quality these days wants it to be seen, and to be engaging enough to make an impact, but we all know that pushing the emotive buttons via fear and outrage is not exactly doing society a whole lot of good, either.

Rather than defend my position or endlessly re-examine each turn of phrase, I’ve simply included a wide selection of the comments received in the poll section below ⬇️

There was substantial pushback, but also broad agreement about how safe the city actually feels, despite the obvious horrors of the recent incidents, so I hope a more nuanced debate is the overall result.

‘If it bleeds, it leads’ has long been the front page mantra for selling newspapers, but I think in an algorithmic, trackable era, we all have a duty not to get sucked in to feeling that every video of a phone snatching or fare evasion served up to us signals that our city has no hope. Watching these things simply feeds the outrage machine, as well as stoking our own worst fears, which only ends up making the issues (perceived or real), worse.

At a time when even such once venerable titles as the Evening Standard seem to be on their last legs, haemorrhaging their remaining journalists while churning out depressing amounts of vacuous sponsored content, it’s easy to see why publishers and audiences alike gravitate desperately towards the more emotive stuff.

I love having impassioned feedback to Camdenist, but I won’t chase it by running easy crime topics or culture war controversies. Thankfully, we’re spared the anonymous slanging match of X, YouTube or below the line keyboard warriors here, and all opinions are welcome, as long as they genuinely aim to improve city life, not deride or dismiss it.

👑 Remember when it used to rain in April?

The brand new Queen Elizabeth II Garden opens in Regent’s Park this Monday (27th Apr), commemorating the life of our longest serving monarch while also making some rather pointed, er, points about climate change with its striking design.

The wider Park is looking lush at the moment, its historic, generations-old formal landscaping and sweeping boulevards are bursting with the colourful buds of spring promise. In fact all that makes the new QE2 garden look positively arid, where more youthful plants have a few years of bedding in ahead of them.

The plucky specimens have also been set the challenge of growing deep into a high PH scree of crushed up concrete that was once the base for the defunct greenhouses that used to dominate this site, found just behind the pretty espresso kiosk on The Broad Walk.

By repurposing the rubble, the designers at landscape architects HTA have solve one environmental challenge (waste) while also creating a garden ready to adapt to the stresses of London’s scarily fast-shifting climate.

On a blisteringly sunny preview visit this week, we heard about the meticulous, low impact irrigation systems, the mix of rolling wildflower meadows, shady wooded areas and water features that all sit on top of some rather unforgiving London clay.

It’s certainly very different from the rest of the Park, hemmed in by trees and bushes as a curiously less green oasis in the middle, yet with the same odd glimpse of the BT Tower, which I always feel lends Regent’s Park a rather homely, urban exclamation mark.

The space looks idea for weddings (if not the shooting plenty of identical social content) although we were told it’s not been designed for such events. Meanwhile, an impressive figure of nearly 200 places to sit was also hinted at, across posh benches, concrete perches and assorted other places where you can to rest your feet throughout.

Oh, and the stone and iron work really are as impressive as the epic tulips currently swaying in the centre beneath the Queen’s fave - a magnolia tree - and well worth taking a look up close, too.

Suitably interested? You can find out a lot more from last week’s episode of Gardener’s World or just drop by from Monday - it’s another impressive free attraction on our doorsteps, and will doubtless prove a big draw (so beware initial crowds, perhaps), not just for locals and tourists, but also apparently for all the hedgehogs reportedly curled up in the strategically placed woodpile.

🌍 EarthFest is back in KX this summer

Talking of positive, free things in the area, right after the garden preview, I strolled on down to Euston for the launch of EarthFest 2026, which will see a week of summits and school events, leading up to public-facing events on 27th & 28th June around King’s Cross.

The event developed out of the work of the Covid-era inspired Camden (now London) Clean Air Initiative, and introduces all kinds of sustainability topics to the public in an engaging way, with live music, wellbeing, workshops, food demos, an eco friendly expo, electric mobility showcases, sustainable fashion and big name panellists.

It’s the third edition, and every year the format gets tweaks to improve, with a move to coincide with London Climate Action Week the big news for 2026, alongside ticketed industry-specific summits which you can find out more about here.

Alternatively, simply click on the ad for Aramore skincare at the end of this week’s edition to help fund this newsletter at zero cost to yourself ☑️

CAMDEN CURATED

Top ways to eek the maximum out of local cultural life. Am I right?!

Bowie Nights

MUSIC: 🎶 The latest big ticket multimedia spectacle to land at Lightroom opened this week, using the three-storey-high screens to bask visitors in the sounds and images of David Bowie in You’re Not Alone. With material curated from thousands of hours of film, its an indulgent deep dive into the archive of this untouchable pop icon, but did you know there’s also a series of events to catch in the weeks ahead too? Bowie Nights sees graphic designer and Bowie collaborator Jonathan Barnbrook give a talk on Tues 19th May, Miranda Sawyer interview six Bowie photographers (Tues 26th May) with podcaster Adam Buxton and a Bowie-0inspired cello recital by Peter Gregson lined up for the months ahead.

EXHIBITION: 🎥 There’s a special screening of the acclaimed ANARCHY! McLaren Westwood Gang alongside the launch of Soho ‘73, an exhibition of street photography taken in the area at the birth of punk, taking place at the Museum of Soho inside Dean St’s bohemian hangout All Is Joy next Fri 1st May. Meanwhile cross-platform music collective Noise of Art’s head honcho, Ben Osborne, launches Slack City Radio London and his new show on the station.

FOOD: 🤯 There’s a fairly unique chance to tickle all five senses at HERE at Outernet on Tues 5th May where Michelin-star chefs will prepare a six-course meal soundtracked by big room electronica heroes Bicep at Sensora. It’s all in aid of The Brain Tumor Charity, and tickets (priced at £375) are already sold out, however there’s a chance to win a pair by pledging a tenner in the next couple of days.

MUSIC: 🎛️ The Roundhouse Three Sixty Festival is in full swing this weekend with the might Detroit techno originals Carl Craig and Octave One Live tonight, Fri 24th Apr and a pay-what-you-can party from Situation Dance with Annie Mac, Benji B, Yazmin Lacey, Kash Jones + Femi Koleoso on Sat 25th. Both events have vanishingly few tickets left - if you‘re quick.

ART: 🖼️ The 16 interdisciplinary artists and curators that make up the newly formed Palace Cinema Art Collective have their firs show in their new Kentish Town gallery home on Fri 25th Apr with a free private view of House Warming, which then runs all weekend.

FOOD:🌶️ Swish food hall Arcade is opening a third London site fairly near their Tottenham Court Rd original. This time its the former TGI Fridays spot in deepest Covent Garden, with flat iron and smoky spatchcock at Solis and smash burger from Manna amoung the hall highlights, plus standalone outlets for Southern Thai specialists Plaza Khao Gaeng and an exciting Greek Cypriot taverna from ex-Kiln/co-owner of Singburi, Nick Molyviatis. Doors open to everything on Fri 15th May.

COMEDY: 🎭 Seven Dials club Comedy Carnival hosts a showcase of international stand up comedy this Sat 25th Apr, featuring outspoken Irish comic Mary Bourke, Scott Capurro, Sam Picone and the entertaining David Ward on MC duties.

MUSIC: 🪩 You’ll need to venture just over the river for this one 😱 but the prospect of 500 free drinks, the start of a bank holiday weekend and al fresco bangers courtesy of Guilty Pleasures and Flexin’ means the return of the South Bank’s annual food and cultural programme Between The Bridges next Thurs 30th Apr is one for the calendar, I’d say.

BOOK NOW

🥕 Celebrate the arrival of Spring and its fresh harvest of vegetables on Sat 9th May as local sustainable food champions Vegbox and Eat Club team up for Seasonal Surprises, a cooking workshop followed by a community meal, at Calthorpe Community Gardens. You’ll learn to prepare some simple, delicious, seasonal dishes and then meet fellow local food enthusiasts around the table afterwards.

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Are we getting a distorted view of London?

It doesn’t need me to poll Camdenist readers about their views on London, as I absolutely know the vast majority of you are fully enamoured with living in the capital, despite its challenges.

Yet we’ve all doubtless had a few conversations of late with concerned friends, remote relatives, or superior-sounding expats about how the city is perceived as too dangerous and/or in a state of terminal decline.

In such pointedly polarised times, I suppose a proverbial cultural melting pot with the power to stir great emotion was always going to become a target for politically motivate point-scoring, but some of this stuff is really off the charts.

A combination of anti-Sadiq sentiment, augmented with some common-or-garden racism and casual prejudice, then super-charged by malicious bot farms intent on stoking disharmony, has lead to an often comedic gulf between Londoners’ lived reality and the persistent narrative that our home is some kind of lawless hell hole.

So, while the capital has just scored a major gong (the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize 2026) for its world-class innovation, vastly improved air quality, transport infrastructure and vibrant public spaces, the Mayor simultaneously had to go on the record to decry the “disinformation blizzard” that continues to swirl regardless, where the hot button topics of crime, violence and clashing beliefs are fully weaponised to badmouth London in the attention economy’s post-truth scroll wars.

It’s certainly landing reputational blows, too. Earlier this year, YouGov found that most Britons (61%) now think London is ‘an unsafe place to live’, a big increase across the board. So there’s no doubt that sentiment originating from online far right agitators is currently being accepted as ‘fact’ by millions, who have been confused by the algorithmic prevalence of triggering violent video clips and the snarky words of questionable commentators.

And yet. It’s an inescapable truth that we’ve seen two horrendous murders here in the Borough in the last month.

Such violence rightfully causes fear, grief, anger and a search for accountability, but the inevitable way the usual agitators seized upon these devastating incidents to push their narrow agenda offers nothing to solve any of the complex issues behind them. It definitely makes things worse.

The sensational nature of this content as a form of viral engagement/entertainment hook sums up so much of what is wrong with the current libertarian free-for-all of the social platforms.

Perception is everything, as the Mayor knows. Fear is real, even if what is feared actually befalling you might not be. Whipping up hateful ‘I told you so’ stories about statistically/thankfully rare crimes reveals a twisted glee at how damned - and damned wrong - us Londonphiles must all be. Meanwhile, we just get on doing the daily work of supporting stronger community bonds and rejecting hate across the city, in our millions.

The things I love about London the absolute most, are often those most savagely attacked by the keyboard critics: multicultural enclaves, bountiful street art, Notting Hill Carnival, daily encounters with edgy nonconformist characters. They represent joy, tolerance and creativity, which is all obviously a real threat to certain fading power structures.

Put into any kind of historical context, from Dickensian squalor to post-war race riots, the capital is unquestionably safer than ever, though. I’d say the real danger - culturally at least - is a slide towards bland over-sanitisation and regulation.

That’s my perception, but I know its far from shared elsewhere, particularly online. Yet, we’ve similarly seen the much-touted online perception of a city like Dubai, (regularly juxtaposed with London for being so much more safe, clean and prosperous - at least if you ignore the human rights issues and repressive government overreach), fall apart in the buzzing shadow of Iranian drone bombs.

If the carefully constructed reputation of one city as ‘safe’ can crumble so fast, so can the equally manufactured narrative that our city is apparently so lacking.

Speaking with an Afghan refugee in Camden this week, I heard only that London represents security and opportunity for his family. Of course, he’d quickly be portrayed online as the ‘wrong kind’ of Londoner to be enjoying the place so much, but his perception is just as real and valid as anyone else’s.

While the local murders are shocking, the actions of one or two disaffected, angry young men simply do not represent what this massively varied city and its wealth of culture and lived experience is all about.

That shouldn’t need to be pointed out, but here we are.

As the Mayor suggests, London might be “the canary in the coalmine” for many more such disinformation outrage battles to come, but we also have the chance to make it the place where the fightback began.

Let’s make that happen.

PUBS

🍻 3 boozers return - we’re spoilt!

Despite the prevailing doom felt right across the nation’s cherished hospitality industry, Camden’s pubs just don’t die easily (even if it takes some serious community mobilisation to keep them incubated when in dire need).

Hot on the stilettoed heels of vital LGBTQ+ drag pub The Black Cap returning after over a decade in the dark last month, April has seen the return of lovely backstreet local The Star in Chester Rd, too. It comes complete with masses of optimism after a successful campaign to save it from permanent closure, as story that sits behind an increasing number of boozers in the ‘hood now.

Particularly exciting it the return of Tufnell Park Film Club to its old haunt upstairs, with screenings shown every Tuesday.

And, low and behold, another long-closed local fave, Camden Road’s The Unicorn now looks set to return as an outpost on the live music circuit once more. With such positivity on the pub scene despite numerous challenges, the next question looms over the former Camden Arms right opposite Camden Rd Overground station, which was dragged down with the precipitous fall from grace of Brewdog. Surely that well-appointed hostelry won’t sit dark for quite so long…

CAMDEN CURATED

10 pleasingly different suggestions to go out and explore

Hot Toddy’s now on Camden High St

COMEDY: 🎭 The old Belushi’s sports bar at Mornington Cres has become dedicated comedy and live entertainment venue Hot Toddy’s, promising regular stand-up shows championing rising comedy talent, outrageous LGBTQ+ performances, free karaoke parties and capsule hostel beds upstairs, aiming to become an exciting hub of Camden’s nightlife as the summer gets going.

MUSIC: 🎤 It’s Record Store Day on Sat 18th Apr, which means a celebration of all things analogue and vinyl. Look out for ragga metal legends Skindred takeover at Raven Records in Camden Town for signings, chats and demos, and a special in the monlth-long series of outdoor DJ and live gigs at Kingley Court’s Soho Sounds, supporting the frenzied crate-digging going on at other key local bastions of the black stuff including Phonica, Sister Ray and Reckless.

SHOPPING: 👗 There’s a new pop-up location for the excellent Charity Super.Mkt just launched over at Finchley Road’s 02 Centre, which brings together loads of different leading charity shops offering stylish preloved clothes, as co-founder and urban visionary Wayne Hemingway told us when he was a Guest Editor of Camdenist back in 2024. Look out for their Fashion with Compassion upcycling workshops on Sat May 7th offering practical tips ways to re-vamping beloved garments, and a specially curated capsule collection with exclusive discounts for students.
It all started at their Classic Car Boot Sale, which also returns this weekend, Sat 18th & Sun 19th, to its home of Granary Square in King’s Cross for what is always a riot of music, fashion, food and vintage vehicles.

MUSIC: 🎤 Africa’s celebrated musician and visual artist, Nissi brings her Afrobeats, R&B and soul sounds sung in English, Yoruba and pidgin to the Jazz Cafe on Thurs 23rd Apr. Sister of Burna Boy, its a rare chance to catch this compelling artist in a club setting.

FOOD: 🥫 The latest addition to Camden Town’s smorgasbord of international supermarkets has just opened on Parkway, with a new branch of Russian deli Dacha, featuring meticulously laid-out racks of pickles, sauces, sweets and signature caviar, too.

BOOKS: 📚 Up at Ally Pally, the North London Book Festival brings masses of authors and readers under one roof for a guaranteed inspiring three days, Thurs 23rd - Sat 26th Apr, of readings, panel discussions, Q&As, workshops, and book signings.

FOOD:🌶️ There’s a spicy new Thai kitchen residency at King’s Cross listening bar Spiritland throughout April on Sunday’s (lunch and dinner) and Mondays (dinner) with the acclaimed Bangkok Delivery Boy.

COMEDY: 🎭 Dave Chawner is a stand-up currently writing a show about quitting alcohol and getting his shit together, and diving into the complex relationship today’s culture has with booze. He’s previewing Dry Humour at Camden Comedy Club on Thurs 24th Apr.

ART: 🖼️ The 16 interdisciplinary artists and curators that make up the newly formed Palace Cinema Art Collective have their firs show in their new Kentish Town gallery home on Fri 25th Apr with a free private view of House Warming, which then runs all weekend.

BOOK NOW

🥕 Celebrate the arrival of Spring and its fresh harvest of vegetables on Sat 9th May as local sustainable food champions Vegbox and Eat Club team up for Seasonal Surprises, a cooking workshop followed by a community meal, at Calthorpe Community Gardens. You’ll learn to prepare some simple, delicious, seasonal dishes and then meet fellow local food enthusiasts around the table afterwards.

PARTNER

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With global headlines this week shaped by flailing, ego-led idiocy of the highest order, down here at local level, we might be excused for feeling a little powerless in the face of it all.

But perhaps our discomfort in observing the once great USA debase itself so completely, while making life measurably worse for almost everybody, signals a moment for swinging into action, no matter how insignificant that might initially feel.

Despite the anti-human imperatives of Late-Stage Capitalism, there’s always been a parallel green and pleasant underground movement working diligently, idealistically and vitally towards a pro-climate, pro-social agenda.

In Camden, the volunteer organisation Think&Do has been running these types of local initiatives for many years, so what better time to turn our attention away from Trumpian petro-war doom and look towards areas where all of us really can exert some power?

The organisation’s co-founder and ‘avid’ weekly Camdenist reader, Debbie Bourne, reached out this week with some proactive inspiration…

Guest Editor Debbie Bourne asks: what if…?

At Think&Do we are all about turning some major ‘what ifs?’ into, ‘hell yeahs!’

What if… we reimagined waste as opportunity, and more of the things we no longer need could find a new home, instead of ending up in landfill or incinerated?

What if… we could have everything we need to be strong, connected and self-sufficient - by sharing things we already own?

What if… our homes and estates across Camden became mini power stations with rooftop solar and solar balconies, helping us become energy secure?

What if… we could easily save £400pa on our energy bills without any government or energy company BS?

What if… Camden became one big pollinator pathway and radical leader in ecological justice?

What if… climate action wasn’t just feeling ‘what’s-the-point-with-Trump-in-power’, but becomes a no-brainer, woven into our daily lives?

Think&Do is a not-for-profit Camden-based organisation run by an enthusiastic bunch of locals. We’re on a mission to build a fairer, greener Camden with projects which make positive, sustainable long-term change. Put simply, it’s climate and social justice in action – and it’s good fun.

We believe that if we wait for governments, it will be too late. If we do it by ourselves, it will be too little. But if we join together as one big, connected community, it might just be enough, and in enough time. We urge you to join in the fun, since it’s all such uplifting, positive stuff.

So, back to the ‘what ifs’, and also, ‘what has this got to do with me’? Well, we have some events coming up that should answer both questions.

In terms of reimagining waste and sharing, how about a bit of retail therapy that doesn’t cost the planet? Join us alongside Transition Kentish Town on Sat 18th Apr, 10am-2pm, at the Hampstead Heath Education Centre (right by Parliament Hill Lido) for our next big street swap. These events see all kinds of goodies from guitars to printers, clothes to kitsch china plates all ready to be swapped. What’s more, if you’re then inspired to host a street swap where you live, we’ll not only show you how to do it, but we’ll give the most convincing plan a £200 budget to get cracking.

Want to discuss ideas about circularity and sharing in general? Join us at the Primrose Hill Community Association (PHCA) on Thurs 23rd Apr for an In The Loop People’s Assembly where we’re going to expand the conversation.

On Sat 25th, back at PHCA, we’re co-hosting a general electronic repair event and a ‘Mining Your Mobile’ workshop with our friends from the Queen’s Crescent-based Fixing Factory. Come along to get any electronic item repaired and also to learn about the precious minerals inside your mobile phone and the climate justice issues related with mineral extraction. Sounds a bit heavy, but it’s all positive, important stuff. E-waste is a big fat downer with over 2 million items generated in the UK each year, but we all have to power to reduce that with our actions.

In terms of Ecological justice, we are big into helping Camden residents on estates plant pop-up wildflower meadows and pick-your-own fruit patches, and are hoping that our ‘Communitree’ project, in partnership with the amazing KOKO Foundation, re-emerges after its Glasto-like fallow break, for a fifth year.

We’re helping residents set up Sharing Spaces across Camden estates, where neighbours can meet, build connections, and collectively work towards a more resilient future; we’re working on a solar balcony pilot project, training up new Power Rangers. There’s masses going on.

I hope that, wherever in the Borough or beyond that you are reading this, you stop to look around and that an idea pops into your head for a project that you and your besties might do. Whether it’s about food, energy, sharing, greening, skilling-up, artivism, or whatever. It’s really that simple. Just get Thinking & Doing, and we’re always here to help with advice. We’re also always looking for volunteers to help us run our own projects.

Now really is the time for exploring ‘what if…?’, so do get in touch: info@thinkanddocamden.org.uk

💡 Are you a local business looking for an editorial profile on our website and a social media partnership to reach new local customers? Join the Camdenist Business Community network today and let’s work together.

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Intrepid has launched three new Women’s Expeditions in Peru, Bhutan and Cambodia – created exclusively for women travellers. Expect immersive adventures that break down barriers and connect you with local communities, from trekking the Peruvian Andes to a women-run tuk tuk tour in Cambodia and a traditional hot stone bath experience at a women-owned farmhouse in Bhutan.

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CAMDEN CURATED

Unexpected things to do for the days ahead

Coconut prawns at Rum Kitchen

FOOD: 🍹Soft-opening next Thurs 16th Apr with four days of 50% off your food bill, Rum Kitchen is the new addition to the longstanding Cottons Caribbean dining empire, born and bred in Camden Town. Promising beach shack-style food, bountiful rum cocktails, plus rhythm and late-night energy on Inverness St, just in time for a tropically scorching London summer, right?

STAGE: 🎭 The new Hampstead Theatre production of Michal Frayn’s multi award-winning WWII play Copenhagen is essentially sold out for the entire run until 2nd May, however we’ve spotted very limited availability for this Sat 11th Apr matinee performance, if you’re quick about it…

EXHIBITION: 🔊 As part of the current Roundhouse Three Sixty Festival, the iconic Chalk Farm music venue is hosting free exhibition From Soundboy to Streaming: Collective and Individual Joy where groups of local young people, in association with the (soon to be nearby) Museum of Youth Culture, explore the changing face of London’s music culture, and why it remains such an important force. Runs 11th - 25th Apr.

MUSIC: 🎤 Euphoric live rave singing collective House Gospel Choir are onto week 2 of their Jazz Cafe residency, belting out the vocal-driven Afro and Soulful house classics tonight, Fri 10th Apr.

FILM: 🎞️ Cute new Chalk Farm bookshop and café, Fable & Falcon, have their first movie screening event tonight, Fri 10th Apr, with a Y2K-themed showing of 10 Things I Hate About You with a slice of Ria’s pizza and your first drink included.

ART: 🖼️ Camden Arts Centre has just opened London’s first comprehensive survey of Guyanese-British ceramicist, painter and sculptor Donald Locke. Resistant Forms includes over 80 works from this Windrush Generation artist who played a pivotal if under-recognised role in 20th century British sculpture. Runs to 30th Aug.

MUSIC: 🎤 Indie rock and alternative energy in the vein of Sam Fender, Arctic Monkeys and Catfish and the Bottlemen, singer-songwriter Luke Chappell brings his UK tour to Camden for a headline show at The Dublin Castle on Wed 15th Apr.

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Busk justice (image: keepstreetlive.com)

Did you know that - despite its storied history at the centre of London’s live music scene and as the birthplace of so many sounds that went on to conquer the world - Camden is now among the hardest places in the country to simply come and play your heart out on a street corner?

Nick Broad is a researcher and advocate that runs The Busking Project, a non-profit devoted to solving the technological and political needs of street performers. Their website, busk.co, is used daily by hundreds street performers worldwide.

I’ve been speaking to Nick for a long time about how Camdenist might help improve the situation for all, and now the political jostling ahead of May’s potentially seismic local elections seems to have finally pushed the debate front and centre.

So, for this week’s edition, Nick takes over our occasional Guest Editor slot, following conversations he’s had with the local Lib Dems. He’s currently also seeking comment from representatives of the other parties in Camden, so look out for that in more depth over on busk.co in the weeks ahead…

“It must be scrapped”: why Camden's busking licence is broken says The Busking Project’s Nick Broad

For what is probably the first time in British political history, a major party has put support of street performers in an election manifesto.

The Camden Lib Dems have pledged to “liberalise the council's approach to busking”, because they say the current policy “undermines Camden's reputation as a centre of music and free expression.”

Why does this need a manifesto commitment? Because the licence is broken and the situation on the ground is getting worse.

When the rules were first passed in 2013, the borough became one of the least-hospitable places in the UK in which to busk. To get a licence, street performers had to apply online, pay £19 and wait at least five business days for a licensing committee to assess whether they were “a fit and proper person”. Non-compliance could risk a £1,000 fine and having their equipment confiscated, which the council could then sell if the fine wasn’t paid within 28 days.

On a call the other day, Cllr. Tom Simon, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Camden, laughed when I reminded him of the severity of the rules. He told me that maybe there had been a problem with some performers at Camden Town tube station “being obnoxious and too loud”, but that “you don't solve that problem effectively by introducing a borough-wide policy requiring people to pay money for a licence.”

He’s right. Data revealed by a Freedom Of Information request shows that annual licence applications between 2014 and 2024 collapsed by 90%, from 194 per year to just 21. Meanwhile, complaints rose by 422% to 606 in 2024, the worst year on record.

The only people prosecuted for breaching the terms of the licence were champion beatboxers Fredy Garcia and Alex Hackett in 2016. Hackett reported he hadn’t got a licence because he simply couldn't afford to lose a non-refundable fee on a rejected application and was only busking in Camden because he was at risk of homelessness. The council sought £1,000 plus costs, but the magistrates reduced the pair’s penalty to £220.

Despite the licence’s evident failings, Camden Council is literally “doubling down”, according to a spokesperson, handing out official warnings and threatening a “crackdown” on unlicensed performances.

But in 2023, they lengthened the approval delay for a licence to at least 20 business days and increased the fee from £19 for one year to £150 to two, an eightfold increase in upfront costs, making it the most expensive council-run busking licence in the world.

These are not the actions of a council looking to get street performers to play along.

Contrast this with how the policy was sold when it was being debated in 2013. One Labour councillor described it in her speech as a “measured, orderly approach” and as “light touch regulation”. Another dismissed over 6,000 signatures on a petition opposing the licence as “ultra-libertarian angst”, an ironic take by an ostensibly leftwing politician responding to a grassroots initiative launched by low-income artists and supported by an actual union.

The evidence Labour used to justify the licence was weak: 58 people had made 116 complaints over a period of 12 months, of which a quarter had been submitted by just three individuals.

The council also circulated a public consultation for feedback on the proposed rules, which started by making the surprising claim that buskers posed a risk to public safety and created opportunities for crime. And yet, even then just 16% of respondents agreed with all of the council's proposals, 62% objected to the application requirements, and 68% to the licence conditions.

During the debates, street performers acknowledged that certain buskers were causing a noise nuisance but argued that a licence was the wrong response. The late busking campaigner Jonny Walker, who led the Keep Streets Live campaign against the policy, pleaded with the council to first convene “a public forum between residents, business owners, musicians, artists and professional bodies to address problems through dialogue”.

The Musicians’ Union also tried to get the council to slow down, asking for a trial period to develop a code of practice cooperatively.

These weren't radical demands; they were common-sense suggestions, and they’re still Camden’s best option. The council has tried repression. They’ve tried enforcement. But whomever wins in May, if elected officials want to protect Camden’s lively street culture while dealing with the situation in a way everyone can get behind, the most sensible starting point was already on the table thirteen years ago: community and collaboration.

David Gray, one of the directors of Keep Streets Live, agrees. He told me he thinks “Camden's policy has not worked, and the sad fact is that this was all entirely foreseeable. It was never designed to be effective – it was designed to look as if [Camden Council] were doing something. It must be scrapped, and they should start again by bringing businesses, residents and buskers together to create a workable solution for everyone.”

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Ska! Sunshine!

London International Ska Festival

MUSIC: 🎤 It’s the return of he mighty London International Ska Festival 2026 across the longer Easter weekend 2nd - 4th Apr, with events at The Dome in Tufnell Park, aboard legendary Thames pleasure boat The Dixie Queen, in the reborn Camden Assembly and culminating with a party to celebrate the Rock Against Racism 50th anniversary featuring headliner Misty In Roots and Cimarons at the Electric Ballroom on Sat 4th.

FAMILY: 🐰 Looking to take the edge off the extended holidays with some younger, impossibly energetic members of the family? Head to the free Easter celebrations at Camden Market on Sat 4th and Sun Sun 5th Apr to find activities, workshops, rides, street circus performers, egg hunts and loads to eat and drink, too.

MARKET: 🎪 Silly me, forgetting to add the all important date to the link that actually got the most clicks last week: Camden Town Brewery and Go East Vintage are bringing their popular Flea Market to the mews under Kentish Town West Overground. It will take place of Sat 18th Apr, with a focus on sustainability and one-of-a-kind vintage pieces, plus vintage clothing, bags, accessories, art, jewellery, mid-century furniture, ceramics, stoneware, glassware, rugs and home decor - alongside a fair few pints of Hells, of course.

BAR: 🍸It’s a suntrap rooftop that locals really shouldn’t overlook, and now The Dark Horse terrace is back open again - a sure sign that summer is on the way.

STAGE: 🎸 Queer musical immersive club theatre show, Girl Kisser, explores a complex web of addictive hookups, innocent discoveries and the lines of friendship being blurred, set against a backdrop of the East London music scene, and Gen-Z's struggle for employment. Expect live music from femmes playing guitars, dancing and kissing galore at The Lion & Unicorn Theatre from Tues 7th - Sat 11th Apr.

CLUB: 🪩 Grammy-winning reformed DJ duo Deep Dish, aka Dubfire and Sharam, make their KOKO debut with a special Easter Sunday all nighter on 5th Apr.

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Hopefully more interesting than a PC update

This week I thought we’d run a quick update on a few of the most popular, fast-moving lead culture stories featured here in Camdenist over recent months.

The links lead to the online version of each newsletter, and the website is going to be growing substantially in the weeks ahead, as we move everything to one digital home, so why not sign in for the full experience? As a newsletter subscriber, you already have a login…

1. Playing politics with praying

I was please to see that last week’s toe-dip into the toxic, sludgy waters of the culture wars didn’t immediately submerse us in the mire. In fact, the feedback was 100% positive for Eid, truth and the relentless search for engagement.

“Well done for this article, said Debbie. “Let's stand together against endemic poor, biased, racist reporting.”

“So grateful for your hopeful comments about Eid and our mayor,” wrote Liz. “Expecting lots of people from all over the country this Sat 28th for the Together Alliance March to amplify your words.”

“Good wide-ranging editorial about phoney wedge issues, local press and clickbait,” said Tom. “Like it or not, the UK is not officially non-religious. We haven't put religion in a box like the French have.” And on the wider topics covered, he continued. “The local press still matters colossally. It brings people together via informed discussion of the all important shared environment and the changes it is subject to. As for micro-attention and all its ills, what a disaster. It comes with the general loss of that flow state which was old-fashioned absorption in a book. But I think boredom will yet save us. The toxic social media stuff you touch on is so boring. And nothing can hide that in the end.”

2. The end of the decent gym playlist?

After February’s piece about the sad decline of gym chains willing to pay for licenced (i.e known and loved) music to be played in their studios, opting in favour of cheap stock tracks instead, So is this how the music dies? received more moans about the bland tracks now on endless repeat in some studios.

So I reached out to both Better/GLL (who run all the Council’s gyms) and Common Bond (who now own Triyoga), both of whom were mentioned in the story having recently adopted the policy in Camden.

A spokesperson for Better said, “As a social enterprise, GLL operates on a not-for-profit basis, meaning any surplus we generate is reinvested directly into our services and community programmes rather than distributed to shareholders. Our priority is always to deliver the greatest possible benefit to the communities we serve.

Like many organisations, we are currently facing rising operational costs. One area that has seen a significant increase, well beyond the rate of inflation, is music licensing.

While music plays an important role in creating an engaging and enjoyable class environment, these rising costs inevitably impact the resources available for our wider community programmes, including GP referral schemes, senior activities, junior programmes and school swimming lessons. As such, we must carefully balance how we allocate funding to ensure we continue to deliver maximum social value.

Following a detailed assessment of these increased licensing costs, we asked our instructors to transition to PPL pre-cleared, royalty-free music. To support this, we have provided free access to platforms such as Power Music, one of the most widely used fitness music services.

Power Music offers a library of more than 10,000 professionally recorded studio tracks (not AI generated) and enables instructors to create customised playlists, ensuring both flexibility and full compliance with licensing requirements.”

Sadly, nobody from Common Bond has responded about my questions yet, including the fact that the popular 4Beat style of yoga has by default been banned from their studios, and that instructors dislike the royalty-free alternatives to the extent they’d rather teach in silence. Instead, an automated reply pointed me towards a ‘helpbot’, which I really hope doesn’t foretell the human-free yoga class dystopia that was mentioned as a bit of a joke in the article.

Meanwhile, Better pushed ahead with the move to royalty-free only, claiming they spoke to more than 500 instructors since Xmas to gather feedback which has “directly informed improvements to our offer, including expanding platform options, broadening music genres and retaining familiar tracks for certain classes. One outcome is that we have introduced Afrobeats and Bhangra, with Soca tracks due to be added shortly. We will continue to listen to feedback and explore ways to further enhance our music offering.”

This was in response to concerns that specialist classes offering routines based around a truly diverse range of styles were being marginalised in the process. Not quite sure how this works in practice though. With the promise of continuing to listen to feedback, perhaps all is not lost to the anti-culture cost-cutting yet…

3. Proper Drugs Testing

Another potentially controversial story, which our progressive local readership seem to generally support, Taking drugs like grown-ups showed the frustration with current drugs policy and the willingness to try new things, faster, than before. Meanwhile, charity The Loop have announced the dates they will be running their groundbreaking Camden-based drugs-checking services for the rest of 2026, with the next one being Sat 4th April. The full list and address info can be found here.

4. Nightlife as the cultural and political lever

Our next leader might be a raver was a provocative yet potentially 100% true headline, as the opposition parties and Labour’s own potential Starmer challengers cosy up to the nighttime industries who have had such a rough ride in recent years.

I’m all for pro-nightlife politicians, as they genuinely are representing the silent majority who think living in a city should involve a bustling scene after hours. With that in mind, today Fri 27th Mar is the last day to have your say on the Mayor’s proposals for how we improve what’s on offer after dark, create a more consistent approach to licencing and support London’s grassroots music venues, clubs, bars, restaurants and more. The GLA is particularly keen to hear from younger people for whom the resulting policy will shape their nights out for years to come, so do take a few minutes to navigate the rather clumsy form and tell them what you want.

Win a big boost for your local business
with Simon Squibb, Camdenist & Tradestars

Simon Squibb

Entrepreneurs, founders, freelancers and makers are all invited to a free Business Carnival over at Islington Tradestars on Thurs 2nd Apr, including the chance to win a brilliant bundle of genuinely helpful prizes to supercharge your venture.

The event will be hosted by social media sensation, investor, serial entrepreneur and author, Simon Squibb, known for pointing a camera at people on the street and asking them ‘what’s your dream?’ then helping them see if they really can make it come true.

Forget the usual dry panel discussions and networking small talk; this is a high-energy mix of games and activities including a live Doorbell of Dreams pitch station, drinks, darts and a presentation where Simon will dish out prizes that include

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A selection of ideas to do in the days ahead

Brigitte Calls Me Baby

MUSIC: 🎸 Chicago alt-rockers Brigitte Calls Me Baby touch down at King’s Cross Scala on Thurs 2nd Apr channelling the likes of The Smiths and The Strokes with their new wave post-punk style.

FESTIVAL: 🎤 The Roundhouse Three Sixty Festival is about to tkae over the iconic railway turning shed for a month of vital and vibrant music, spoken word, literature, theatre, visual arts, podcasts, and club nights, kicking off on Thurs 9th Apr with the mighty Poetry Slam Final.

ART: 🎮 ARCADE is the new month-long exhibition of interactive artworks and experimental film at Hypha Studios Euston Tower. With work from 12 UK and European artists across sculptural simulations, speculative video games, browser-based open worlds and surreal tabletop role-play, everything in the show is playable. This Sat 28th Mar sees the special screening Iranian Post-post-post-post revolutionary cinema, featuring short films from Iranian artists and their peers working under the pressures of circulation, censorship, translation, and networked visibility.

MARKET: 🎪 Camden Town Brewery and Go East Vintage are bringing their popular Flea Market over from the East to the mews under Kentish Town West Overground with a focus on sustainability and an array of small businesses offering one-of-a-kind, vintage pieces that are stylish and eco-friendly. Expec vintage clothing, bags, accessories, art, jewellery, midcentury furniture, ceramics, stoneware, glassware, rugs and home decor alongside pints of Hells, of course.

MUSIC: 💀 Sat 27th Mar sees ‘a veritable who’s who of the extreme metal scene to satisfy the most depraved of tastes’, as Snuff Fest 2026 brings likes of Brutal Sphincter, Basement Torture Killings and UK Slam legends Amputated to cause the requisite carnage, if you are so inclined.

ART: 🎨 London-based ceramic artist Bisila Noha’s Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul) showcases her work rooted in ritual, memory, and a deep engagement with women-led pottery communities across Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Senegal. It opens tonight up at OmVed Gardens with a special immersive sound-led gathering to mark the Spring equinox. Free but booking essential. Exhibition runs to Sun 29th Mar.

FREE: 🛥️All day Sat 28th Mar the London Canal Museum is eschewing their usual entrance fee for their annual Community Open Day, inviting everyone in to discover the truly fascinating stories behind our local waterway.

SUPPORT: 🫱🏽‍🫲🏽 Women + Health have moved from Camden Town to a new home in Queen’s Crescent, secured with the support of local councillors. The relocation ensures that the radical vision of accessible, high-quality holistic care, originally championed by the late, formidable campaigner Boo Armstrong, will continue to land right where it's needed most.
Trustees, Judith and Daya, tell Camdenist “Women + Health is a proper grassroots charity. For over forty years on Carol Street, it has been a sanctuary for women fleeing domestic violence and abuse. And since the mid-1980s, it has been offering a lifeline of affordable therapy and holistic care to those often priced out of the private wellness industry, offering everything from talking therapies to bodywork on a sliding scale for low-income residents.”
The team is currently busy unpacking and prepping the new treatment rooms, ready to welcome back familiar faces and introduce themselves to new neighbours, but the mission to protect vulnerable women, combat isolation and manage chronic pain remains the same in NW5.

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Little Amal walks in King’s Cross, 2023

Forgive me dropping a few hot cultural reference points from the last few days into today’s intro, as I know we’ve long ceased having a shared experience of media consumption and social touchpoints.

It’s annoying (and wildly outdated) when people assume that you’ll know of the celebrity, TV show, trend or viral clip they think everybody is talking about, when the reality is now so algorithmically unlikely.

Even when we do have the kind of collective cultural moment that cuts through all filter bubbles - and the current news bombardment sure is vomiting up a few of those right now - we’re quick to split off into opposing camps: for/against, true/fake, jubilant/outraged.

Over recent years, the phenomenon of Open Iftar has added genuine, shared community moments to the lives of all kinds of Londoners. For Muslims, it’s a big, group centrepiece for breaking a day’s fast during the month of Ramadan, while for others it provides the kind of otherworldly global encounter that make this city so exciting, educational and forever unexpected.

A few years back, I covered the enthusiastically crowded walk behind the 12ft tall Little Amal puppet, through the streets of Somers Town towards an Open Iftar in King’s Cross’ Granary Square, a stop on her journey from Syria through 181 different cities and towns.

The atmosphere at sundown and the setting for the feast, with tables laid out along the length of the Victorian railway goods square with paper lanterns swaying in the breeze, was quite magical. It felt like the very best of Camden’s cultural melting pot; open to all ideas, experiences, peoples and traditions.

The organisers have continued to grow Open Iftar to take place in some huge locations up and down the UK, from football stadiums to art galleries, but the biggest annual bash is in Trafalgar Square.

I won’t give the Shadow Justice Secretary’s divisive comments any repeat here, or the racist pile-on that Farage, Robinson and others have relished joining in with since, but seeing something that promotes understanding, empathy and joyful community used as a culture war wedge to further political agendas is particularly sickening.

In amongst the occasionally prostrate crowd that so scared the Very Online Right was the Mayor of this city (voted in enthusiastically by the people 3 times in row, so far) and Little Amal herself, back on these shores to catch another Open Iftar.

I would say the simple ‘truth’ of this particular gathering was a gentle, intergenerational faith-based celebration in London’s main square; one of many such events that take place right there throughout the year, offering a rather special atmosphere of discovery for the casual bystander, to match the one I witnessed in KX in 2023, I’m sure. But for others, the ‘truth’ needs to have an agenda of provocation for engagement.

Another widely shared experience (at least I think?!) this week has been widespread disbelief at the kind of online lowlife ‘celebs’ featured in Netflix show, Louis Theroux: Inside The Manosphere.

Again, there’s no need to regurgitate any of their Late Stage Patriarchy bile here, but the same democratised and unregulated media forces that have coarsened our politics are laid bare here. Our content-addled attention is now only meaningfully commanded by the people shouting the most outrageous statements, while zeroing in on the most impressionable to help spread the word. It’s not about whether they even believe what they are saying, it’s simply what it takes to capture metrics and advance their political or monetisation goals.

By posting on any social platform, we’re all thrown into the very same cesspit - largely doomed to scroll-by irrelevance unless we too say or show something suitably polarising. As social media morphs into a one-channel, X-rated reincarnation of You’ve Been Framed, it seems most of the original ideas - like sharing your photos or chatting with friends - are happening on closed groups, and perhaps that’s the best place for them.

But with the devastating effects of the race to the lowest common denominator going on in their place, I’m really keen to imagine what the hell comes next. Can it get any worse than wealthy beefcakes livestreaming themselves beating up guys they’ve snared in content-driven honeytraps? Or members of His Majesty’s Opposition not being sacked (as yet) for pushing all the worst anti-Muslim tropes out to audiences that genuinely think London is some kind of religious battleground, complete with the horrors of, er, 12ft high woke puppets of refugee children?

Also this week, although I forgive those not on the local media frontline for perhaps overlooking this one, the Government announced an initial £12m fund to support publications like (I really hope) this one, in an attempt to improve the beleaguered state of local news provision and growth.

It’s cautiously encouraging, as the antidote to the fake posturing by the engagement chancers must surely be the trusted, (if often somewhat less dynamic), voices of good people who live in your own community simply talking about what’s really going on, how it is being felt on the ground and what it means to the people that actually count, rather than the global mob.

The horse has bolted on how these platforms have transformed politics and entertainment for the worse, but that’s no reason for the essential fightback not to be conducted in the same space, without the crushing pressure for viral hits, likes, follows and eyeballs dominating everything.

Government funding is one thing, but we can all make an effort not to be so seduced by outrage, and be more selective with our scroll. It’s certainly hard, especially when the USA seems to be running foreign policy almost exclusively on the very same manosphere shitposting model, (and the result is pretty much the full spectrum mess you’d most fear), but it does feel like we simply have to tire of how dysfunctional that is, then go seek something better.

I’d like to think that will be content that’s more local, more quality, more regulated. Surely, eventually, after more weeks like this, we’ll crave that, instead of the cheap outrage hits of the ugly polarisers.

In the meantime, Eid Mubarak!

This week’s local business profile

It’s the final week of our recent partnership series showcasing businesses in the fast-growing Tradestars workspace community up on North Road.

This time, we drop in to the studio of multi-modal mind and body practitioner Avni Touch, who specialises in working with women and babies. We hear about her background and multiple trainings, her approach to the work/life balance and a particular interest in making digital content that actually reminds people how to get away from their screens - and live back in their bodies.

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Jamestown Rd: Two big perks in the morning

🦮 Lovely new grocery store concept STORRD, who we profiled in Camdenist upon their recent grand opening, are running a special promotion aimed at the Boroughs dog owning contingent. Drop in to their flagship on the way to/from your Regent’s Park walkies tomorrow, Sat 21st Mar, and get a free coffee and pastry while your pooch gets a free puppuchino (whatever is actually in that?) and picks from the tasty ‘barkcuterie’ board. Then the dog deli pup-up continues daily through to next Sat the 28th for more freebies.

🥞 Did you know that at neighbouring Turtle Bay, the first 10 guests to rock up at 10am each morning get their Caribbean-infused breakfast for free? That’s the whole menu of island-inspired eggs, toasts, wraps, rotis and muffins to choose from, all you need to do is purchase a drink to go with it.

If you love nightlife, your views are wanted on the Mayor’s proposals for how we improve what’s on offer after dark, create a more consistent approach to licencing and support London’s grassroots music venues, clubs, bars, restaurants and more. Have your say now before the closing date of 27th Mar. The GLA is particularly keen to hear from younger people for whom the resulting policy will shape their nights out for years to come, but to be honest, we should all have something of value to add to the framework.

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Those holes in your cultural calendar might just be sorted…

HABITAT at Roundhouse

MUSIC: 🎆 Italian cinematic melodic techno duo Mind Against are bringing their visually-driven HABITAT show to Chalk Farm’s Roundhouse tonight, Fri Mar 20th, for a proper spectacular in the round.

FOOD: 🍕 Bing Bong Pizza are the brand new kitchen residency opening today at The Imperial Palace of Big Red, and offering 50% off all food through to Sun 22nd Mar for the soft launch. Expect NYC-style nonna squares, great sides including tasty wings and top-tier puddings, too.

ART: 🎮 ARCADE is the new month-long exhibition of interactive artworks and experimental film at Hypha Studios Euston Tower. With work from 12 UK and European artists across sculptural simulations, speculative video games, browser-based open worlds and surreal tabletop role-play, everything in the show is playable. Look out for the special screening next Sat 28th Mar: Iranian Post-post-post-post revolutionary cinema, featuring short films from Iranian artists and their peers working under the pressures of circulation, censorship, translation, and networked visibility.

FOOD: 🐟 Swain’s Lane destination fishmonger and restaurant London Shell Co are celebrating their third birthday on Wed 25th Mar with the return of their famous free fish stew lunch. It’s for walk-ins only, so expect a queue, but a free lunch is always worth it.

ART: 🎨 London-based ceramic artist Bisila Noha’s Ile Ọkàn (House of the Soul) showcases her work rooted in ritual, memory, and a deep engagement with women-led pottery communities across Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Senegal. It opens tonight up at OmVed Gardens with a special immersive sound-led gathering to mark the Spring equinox. Free but booking essential. Exhibition runs to Sun 29th Mar.

STAGE: 🎭 Fittingly for the theme of this week’s edition of the newsletter, Animal Sense explores the impact of the acceleration of digital technology and artificial intelligence on daily life, and its personal and political implications via an immersive poetic performance in video and sound at Etcetera Theatre tonight, Fri 20th and Sun 22nd Mar.

MUSIC: 🎸 Catch Spanish bassist Vincen Garcia bring his distinctive and gritty modern jazz and funk sound to Dingwalls this Sat 21st Mar.

FREE: 🛥️All day Sat 28th Mar the London Canal Museum is eschewing their usual entrance fee for their annual Community Open Day, inviting everyone in to discover the truly fascinating stories behind our local waterway.

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Certified Osteopath, Birth Doula, Zero-Balancer, Reiki Master and plenty more besides, Avni brings a wealth of varied experience to her holistic body work, which has a special focus on woman and babies.

“I got interested in complementary medicine in my 20s,” she tells us, when we drop by her new studio at Islington Tradestars, “and had lots of early experiences with different healing modalities, training in things like using Reiki within the NHS for people with addictions.”

As her interests evolved, she found herself drawn towards osteopathy, particularly in relation to pregnancy and paediatrics. And it was when on maternity leave with her own twin boys that she spotted these studios, just around the corner from her home. Practicing what she preaches, setting up here was about finding more balance in the perma-hectic landscape of modern urban parenting.

“I've always come back to this question of: what does success look like? And for me, it's having time in my day and not feeling like I'm constantly rushing. A commute can often feel tiring, so being here means less of a divide between my work life and my home life is really meaningful for me.”

Her workspace is far from a traditional clinic setting though, and that’s what she appreciates about it.

“Although my work is very calm, it's nice to have a bit of life going on around me. I'd worked for years in places where it just got so calm and so quiet that it could be a bit stifling. I love that when I walk down the corridor here, there's someone who's working with ceramics, there are electricians and there's someone who's doing Botox. It's very diverse.”

Continues below…

This buzzy environment has also opened doors to collaboration, including with Sarah at The Womankind Clinic, who we showcased in a previous Camdenist X Tradestars profile earlier this month. Avni has also linked up with a resident acupuncturist and a psychotherapist, plus begun treating another of her neighbours on the same floor.

She is also looking beyond one‑to‑one clinical work, exploring ways to use today’s media and technology to reach more people, making use on Tradestars in-house podcast and photography studios to create content. At the same time, she’s acutely aware of the risks of a screen‑dominated life, especially for children, who can often spend hours on tablets and staring at screens at school, too.

Her work increasingly centres on ‘interoception’, or helping people reconnect with the sensations inside their bodies in a highly digital age:

“That's something I've been exploring with my content; of the idea of how you teach someone to stay connected to their body. To be more intuitive and learn the softer skills - more of how you feel, rather than what you can see. We live in an increasingly visual world, so the felt sense is something that I'm really passionate about teaching people. Especially guiding women, babies, and children into a more embodied, intuitive relationship with themselves.”

Find our more about Avni and her wellbeing services here

Party pills of hazy provenance

Forward-thinking harm reduction charity, The Loop, announced this week that London’s first regular drug checking service is to launch here in Camden, plus one in Hackney, too.

The UK’s relationship towards substances that have been deemed illegal feels like it’s been stuck in a time warp for generations. All the while, the human cost of this inertia of the imagination racks up more unnecessary victims.

So, seeing the relevant authorities in London finally give in to the evidence-based truth of testing provision feels like a bit of a moment.

Drugs are a classically polarising issue, with the added twist of their illegality, yet social ubiquity, causing anyone arguing for or against the status quo quickly having to contort themselves into all kinds of ridiculous hypocrisies.

And so nothing changes. We either sketch over the gulf between strict ‘on paper’ prohibition and its glaring IRL ineffectiveness with a knowing nod and a wink, or storm into any debate on the high horse of moral outrage, which drowns out the fact that the law so obviously isn’t fit for purpose.

Current policy increases harm, so it shouldn’t be that controversial to want to change it.

Yet, the Green Party’s imminently sensible, if all-too-easy-to-rubbish decriminalisation policies are mocked as beyond-the-pale outrageous by the Tory press and the PM alike, all while he also drops a classical nod ‘n wink routine when interrogated about his own high times as a student. Shame.

From a cultural perspective, chemically altered states have been the rocket fuel behind many of our most celebrated creative works, just as they cheerfully augment million’s of people’s peak shared social experiences.

We should openly and appreciatively recognise that. But yes, we all know how these substances can equally serve as the proverbial slippery slope down which many brilliant minds and unwitting pleasure-seekers have later descended.

This ferocious double-edged power (mixed with a large dose of social control) is why we seem unable to have an adult conversation about both the pursuit of harm reduction and the creative joy of psychoactively enhanced hedonism.

Whatever fearmongering the law, puritanical religion leaders or risk-averse teachers try to impress upon us from a young age, a natural intrigue towards intoxication for kicks is still our birth right.

Relying on the very worst kind of criminals to fulfil this vast and vibrant market is a truly terrible idea. The impulse to protect others from the real perils of excess is honest enough, but doing so via the blunt instrument of prohibition has so clearly proven to be rubbish.

Look no further than the new scary-strong synthetic versions of all the most celebrated of recreational drugs now ruining lives if you want evidence of the abject failure of decades of sustained prohibition.

In an urban centre like Camden, the way people use and abuse substances is also complex and nuanced. There will be as many unfortunate hardcore addict’s lives soon to be made safer by The Loop’s testing facilities as there will be clubbers simply keen to make sure their latest little baggie of happy pills won’t derail their all-night dancefloor aspirations unexpectedly towards A&E.

What is universal, though, is the danger that an unregulated supply of the drugs people want (or unfortunately grow to need) to consume puts everyone in. With multiple perma-crises rumbling on across the world, this is at risk of being a bit of a forgotten crisis - at least until it negatively impacts someone close to you.

The old hypocrisies aren’t helpful, yet they grow ever more pronounced, as legalised industries for cannabis and psychedelics develop apace in previous ‘war on drugs’ strongholds such as the USA, while immoral death penalties for relatively minor possession ‘offences’ still abound elsewhere on the planet.

Hopefully, The Loop’s success in getting the support (and Council funding) for this local checking facility might remedy some of our failed approaches and point towards some new, more grown-up thinking on this topic here on home turf.

Whoever you are, and from wherever you hail (not just LB Camden), if you’ve got a substance that you fancy ingesting for fun, oblivion or all the complex self-medicating reasons in between, there’s now a judgement-free place to make sure it’s not going to badly, inadvertently harm you.

The service combines free personalised health advice alongside rapid chemical analysis of your sample, so you know what you’re in for. The anonymous results then contribute to realtime data collection on current trends, adulterants and other dangers lurking within local drug markets; vital info which can quickly be shared. This approach has already saved lives, with The Loop issuing alerts about dodgy batches of powders and pills confiscated at UK festivals - even though, frustratingly for now, the public-facing checking that now exists in Camden is still often not permitted on festival sites.

I’ve interviewed the pioneering Professor Fiona Measham, founder and chair of trustees of The Loop and chair in criminology at the University of Liverpool, previously, but it’s worth hearing what she has to say about the new service opening:

“Drug markets are more dangerous than ever, with increasing numbers of potent synthetic drugs in circulation across the UK. Drug checking can play a unique role in countering these threats, acting as the ‘canary in the coalmine’. It tests, identifies and communicates these risks rapidly and directly to local services and local communities. Drug checking reduces drug-related harm, which reduces the burden on emergency services and the NHS.”

Acknowledging the realities of how different drugs are being used, produced, sold and drift in and out of favour in society through this monitoring is a great step forward. We could do with more reality across the board, though, not more of the usual political point-scoring.

As with sex education, so much of the public dialogue about drug-taking focusses on the dangers, doom and downsides, leaving the delicious pleasures of a responsibly managed sexual encounter or mind-expanding chemical dalliance to be discovered in the shadows.

At a time when we desperately need more ways to trust those in authority, this experience gap is another terrible policy.

From weekend hedonists to struggling addicts, everyone deserves safer substances when the law has so comprehensively failed its expressed duty of care in ‘banning’ them. It should be inconceivable that anyone has ever argued otherwise.

Get your substances checked by The Loop team with no questions asked at Camden Drug & Alcohol Service, just off Camden High Street.

Don’t agree? Think these changes should go much further? Have your say in this week’s poll, below…

Meet locally-based, global social impact champions, The Washing Machine Project

This week, in Camdenist’s ongoing partnership with the Tradestars workspace and their growing community, we drop in to the North Rd studio home of The Washing Machine Project, to speak with Flora Edmiston (pictured) about a brilliantly simple idea with the power to change millions of lives for the better.

With the burden of hand washing clothes predominantly placed upon women and girls, and still very much a fact of life all over the world, they have developed a flat-packed device that required little manual effort, and no electricity or plumbing, saving up to 15 hours of hard slog each week.

Read all about the amazing Washing Machine Project here.

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Tradestars offer private, customisable studios with 24/7 access, reception support, shared amenities including meeting rooms, cafes and podcast studios and a strong community across multiple locations.

➡️ As an exclusive offer, Camdenist readers get 50% off their first 6 months when signing up to a private studio or the first month free on a Tradestars membership. Offer open until 31st March 2026. Please quote ‘Camdenist’.

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Watch our video interview with Flora on Instagram:

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📽️ Pop-up cinema to bring movies back to Kentish Town’s old Gaumont

Nowruz Festival at Lauderdale House

The Palace Cinema, later known as The Gaumont, was a popular big screen attraction on Kentish Town Road a century ago. It became a law centre in the 1960s, and more recently was scrubbed up as a creative hub for a collection of artists run by Hypha Studios.

But a more permanent restoration of the building has long been mooted, and this week finally got its planning approval (see the impressive-looking render above). The plan is to create a bigger hub of affordable workspaces, community workshops and event spaces, retrofitting the historic building and expanding upon the activities that currently take place there.

As longer-term Camdenist readers will remember, a couple of years back we got actively involved in the decade-long local battle to realise the community cinema promised in planning at the redeveloped former North London Polytechnic assembly hall, directly opposite.

The dream was ultimately foiled, due to chronic lack of any cash and a near impossible market for small permanent cinemas, but we did get to screen the KT film festival winners and run a popular poster sale.

All the while, when trying and failing to make that difficult space work, there was chatter about what to do with the actual historic cinema looming over the road, which still had its Victorian upper circle and ornamental roof in place.

Now, a free 24-hour cinema pop-up running back-to-back features from midday on Fri 10th Apr to midnight on Sat 11th has been announced. In a move reminiscent of the infamous heyday of King’s Cross’ Scala, you’re invited to arrive whenever you like and stay for as long as you please. Look out for teasers for the movies in the programme soon via the @doublewonderfulevents Instagram.

If you love nightlife, your views are wanted on the Mayor’s proposals for how we improve what’s on offer after dark, create a more consistent approach to licencing and support London’s grassroots music venues, clubs, bars, restaurants and more. Have your say now before the closing date of 27th Mar. The GLA is particularly keen to hear from younger people for whom the resulting policy will shape their nights out for years to come, but to be honest, we should all have something of value to add to the framework.

MORE CAMDEN CURATED

FOOD: 🍛 NW5 is all aflutter at the arrival of Med Salleh to Kentish Town Rd, the Malaysian street food champions already with a big following in West London. This attractively decorated new outpost specialises in Kamparian claypot rice, char kuey teow Penanng-style, Hainanese chicken rice and other classics, and has already been paid a couple of visits from neighbouring Times food critic Giles Coren, (let alone the ambitious test of a table for 14 in the opening week for Iftar, attended by my dear Missus and friends ❤️).

MUSIC: 🎤 The Red Light Sessions are back at epic Camden Town boozer The Hawley Arms this Thurs 19th Mar with Welsh band The Now alongside the cool Carmine Nights playing in the upstairs.

FOOD: 🍞 Coal Drops Yard Japanese curry bread specialists Kanazawa have just opened their first physical shop on Islington Green, having made a name for themselves serving delicious fried and stuffed savoury breads and fruity donuts from their trailer on Lower Stable St.

COMEDY: 😂 Keep Your Sunny Side Up: The Gracie Fields Story tells the 'rags to riches' story of Britain's most successful female variety artist and the highest-earning female performer in the world in the 1930s. It follows Gracie's life from the age of 10 through to her death aged 8, from her tough northern upbringing, three marriages, life-threatening illness and the unjust way she was treated by the British press during World War Two. Runs until Sun 15th Mar at The Museum of Comedy in Blomsbury.

FOOD: 🐟 West Hampstead’s acclaimed Wet Fish Café is preparing to open a second branch in Primrose Hill. They promise to bring their winning fresh seafood and decent vino combo to the vacant Sweet Pea jewellery shop - conveniently also right next door to the existing fishmongers.

STAGE: 🎭 A bold new debut at The Lion & Unicorn Theatre explores the tumultuous marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. The play journeys from the couple’s harmonious beginning to it’s acrimonious end, charting the painful collapse of their partnership, revealing the pressures of fame, creativity and addiction. Arthur & Marilyn runs 17th - 21st Mar.

DRINK: 🥂 It’s the first St Patrick’s Day since the long-overdue opening of the Guinness Open Gate Brewery London in Covent Garden, so head down there from today through to Tues 17th Mar for celebrations, live music and comedy.

FREE: 🛥️All day Sat 28th Mar the London Canal Museum is eschewing their usual entrance fee for their annual Community Open Day, inviting everyone in to discover the truly fascinating stories behind our local waterway.

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Sticking on a wash is just another of life’s mundane little chores, to we largely don’t give much of a second thought, right? But in vast swathes of today’s world, clothes washing remains the back-breaking, time-consuming task that it once was here in London, too, not so very long ago.

“The burden of hand-washing clothes is faced by up to 50% of the global population,” says Flora Edmiston, Partnerships Manager at The Washing Machine Project, a social enterprise working on doing something about improving the situation.

“That burden is predominantly placed on women and girls,” she continues, “costing them time, effort and resources. Essentially barring them from opportunities to work, study, rest and play as they would otherwise choose. We exist to change that.”

From their new (and first London-based) office at North Rd’s Tradestars, Flora and the team promote widespread adoption of the Divya; the world's first flat pack, manual washing machine,  designed specifically for communities without reliable access to electricity or plumbing.

It’s a low‑tech, high‑impact kinda innovation, one with the power to change lives all over the world.

 “Everything is placed in a door at the top; clothes, two buckets of water, about a palm-full of detergent, and you just give it a spin,” smiles Flora, while demonstrating on the Divya unit that’s showcased handily in their new studio.  “The only action is via the handle at the front, and a wash cycle in this machine takes about 30 minutes, with six minutes of turning time spread across that. We found that people can spend up to 20 hours a week hand washing clothes, which is an enormous amount of time. So, when you're using this machine, you're therefore reclaiming 15 hours across a week. I always like to think, what would I do with those 15 hours?”

The positive impacts of the Divya are also environmental, with a 50% saving in water usage compared to hand washing clothes, alongside that epic 75% time saving.

Over six years and multiple design improvements based on user feedback, The Washing Machine Project is now all set to scale up, with its Bristol-based engineers supported by the growing team here in London.

“Now we're at a point where we've got a product that people really like to use, and it's really effective at cleaning clothes. This year, we're establishing our manufacturing capability in India so that we'll be able to manufacture closer to the people who need the machines. We've worked with a number of partners in India on designing a next generation washing machine and distribution model that will be cheaper, easier to assemble, more sustainable, and will help us to get that scale.”

Late last year, they settled on Tradestars with the help of some AI searches to find where in London would be most commutable spot for the various members of the team - and haven’t looked back since.

From a colourful new workspace - which also doubles as their photography and filming studio for their regular social media posts - to the world, The Washing Machine Project is one of those brilliantly simple ideas that have the outsized ability to blow you away with their potential.

Find out more about the Divya and the work of The Washing Machine Project.

Marc Burrows by Alexis Dubus

We have one of our occasional Guest Editors writing the lead in Camdenist this week. And, while the voice is new, the topic is an urgent cultural conundrum in need of solutions, one that we look at regularly.

Most recently, that was when agreeing with the words of potential heel-biting Prime Ministerial challenger/Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, last month, as he flagged the dangers of the UK’s various world-famous music destinations relying rather too heavily on their former glories.

Marc Burrows is an award-winning author, comedian and culture journalist, currently touring the UK with The Britpop Show, a multimedia stand-up celebration of 90s Britpop.

Here, he sets out why his deep love of 90s Britpop is precisely why he doesn’t want to hear it regurgitated endlessly in the local venues which very much helped make its name.

“Our musical past only matters if we're building a musical future"

Last weekend, the BRITs handed Noel Gallagher the Songwriter of the Year award.

At the ceremony’s first ever outing in Manchester, no less – the city where the songs were born, and performed once more to a crowd who'd grown up singing them back to him. It was a lovely moment. A hometown coronation.

There’s just one small wrinkle: Noel Gallagher didn't actually write any songs in 2025. He performed thirty-year-old ones to two million people, and three Oasis albums simultaneously occupied the UK Top Five. That was apparently enough.

You can see the logic, and I've argued the case for it myself, elsewhere. In a streaming age, where Spotify's own data shows that only three of its top ten most-played songs of 2025 were even released that year, there's something to be said for recognising songs that still do the heavy lifting decades later.

‘Wonderwall’ has over two billion streams. ‘Don't Look Back In Anger’ crossed a billion in 2025. They're practically public utilities at this point. They should be added to the Monopoly board.

But there's a version of that argument that should make anyone who cares about new music quite uncomfortable. When Britain’s biggest songwriting award goes to a man who hasn’t picked up a pen in years, what message does that send to the twenty-three-year-old with a guitar and a pub gig on a Tuesday night?

There's a deeper irony here, too. Britpop was built on the idea that working class kids with cheap guitars and sheer nerve could storm the gates of the music industry. That was the whole point.

Thirty years on, those same songs have become the gates. The movement that defined itself against the establishment has become the establishment – canonised, commodified, and streaming in perpetuity, while the next generation of scrappy bands with something to say can't get a foot in the door.

This is where Camden comes in, because it’s very, very easy to get lost in the musical mythology of the area, which is vast and legitimate.

The Dublin Castle. Dingwalls. The Roundhouse. KOKO. The Good Mixer, where Blur and Elastica and Menswear propped up the bar while the NME photographers circled like vultures. Amy Winehouse sashaying down the High Street. Madness. The Clash. Half of punk, most of Britpop, and a solid chunk of everything in between happened within spitting distance of Camden Lock. You could put a blue plaque on every second building and still run out of wall space before you ran out of stories.

None of that means very much to a band trying to get a gig in 2026.

The grassroots circuit that once provided the pipeline from sticky-floored pub to sold-out arena is in worse shape than it has ever been. Venues are closing, costs are rising, and the economics of being a new artist in the streaming era are, with the greatest of respect to Spotify's cheerful press releases, absolutely brutal.

Add AI-generated music flooding the platforms, diluting the pool, and you've got a system that increasingly rewards the already-established at the expense of the not-yet-known.

Camden still has venues. Good ones, some of which only survived the pandemic by the skin of their teeth. The likes of The Fiddler's Elbow, Black Heart and Underworld are still booking bands every night of the week. That's worth celebrating. But celebration alone isn't a strategy.

Camden doesn't just have a heritage to protect – it has a responsibility to build on it.

Heritage that doesn't generate a future is just a museum with a gift shop. Noel Gallagher's songs are woven into the fabric of British life, and nobody – least of all me, a man who is literally touring a stand-up show about Britpop – is arguing otherwise.

But the best tribute to Camden's extraordinary musical past isn't another heritage walk or a commemorative beer mat. It's making sure the next great band can afford to play here, and that someone’s actually in the room when they do.

This week’s local entrepreneur profile:
meet Sarah, founder of The WomanKind Clinic

Continuing our partnership with the Tradestars workspace and their growing community up on North Road, this week we hear from Sarah Balogun, an osteopath and acupuncturist specialising in helping women who are struggling to get pregnant.

She discusses how personal experiences led her towards this path, reveals the expansive network of other practitioners she works in conjunction with, and how moving in to such a creative community continues to inspire her as a one-woman start-up business.

Read Sarah’s the full story here, or watch it below…

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Tradestars offer private, customisable studios with 24/7 access, reception support, shared amenities including meeting rooms, cafes and podcast studios and a strong community across multiple locations.

➡️ As an exclusive offer, Camdenist readers get 50% off their first 6 months when signing up to a private studio or the first month free on a Tradestars membership. Offer open until 31st March 2026. Please quote ‘Camdenist’.

---

Watch our video interview with Sarah on Instagram:

Are you a local business looking for an editorial profile on Camdenist and a social media partner post video like Sarah? Join our new Business Community network today - it’s all part of the package…

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CAMDEN CURATED

Solidarity, stand-up and social dancing

Nowruz Festival at Lauderdale House

FESTIVAL: 🤝 Now in its third year up at Highgate’s Lauderdale House, the coming of the Persian New Year will be celebrated at Nowruz Festival 2026, marking the 14-day-long, 3,000-year-old springtime tradition of gathering, sharing stories and hoping for a better future.
With current events in the region causing so much upheaval and concern, this year’s festival will offer in important space for solidarity, talks from Iranian authors about the future, and space to explore the rich artistic heritage of the region. All events are free, Wed 11th Mar to Mon 6th Apr, and include a Haft-Sin Trail in Waterlow Park showcasing seven up-and-coming female Iranian artists.

MUSIC: 🎶 After a year of barnstorming live shows, including at Little Simz’ Southbank-based Meltdown Festival and supporting Cat Burns, British-Ugandan vocalist and songwriter Mega is bringing her blend of modern soul to KOKO for the early live set tonight, Fri 6th Mar.

COMEDY: 😂 Offering a formula of ‘six bullets in the chamber, one gun’, Revolver Comedy is back at Chalk Farm’s The Dark Horse this Thurs 12th Mar with six standups given only 10 mins to make the crowd laugh. The bill includes Phillip Reiss, Tom Voice, Hugo Webber, Nick Koukides, Will Hyslop and Emmanuel O.

ART: 🎨 Camden Town’s tucked away gallery Corner7 returns next Thurs 12th Mar, after providing a roof for visiting overseas artists in recent months, with The Hinge and the Knife, an exhibition by Royal College of Art Information Experience Design students, in response to Jan van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece, 1432. The historic artwork is approached as a living structure, opened, re-joined, and reinterpreted through contemporary materials, gestures, and systems. Look out for special performances on Fri 20th Mar, too.

MUSIC: 🎤 American singer Audrey Hobart plays two nights at the 02 Forum Kentish Town on Tues 10th & Wed 11th Mar, branching out successfully as a solo artist following her acclaimed co-written songs with Gracie Abrams.

DANCE: 👯 London Contemporary Dance School’s The Ball looks at joy as a collective practice, which sounds like a fantastic starting point for a good show. It explores celebration as a public, performative act with social and political stakes, reframing cheer and care as timeless acts of solidarity. Drawing on influences from Bridgerton to Harlem, New York; a school disco to a grandad's 90th birthday, it’s at The Place Thurs 12th - Sat 14th Mar.

CLUB: 🎧 David ‘Ram Jam’ Rodigan hosts the second in his series of three Sunday session at at the Jazz Cafe this Sun 8th Mar, with No Objections, Rebel Clash and Papa Face, plus there’s a reggae jungle special next week (15th) with Kenny Ken, DJ Ron, MCGQ and a surprise special guest. Fiya!

STAGE: 🎭 A bold new debut at The Lion & Unicorn Theatre explores the tumultuous marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. The play journeys from the couple’s harmonious beginning to it’s acrimonious end, charting the painful collapse of their partnership, revealing the pressures of fame, creativity and addiction. Arthur & Marilyn runs 17th - 21st Mar.

DANCING: 💃🏻 At the very first glimpse of warmer, longer evenings, the epic vibes of Rueda Libre returned to Coal Drops Yard this week, kicking off a long season of their joyous weekly social salsa dances in the central square. All levels are encouraged to join in. Wed 11th Mar is the next one.

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Osteopath and acupuncturist, Sarah Balogun, founded The Womankind Clinic just over a year ago, specifically to support women navigating complex health and fertility challenges.

But her path leading up to that point began at university, near a decade before.

“I’d had my own personal issues with my hormones,” she tells Camdenist when we meet, “so in my final year of study, I did a paper on infertility, including research into holistic methods that can help women who are struggling with their fertility. That sparked my interest, and I knew it would be a really, really interesting path to go down.”

That curiosity led her deeper, into acupuncture, and its potential to complement her osteopathic training. Today, Sarah’s work centres around helping women who are struggling to get pregnant and are trying to balance their hormones, but her skills can equally be applied to supporting people with migraines, digestive issues and general joint pains and aches.

When I ask her to describe how these disciplines work, she’s thoughtful and measured in exactly how to word each response, keen to portray her practice in the most accessible, careful terms possible, particularly for those that might be new to one, or both practices.

“Acupuncture works from inserting needles into different parts of the body to improve the internal communication between the brain and the hormones,” is the one she settles upon, with a smile. “Meanwhile, Osteopathy works with more hands-on approach, maybe improving pelvic alignment, maybe visceral manipulation to improve the function of the organs, or cranial osteopathy to improve nervous system regulation.”

With infertility rising globally, the need for this kind of support is growing: “A lot of women do need help, but don't know where to start with their body,” says Sarah, who has spoken about the issue on BBC Radio 1 previously. “So this is a really good place to start from if they want to look at natural options, and also as support if going down the IVF route.”

She’s clear that no single practitioner can do everything, and not every method is going to work for every body, therefore her work sits within a broad network professionals including nutritionists, therapists, IVF clinics and more, some of whom have also gravitated to the rapidly-growing Tradestars community on North Rd.
Continues below…

Watch the video of Sarah in her clinic at Tradestars during our recent interview

“Previously, I’d been renting out the space per hour near Highbury,” she continues, “and I decided that it was time to branch out. As soon as I saw this place, I fell in love with it, designed it just the way I like it, and now all my clients love this space as well,” she grins.

Being part of a wider community of businesses in the building, as well as her fertility-focused network, has proved to be a big advantage, too. “They refer clients to me, and also some have become clients of mine as well. Being self employed can be quite lonely; you're stuck in a room, you're doing all the work, and sometimes it's quite nice to have someone to bounce ideas off, just have a chat with and share a new perspective.”

Being surrounded by a cluster of such creative businesses, complete with all the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial world means “it's quite nice to meet other people who are on the same path as you,” says Sarah.

With a collaborative approach running through every aspect of The Womankind Clinic, and a carefully designed space at the heart of it, it’s fascinating to see how osteopathy, acupuncture and fertility can fit so nicely in alongside designer-makers, TikTok shop streamers and so many other exciting ventures at this local hub.

More info on The Womankind Clinic here

Wooden block road paving, Kentish Town Rd

It was a glimpse of the undulating curves of Highgate Road from a Suffragette Line train that inspired me.

Do you know the view I mean? It's the one you see if you look south as the Overground trundles between the Gospel Oak terminus and its next modern-day port of call, Upper Holloway Station.

The road below displays a gentle S-bend that is wholly unnecessary by any stretch of the urban planning imagination. It’s a natural path - first imprinted by horse traffic, no doubt - to navigate around who knows what rock, tree or tufty hillock required dodging on the trail north to St Albans, back when (really quite accurately) “all this were just fields”.

London’s higgledy-piggledy topography impacts the tenor of our lives every single day, and yet I’d suggest most of us don’t give its quirks much of a second thought as we steer our own hurried path under, over and through it.

But today, I’m keen we indulge for just a moment in some of the best bits that reveal the thin, but still very present, thread between our lives here in the future of 2026, and all that has gone before.

Not your obvious big ticket local icons; the gothic relic of St Pancras Station or the repurposed horse hospital of Camden Market; but the less splendid variety, such as the strange iron stubble that marks where so many Georgian-era gates, railings and fences were swiftly cut down 'for the war effort’ during World War 2.

The rusty stubs remain to be seen all over the place some 80+ year later, while the actual historical record of who/what/why blurs. It’s unknown how much of the felled ornamental metalwork ever made it (or was even suitable for) the munitions and tank manufacture that was used as justification for the cull, with many claims of the railings possibly ending up in Guyana, Nigeria or at the bottom of the Thames Estuary.

I also love the little reminders, visible under foot today, that these streets were once paved with wood (see main pic above, of a manhole cover with a section of the blocks still in place in Kentish Town Rd, with a couple more examples easy to spot on Camden High Street, too).

Victorians liked how timber was a quieter surface than cobbles for coping with carriages and hooves clattering upon it, yet the wooden road innovations of our great grandparent's era are rarely mentioned anymore, even though they are still in evidence underfoot as we walk about. Here’s where you can read a lot more about them, if you wish to really dive in.

There’s huge romance in considering just how much social change - and traffic - these very pieces of wood have seen rush by through the decades. And yet there they are, still playing their part in the integrity of the thoroughfare. Surviving a daily pummelling, rain soaking - and all the rest.

A similar, if more obvious, history can be evoked from the regular rhythm of cast iron coal hole covers across much of Camden Town, Primrose Hill, Bloomsbury and Hampstead, where the fuel needs of well-to-do housing stock residents were sent neatly down the chute to cellars below.

The pretty designs by forgotten local foundries like George Beach & Co, Camden Town, and Abbott, Camden Town, hark towards the industry that thrived around here in a sepia era of rag 'n’ bone men and Hansom cabs. It’s a real reminder that, in the grand scheme of things, that kind of life in a sooty, smelly Camden was not really very long ago at all.

Other relics of the past emerge, once you set your mind at spotting them - the deep air raid shelter access point at Belsize Park, the chirpy ghost sign advertisement for regular ‘beanfeasts' emblazoned on the back wall of Bistro Laz at Parliament Hill, or the listed ‘stench pipe’, still venting gas from the early sewer network, down near the Lido.

With every dry horse trough or ignored moss-covered milestone, every backstreet that bends to yield with the banks of the long-buried River Fleet, or majestic row of mature trees planted with vision by ancient arboriculturists, our lives remain highly connected to, and shaped by, the history behind where we are.

We just so happen to live in a place that has a particularly rich, long and exciting past, evidence of which is constantly on display all around us, clear as day, whether we actually see it or not.

Another 100 years from now, as the role of our high streets, homes and workplaces, and the spaces we gather to socialise, worship or entertain ourselves will undoubtedly have changes beyond all recognition, I wonder what will have survived and continue to be exerting an impact on the daily rhythms of local life in that version of future?

Difficult to predict, but you can bet Highgate Road will still have its dirt track kink, visible for curious minds peering through the windows of a flying robo-taxi, whisking them over from Upper Holloway.

This week’s local business profile: meet VFX and film producer Borja

Continuing our partnership with the exciting new creative cowork space on North Road, Tradestars, this week we speak with Vivarium Films founder, Borja Massa, about the constant need to adapt to changes in the visual effects and film production industry.

He reveals how he’s developed his skills as the impacts of Covid, then the Hollywood actors and writers strikes, and now AI, have completely changed how, when and where he works, and how this led him to seek a studio space that aligned with his artistic vision. Read the full story.

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Tradestars offer private, customisable studios with 24/7 access, reception support, shared amenities including meeting rooms, cafes and podcast studios and a strong community across multiple locations.

➡️ As an exclusive offer, Camdenist readers get 50% off their first 6 months when signing up to a private studio or the first month free on a Tradestars membership. Offer open until 31st March 2026. Please quote ‘Camdenist’.

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Watch our video interview with Borja on Instagram:

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🍺 Pub manoeuvres and shakers

The Fiddler’s Elbow NW5

🎻 Talking of historic landmarks from lost eras, Chalk Farm’s The Fiddler’s Elbow pub stands out as an 1850s oddity surrounded by modernish housing. Formerly The Mother Shipton at a time it backed onto huge painting and piano-making factories, in more recent decades it’s become famous as an affordably and rare surviving stop-off on Camden’s cherished ‘toilet venues’ circuit of authentically lively live music gig pubs.

The big news is that the long term landlords are heading for retirement, and have put the place on the market in the hope of finding another plucky music enthusiast to continue the legacy they've created.

Panic over beloved boozers changing hands is nothing new, especially in these precarious times for pubs and grassroots venues of all stripes, but I’d hazard a guess the Fiddler’s will continue, and look forward to seeing who picks up the baton - or should we say the bow - as it’s a mighty fine place to catch a band and sink an affordably pint and there’d be genuine uproar were it to become anything else.

🥳 In more pub news, The Black Cap has actually, finally got a reopening date: Sat 21st Mar. After a decade of protests, legal wrangles and construction hiccups, the old girl roars back to life in just a few short weeks after 11 dark years. But, there are still a handful of the regular Saturday vigils to go, and you didn’t think they’d stop until the job was 100% complete, did you?

🍻 Also preparing a sensational, near phoenix-like rebirth is Dartmouth Park’s The Star, the future of which was hanging in the balance only a few short weeks ago. A hastily convened petition to save the shuttered pub saw over a thousand locals rally around for its ‘asset of community value’ status to be assured. Now, thanks to a reader tip-off, Camdenist hears that a handsome refurbishment is nearing completion, and we’ve asked owner Stonegate for the skinny on dates, offering and who is going to be in charge, so more info to follow soon…

🔒On the flipside, the sad beer-related news of this edition is the sudden announcement that Lower Stable Street King’s Cross and D’Arblay St Soho off-licence and dedicated can bar, House of Cans, is closing imminently, citing the impossibility of today’s trading conditions.

Not only did they have a vast selection of UK and international beers, specifically limited to the more eco-friendly cans rather than bottles, owner Simon was one of the first local business-owner Camdenist interviewed following the relaxing of the original Covid lockdown in May 2020. Six years on, things are actually tougher than those odd days, which says a lot about the long term impacts of that period for the kind of businesses we theoretically all wish to see thriving on our high streets.

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Let’s Get Lit!

Light Up Kilburn

🏮 The theme of this week's freebie family festivities is definitely lights, led by the popular Light Up Kilburn, which returns to illuminate the end of February with two evenings of twinkly joy tonight and tomorrow, 27th & 28th Feb in and around Kilburn Grange Park. Expect projections, installations and live performances with fire and UV lighting.

🏮The King’s Cross Canopy Market is throwing what it claims to be ‘the first-ever Lantern Festival held in central London. It’s leaning into the celebrations for the Year of the Horse, with live Chinese folk singing, dances, Kung Fu performances and a costume parade, alongside market stalls selling traditional Asian textiles, crafts and foods, plus workshops including tea making and woodblock printmaking. It runs Fri 27th Feb - Sun 1st Mar.

MUSIC: 🎶 There’s an epic 4-hour interactive Brazilian Music Experience tonight, Fri 27th Feb at MAP Studio Cafe, where you’ll be guided through an intense range of Brazilian rhythms and musical styles.

ART: 🧷 It’s the official opening party for Camden Open Air Gallery’s Picture This: A Public Image show tonight, Fri 27th Feb, in association with The Big Issue. Is a celebration of the archives of punk, ska and new wave snapper Spike, who shot some of the biggest bands and singers on the scene in the late 70s and early 80s.

CLUB: 🎧 Clubland party-starting legend Skream is back DJing for his disco disco residency at Parkway’s Jazz Cafe tonight, Fri 27th Feb from dubstep through house to glitterball funk until 3am.

STAGE: 🚺 Camden Town’s Etcetera Theatre is back celebrating bold, original voices with a season of shows by women and female-identifying playwrights, from self-help comedy cabaret to children’s adventure matinees, discover all the shows at the 2026 Women Writer’s Festival throughout March.

COMEDY: 😂 Join Russian-British stand-up Olga Koch for her ‘one good story’ (only it’s not really her story, in Fat Tom Cruise running at Soho Theatre until Sat 7th Mar.

CABARET: 👯 Join Sarah Guinness for her eye-opening romp Grit, Glitter & Gaslight, a Cabaret Story as she delves into her true story of years spent as a muse to some of the top cabaret artists and her own musical journey in this one-woman behind-the-scenes life story. Playing at the new Circle & Star Theatre in Hampstead, 3rd - 21st Mar.

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For visual effects artist and aspiring filmmaker, Borja Massa, the world of work has been undergoing a series of intersecting, seismic upheavals for many years now.

“Traditionally, in the VFX medium, the films and TV series I worked on would hire you as a contractor for six months or even a year,“ he tells Camdenist, while showing us around his brand new studio unit.

“However, since Covid - and especially after the Hollywood actors and writers strikes - the industry has been a little down, so those movie jobs tend to last only three to six months.”

Things have changed, and that’s before we come to any mention of the march of Artificial Intelligence. So how has Borja adapted?

“I’ve been broadening my skill set to not only focusing on post production, but also on the production aspect too,” he tells us.

That means setting up his own production company, Vivarium Films, that not only showcases his work on those Hollywood studio blockbusters (things like Disney’s Lion King) and major Netflix movies, but also now produces collaborative short films and bespoke showreels for actors wishing to recreate a big screen feel at affordable rates.

It means that, despite the shifting landscape, far from the industry offering less opportunity, Massa feels it’s still expanding.

“Nowadays the medium is so wide in terms of you can do with YouTube content, but it has to be high quality to cut through, and the same goes for social media, too. It's a constant evolution.”

Continues below…

Watch the video: Borja in his studio at Tradestars in our recent interview

He’s bullish towards AI, stating that even the VFX houses that have invested a lot of R&D into the technology are still not yet seeing reliable results demanded by high end films and TV series.

“Obviously, it has its its own place, particular where speed is required like for social media, however I’m actually more worried about the environmental aspect of the huge electricity and water resource impacts.”

He’s invested a lot of his own resources into setting up alone, with Islington’s new Tradestars providing what seems like the ideal base for a future that will require further pivots and adaptations as media and technology continue to develop.

Watch Borja’s showreel…

“I used to work in Soho and hop around companies depending on the contract,” he remembers. “But after Covid, there was always more of a hybrid aspect to this work. My partner and I have a small apartment, so I didn’t really have the space to do more working from home, so once I started getting into my own production too, I decided to expand here.

Other workspaces I saw felt a lot more corporate, boring and grey, which is not for me. I wanted a more creative space where I can decorate it how I want, have a true sense of community and to build a network. And it's been really nice to be getting away from home again rather than, you know, the habit of working in PJs throughout the whole day.

Find our more about Borja’s services and showreels at vivariumfilms.co.uk

Self Space King’s Cross

For anyone over a certain age – the threshold of which seems to be decreasing towards the mid-teens – there can often be the sense that we’re ‘living in the future’.

Unsettling moments of reflection remind us that the tools, structures and practices of daily life are racing away from the ones we felt we knew, just a few short years back.

As more and more of modern life resembles something we’d previously only encountered in sci-fi dramas, this is an understandable, unavoidable reaction. How can our poor hunter-gather brains ever be expected to cope with this pace of change?

Nowhere – at lease locally – represents this hyper-exciting-yet-scary tension more tangibly than King’s Cross. It’s the thrusting juxtaposition of the solid, analogue Victorian railway infrastructure with the complex ambiguity behind the ‘statement’ office towers we’ve witnessed rise up all around.

Inside these shimmering edifices, many of the AI breakthroughs responsible for our collective sense of future shock are being developed. Stand in the middle of it all and that customary feeling of wonder/overwhelm at human progress can be enjoyed/feared in its full utopian/dystopian realisation.

No matter which of those opposing viewpoints resonates most, we all seem to agree that these rapid changes will require us to learn new skills if we hope to keep on top of things, and that doesn’t just mean getting CoPilot to write a bland email for you.

The popularity of activities that put us back in touch with our neglected physicality, humanity and consciousness demonstrate this appetite. Which is why King’s Cross is also - naturally - where you’ll find the current, ongoing Equanimity Festival, offering all manner of digital respite, right in the belly of the beast.

Need proof? Witness the wobbly flesh of rosy-flushed bodies emerging from wooden sauna caravans and plunging into steel baths of icy water, chanting and snoozing inside the Slomo tipi, that’s all been happening directly outside the doors of Meta’s gleaming London HQ over recent weeks.

As part of this fiesta of much-needed reconnecting wellbeing, I took up the offer of ‘reviewing’ the MOT check-in offered by Coal Drops Yard therapy-as-a-high-street-service operator Self Space. Their approach is well suited to our current predicament, treating a 50-min mental health drop-in as one of modern life’s consumer essentials.

I rolled up in the midst of yet another financial crunch day on the perma-precipice of operating local media titles in this disruptive era, so I was quick off the mark in venting a few of the challenges.

I do love a bit of therapy, since having an approved space for talking all about me feels delightfully self-indulgent - even more so if we can tease out a nugget or two of genuine self-realisation in the process.

The ‘MOT’ format is far from the standard long-term client-therapist relationship, but that’s the point. You can rock up without planning, and have a chat about anything.

Art Psychotherapist Kristina zoned in on my work-related frustrations; the disproportionate time and efforts put in for the revenues received. Much like the semi-clad bodies outside Facebook just round the corner, it felt like I was bringing the raw challenges right to the source.

Realising that I had accepted a freebie in order to discuss how I shouldn‘t be working for free was suitably meta. There was just enough time to explore how such pressures might be coped with, but the impossibility of really knowing how our work, play and all the rest is being transformed loomed large.

Last week, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of another nearby company, DeepMind, (now at Microsoft) predicted in an FT interview that the majority of jobs that involve ‘sitting down at a computer’ will be fully automated within the next 18 months.

That coincided with the viral essay smash hit of the week (84 million views on X/Twitter alone, and very much still counting) by AI researcher Matt Shumer, who compared this moment to February in 2020, when the Covid pandemic was about to hit.

This approaching AI/job tsunami will be more dramatic, though, he said.

While these AI guys have certain amounts to gain from taking a highly shareable headline-grabbing position, the direction of travel is clear. If you feel like you’re living in the future now, just wait until… the spring, or the end of the year.

The high street of the future may be hollowed out by Amazon and Deliveroo, but new outlets like Self Space are sure to be filling some of the empty units, as the need to talk, to find our humanity, and to make the space to think about what we do next, becomes all the more important.

Just as King’s Cross represents the meeting of the old and the new, making sure we also have some connection with the now is going to be more important than ever. We’re lucky to have it all out there on our doorsteps.

• The Slomo tipi and sauna are in Lewis Cubitt Square until Sun 22nd Feb.

• Self Space is at 46 Coal Drops Yard, N1C 4DQ

• Catch their outdoor gallery, Tiny Acts of Love, a thought-provoking collection of small, human moments ‘to help us get through’ on display in Granary Square until Thurs Feb 26th.

Introducing a new mini-series showcasing local entrepreneurs, in association with Tradestars

Tradestars is the inspirational creative workspace operator that’s just opened its latest community hub up on North Road.

They’ve partnered with Camdenist to showcase some of the fantastic founders and innovative start-ups who have already moved in to their fully-customisable studios, kicking off with the on-site manufacturer of delightful pegboards and accessories: Kreisdesign (pictured above).

In the feature and Reels video (below) the founder, Nikki Kreis, tells us how moving her venture off the kitchen table and into a dedicated space has transformed her work and improved her daily life.

Tradestars offer private, customisable studios with 24/7 access, reception support, shared amenities including meeting rooms, cafes and podcast studios and a strong community across multiple locations.

➡️ As an exclusive offer, Camdenist readers get 50% off their first 6 months when signing up to a private studio or the first month free on a Tradestars membership. Offer open until 31st March 2026. Please quote ‘Camdenist’.

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Watch our video interview with Nikki Kreis on Instagram:

Instagram post

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🥐 9 lovely secret indie cafes for you to discover

Bar Bicicletta, photo by Hydar Dewachi

After the soaraway success of last Friday’s indie bookshops trail, this week we thought it might be time to shine a light on some lovely hidden spots to grab a decent coffee and pastry, or perhaps something more substantial, at the best little local cafes that are otherwise hidden from view, inside somewhere else…

🍵 HOME Café - Venture deep into the handsome backstreets of Primrose Hill to find this special café inside the area’s reborn yoga hub, now called HOME. You’ll find Mission Coffee Works beans, masses of herbal teas and gut-friendly brews and a vegetarian all-day menu from local producers like Natoora and Hodemedod’s, picked for their minimally grown produce and British grains and pulses.

🍵 The English Folk Dance Society’s home base at Cecil Sharp House also has a weekday café to enjoy if you venture inside, offering freshly made breakfasts, sarnis and more.

🍵 The impressive former Methodist chapel now operating as Camden Arts Project has a delightful arty pit-stop cafe in the reception, with Little Bread Pedlar in charge of the coffee and pastries, open Wed-Sun on Prince of Wales Rd.

🍵 Remember to head up to the mezzanine level if you’re buying some plants at Camden Garden Centre, to enter the oasis that is Pritchard & Ure, where not only do they serve exceptional food and coffee, but you’ll also be able to browse books and antiques in their quirky cerebral space as you happily while away some time.

🍵 Berkeley Bake House is the latest café operator inside Triyoga on Jamestown Rd in the heart of Camden Town, which is always a serene escape from the madness on the High St. It certainly smells nice, but there’s little info online about it, so I can only say follow your nose…

🍵 Up on Finchley Road, Camden Art Centre’s Bar Bicicletta (pictured above) is a popular indoor social hub and garden terrace spot serving a seasonal range of dishes, from organic breakfasts through to small plates of Italian inspired food and curated wines after dark.

🍵 Modern urban street art specialists Camden Open Air Gallery have a suitably stylish café just inside their doors if you are looking for a more genuine hangout on Camden’s main drag, and a spot to sip a cappuccino sat on their bespoke plywood furniture while contemplating some art.

🍵 You will need a ticket, but the Dickens Museum’s Artful Tea Room rewards you with hot brews and sweet things in the Victorian townhouse where the great author wrote some of his most famous work.

🍵Up in Hampstead, the café at Burgh House is renowned for its fruit scones and Cornish cream teas in a lovely garden and courtyard setting at this Grade I listed early Georgian historic property and art collection.

Know any other hidden spots Camdenist readers should head out to discover? Reply to this email with you own favourites and we’ll add them to the list ☕

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CLUB: 🪩 Techno hero Mr G is going to be digging deep for an extended DJ session tonight, Fri 20th Feb, as the Jazz Cafe pays homage to one of the scene’s most enduring talents.

MUSIC: 🎹 Fat Concubine play their distinctly unhinged live electronic dance sounds tonight, Fri 20th Feb, at Farsight Gallery as dancefloor euphoria meets mosh-pit chaos in this backstreet West End spot.

SOCIAL: 🌅 The Sunrise Club is a regular gathering of early-risers at the top of Primrose Hill at dawn each Saturday morning. Then everyone heads to Roots Café on Regent’s Park Rd for discounted coffees and vibrant social interaction.

RUN: 🏃🏻‍♀️‍➡️ The NW5Trotters are a new, small but growing local running group who meet on Wednesday mornings at 7am at Lilac Coffee in Kentish Town (near the tube) and take a 6k loop around the ponds on Hampstead Heath at a steady pace, before returning for some of Lilac’s excellent coffee afterwards.

MUSIC: 🎸 The Campaign for Musical Destruction has been going for 36 years, with Napalm Death headlining pretty much all of them. The crew are back with thrash metal legends Whiplash, punk rockers The Varukers and an as yet unannounced special guest on Tues 24th Feb at Electric Ballroom.

COMEDY: 😂 The 4th edition of Soho Calling sees 30 exciting emerging comedy talents hitting multiple stages including The 100 Club, 21Soho, Phoenix Arts Club, The Social, B.R.A.T, Anotherland and Third Man Records on Wed 25th Feb.

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Angela Rayner addresses the nightlife people

Culture isn’t just how we describe the art we create, it’s also the word we use to define the people, places and lived experiences around us.

That we’re living through challenging times is a fairly inescapable reality. And while nightlife is traditionally the space we go to forget our troubles for a few hours, as art reflects life, the late night sector is currently struggling in the face of today’s complex headwinds.

I took a train up to Liverpool this week for the two-day Night Time Economy Summit, keen to hear how the guardians of our most joyful social experiences are faring, and what positive actions might be afoot to improve their many challenges.

With UK politics similarly unable to swerve the prevailing perma-chaos, coming out in vocal support of ‘our pubs, clubs and restaurants’ is a hot campaign tool. Which is possibly why so many politicians rumoured to have designs on the beleaguered PM’s job were to be found speaking up on the main stage at the city’s impressive food, drink, live music and comedy venue, Blackstock Market.

Angela Rayner played to the crowd with references to her proud hospitality roots working in Stockport’s pubs and takeaways, impassioned and thoughtful declarations of the need for more support for our after dark cultural spaces – and being partial to shimming on occasion to local lad DJ duo CamelPhat.

Northern mayoral double act, Burnham & Rotheram, ribbed each other over Manchester and Liverpool’s respective musical chops and delivered well-timed laughs with tales of their back-to-back charity DJ set exploits.

And whirlwind rising Green challenger, Zack Polanski, demonstrated his own impeccable nightlife credentials when referring to his many years working the door and behind the bar at legendary Charing Cross LGBT+ venue, Heaven.

Credibility jousting aside, it’s genuinely refreshing to hear from a line-up of so many politicians who clearly all enjoy a good night out, understand the depth of the current pressures and respect the cultural significance of the dancefloor.

Andy Burnham went as far as to call urban nightlife ‘critical infrastructure’, and he’s right. It’s impossible to quantify the value that Liverpool’s UNESCO City of Music designation and Beatles legacy, or Manchester’s decades of spitting out world-conquering bands continues to deliver to each city, every single day.

There’s an obvious affinity between the internationally renowned music-based stories of these Northern cultural powerhouses and the story we have in Camden, too. The danger for all these celebrated live music destinations - as Burnham also pointed out - is that we risk increasingly relying on nostalgia. Endlessly celebrating our area’s former glories, because the grassroots musical ecosystem today is so broken there’s simply not the platform or the pipeline in place for new artists to grind out a route through the clubs, up to the arenas and a sustainable career.

As I said the other day, there’s a tactical usefulness to the doom and gloom frontline reporting, and it seems to have worked if the level of politician falling over themselves to appear at this week’s conference is anything to go by.

But I prefer looking for solutions. So, now is the moment to capitalise on their campaigning. The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) has scored a winner bagging this many voices to takes a stand and declare their love and support for the sector - gracing the front pages of many of today’s papers, no less.

Still, it’s been easy to talk up support for nighttime culture with hollow promises, but there’s no time left for that any more - and nobody should be able to get away with it.

Reform’s own bid to occupy this space, (with their unashamedly racist, questionably costed proposals to reduce beer taxes by reinstating the two-child benefit cap for all families without two white British parents) only highlights how easily this could just become another political football plopping into the culture war soundbite swamp.

Thankfully, many of those most keen to position themselves in line for the top job have now pledged action on stage in Liverpool. If you see any of them at the bar or on a dancefloor soon (which is actually quite possible), do make sure to remind them.

Despite the momentary arrival of the media circus, the conference was essentially a reminder of why I love nightlife and the assorted enthusiasts that make it happen, no matter the precarious realities.

When it comes to experiencing and producing great culture, these spaces remain as vital and as vivid as ever, despite it all.

🪩 Have your say

Never one to be outdone, particularly on being seen backing 24-hour culture, London’s own Mayor also picked yesterday to a public licensing consultation on the future of the capital’s nightlife and hospitality. It’s a real opportunity to add your voice to the debate as licensing undergoes reform that aims to make the process more ‘pro growth and pro culture’, so it’s vital to have a range of opinions in there.

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Bookshop Crawl inspiration - walk the length of the borough

London Review Bookshop with its St John cafe

Today and all weekend is the London Bookshop Crawl 2026, offering a series of social walks (mostly sold out now) and a free self-guided tour/crawl kit, for the adventurous solo bookworms.

Despite the pressures of digital disruption, a walk through our borough boasts a wealth of specialist and quirky bookstores - and plenty of new ones that have opened in the last year, too, which is very exciting. Here’s Camdenist’s own reminder of a predominantly indie bookshop-rich route you might like to take this weekend, or anytime.

📔Start off on Covent Garden’s ‘booksellers row’, Cecil Court, at Goldsboro Books, famed as the home of desirable signed first edition hardbacks.

📔Pop in to Bookmarks, the largest socialist bookshop in the UK (and official sellers for the nearby TUC) for a spot of radical political thought.

📔Soak up the esoteric atmosphere up at Treadwells in Bloomsbury, where the focus is on all things magic, spiritual and mystical, including regular tarot readings.

📔Nearby you’ll find cultural hotspot the London Review Bookshop, with a strong events calendar and on-site cafe from the mighty St John (pictured above).

📔It’s a short walk over to Holborn’s Skoob Books, the huge basement in the Brunswick that’s stuffed with shelves of secondhand gold waiting to be rediscovered, including thousands of academic books.

📔Then sashay meaningfully across to Gays The Word, the campaigning LGBT+ bookshop and very first of its kind in the UK, dating back to the 70s and very much still a vital hub today.

📔King’s Cross boasts the legendary radical and progressive Housmans, a hub of all things feminist, anarchist, environmentalist and plenty more since 1959.

📔 You might want to divert up to the Regent’s Canal at this point to catch the ‘London Bookbarge’ Word on the Water, now permanently moored near The Lighterman, and a wonderful floating trove of bookishness.

📔 Chalk Farm Rd now boasts two brand new book sellers, the Camden Town Bookshop (which reminds me, in looks at least, of the long lost Compendium, which was once such a peerless countercultural book destination nearby).

📔 Just up the arcade is Fable & Falcon, which is as much a top top coffee pit stop as it is a diminutive room for browsing, reading and purchasing a lovely new hardback.

📔 Kentish Town’s Owl Bookshop is a longstanding classic, still pulling in brilliant guest speakers for signings.

📔 Small but perfectly-curated, Funny Weather books and coffee is proving a smash hit in its first few weeks since opening directly opposite the Heath (for another kind of top local walk) at Parliament Hill Fields.

📔And round off this borough-long bookshop odyssey at the longstanding Highgate Bookshop, still serving the village after decades in the game. There are still plenty more to choose from if you divert towards Primrose Hill or up to Hampstead, but this route really does serve as a reminder as to the riches committed to the printed page that we still have right here.

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EAT: 🌮 Charlotte Street’s popular collaborative restaurant Carousel are repurposing their wine bar as a new wave Mexican seafood restaurant to be called Cometa when it opens next Fri 20th Feb.

COMEDY: 😂 Take your Valentine' for a laugh this Sat 14th Feb with standups Bob Mills and Phil Nichol at the new KX Comedy club, inside the Grade I listed Parcel Yard deep within the mainline station.

CLUB: 🪩 Just nominated in a BBC award for Major Venue of the Year, KOKO continues to smash it, with d&b hero Culture Shock tonight, Fri 13th Feb.

MUSIC: 🎸 Mønster Queen in communion with the Catacomb Club have a ceremonial awakening of desire for the devoted and the damned at Camden Assembly on Sat 14th Feb. Billed as a gathering where lovers, ghosts, and unfinished stories collide to worship love, break it open, and release it back onto the dancefloor, trembling and alive, you’ll get Tilly Electronics Live upstairs too.

STAGE: 🎭 Deafinitely Youth Theatre bring their end-of-term show, devised from scratch by young deaf artists and presented in BSL with creative captions for a boundary-shifting creative show at Camden People’s Theatre on Fri 20th Feb.

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Swiss born designer, Nikki Kreis, has built a thriving, hands-on business around a deceptively simple idea: beautifully crafted pegboards.

After years working all over the world as an architect, she returned from her last role, in Sydney, back in 2011 and began exploring furniture design as a new path.

 “During my architecture years, I’d always had all these ideas of furniture designs, too” she tells us when we drop by her Kreisdesign studio and workshop, on the ground floor of the new Tradestars up on North Road.

“I experimented with a few different things at first, including metal tables, and took them around trade shows in Italy, New York and all the rest, but everywhere, everybody was most into this idea of the pegboard. So I focused on that, and I've been doing it ever since.”

The concept was actually born in her Berlin apartment, where she wanted a better way to display her footwear collection without damaging the walls.

“I bought these really big nails and put them in a wall to display all my shoes,” Kreis laughs. “But then I thought, it's a rented apartment, I probably shouldn't do that. So I grabbed a board and put some holes in it.”

From that initial inspiration, her pegboard concept evolved, and today features a beautiful solid plywood construction, CNC cutting, and an ever-growing range of accessories way beyond the simple, original pegs.

“People really seem to like the different accessories. Little clips for pinning things, big balls for hanging coats. We're now doing numbers, laser cut Scrabble-style tiles so you can create little messages on your pegboard, and then also the different colours, designs and finishes. Oak is very popular at the moment.”

A business that started out – quite literally – at her kitchen table has now grown into a global, largely digital success story with a loyal customer base, particularly in the US.

“I used to drill the boards, oil them and have them shipped worldwide, all from my house,” Nikki continues. “So, moving to this dedicated space make it feel like a proper business. Just being able to have meetings without it being embarrassing, having other people around instead of working alone, its warm, unlike the garage I was in before, there’s a café and even a ToolStation right next door.”

The new space will eventually allow her to train someone up and grow the business, which is impressively running at capacity simply through word-of-mouth and organic search traffic.

Tradestars is a creative workspace in London, home to entrepreneurs, founders and growing businesses. They offer private, customisable studios with 24/7 access, reception support, shared amenities including meeting rooms, cafes and podcast studios and a strong community across multiple locations.

As an exclusive offer, Camdenist readers can get 50% off their first 6 months when signing up to a private studio or the first month free on a Tradestars membership.

Offer open until 31st March 2026. Please quote ‘Camdenist’.

Watch the video of Nikki in her workshop during our recent interview

Some kind of fantasy AI Zumba scenario

We’re already through January’s brief season of resolution delusion, so gym classes are returning to their more measured, year-round attendance equilibrium - made up from people who actually enjoy being there.

But despite this unwavering love for bending, stretching and gyrating together, all is not well on the local wellness scene.

Teachers are up in arms and threatening to leave, customers are signing petitions in their thousands, and the dehumanising impact of the corporate profit imperative is on display in all its bland inevitability.

I’d vaguely noted some disquiet at Triyoga Camden, (where I’ve been a regular for over two decades, as celebrate a year ago in this longer article last year), now part of the bigger Common Bond group.

Then, my beloved wife informed me that her equally beloved Kentish Town Sports Centre instructors were potentially scattering to pastures new, and an online petition was building momentum.

The issue in both spaces? Word coming down from on high that teacher’s own playlists would no longer be allowed to be used to soundtrack classes, with a ‘royalty-free’ platform being introduced instead, which they will have no option but to use.

My interest piqued, a few mins of online research revealed that this is quite the trend, with big chains like Virgin Active already having made the switch, despite equally vocal opposition from their customers and staff alike back in 2024. By not paying the required PRS licence - the fees that ideally help musicians earn money for public plays from their catalogue - the gym operators can save a decent wedge when multiplied across all their locations.

Now, I get that company penny pushers are solemnly bound to keep their spreadsheets looking as efficient as possible, but swapping out popular freerange playlists for sanctioned elevator interpretations doesn’t feel that great for business.

Not only is it unquestionably degrading the customer experience, it also seems to stick two-fingers up at real musicians as we tumble towards a dystopian AI-soundtracked future. But the truth is (thankfully) never quite that simple, so I went out seeking further opinion.

I spoke to one popular instructor at Better (operator of all Camden Council’s gyms) who - in a rather telling sign of the power structures at play - wished to remain anonymous.

“I mix all my own playlists, and would say that 40% of my time as an instructor is spent on planning the music,” she said. “It’s a huge, huge part of what I do, not an afterthought. What’s so frustrating is that they haven't interviewed any of us to ask what we think as instructors. Fitness has evolved so much, and that’s been driven by music. What they are suggesting is such a dated way of delivering a class. The music is like something out of an 80s aerobics movie. It’s got a pingy ‘Game Boy’ sound that’s actually quite shocking. It’s not going to motivate people in the same way, and I really don't want to teach the gym’s clients while forcing them to listen to that for an hour.”

Marcus Veda is one of London’s most in-demand yoga teachers, who I interviewed about the growing importance of decent music in classes exactly a decade ago, when exploring why so many professional DJs were becoming yoga instructors.

He’s developed the 4Beat style of yoga, a complete system based around syncing the breath to carefully designed mixes that are at the core of every movement, in every class. With the teachers he’s trained in 4Beat now being told that the yoga they’ve invested hundreds of hours of their time learning is essentially no longer permitted in certain studios, I knew he’d have plenty to say on the topic.

“The people making these decisions clearly don’t realise how integral the music is to what we are doing,” he said. “It’s not just any old beat in the background, it's inextricable from what is actually being taught. As we always say in our trainings, passion and authenticity are the most important things for a yoga teacher to have. If the studio is not supporting that authenticity, students will feel it, and eventually they’ll head off somewhere else where the creativity is not being curtailed.”

Continues below…

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Often, smaller public spaces such as hairdressers or corner shops hit with a PRS bill complain that they ‘just have the radio on’, and can only see the licence as another money grabbing tax.

But as a touring DJ and band member in his former incarnations, Marcus knows what it’s like on the other side of the coin - and yet he’s still not entirely convinced that the licence filters funds down to the musicians that need it most, making the studio bans all the more incongruous.

“When I make music, or anyone that I know does, we’d much rather have it have it heard by as many people as possible than have it silenced under a licencing system that’s not going pay us anything meaningful anyway.”

PRS relies on accurate data to collect and distribute royalties to the songwriters, composers, and publisher members it represents. While there is legitimate debate about how to ensure royalties reach the right people as efficiently as possible, their mission to seek remuneration for the use of musical creative output is a vital one, particularly in the face of gym operators who don’t seem to see the real, unquantifiable value these tracks bring to their studio offering.

“When we lose the music we know and love from gyms and studios, we lose more than background sound – we lose the thing that makes those spaces feel human,” said Gavin Larkins, Director of Commercial Development and Sales at PRS for Music when I reached out to them this week.

“Music sets the tone, shaping confidence and energy, motivating gym-goers to return while creating a positive environment for staff. It is no surprise that this has resonated so strongly, with thousands coming together to sign this petition: it’s a reminder that music matters.”

The current online petition, (which was set up in Hackney, but applies to Better/GLL’s sweeping policy proposal wherever they operate), also highlights how this directly discriminates against instructors who bring particularly musical styles, such as Soca or Afrobeat mixes, to their classes.

My Better insider agrees with Marcus, that niches of music have become central to the development of so many of today’s popular styles of class, so it seems scarcely believable that the gyms don’t appreciate the source of this evolution.

“My dad taught spin classes when I was growing up, and I remember it was so boring!” she laughed. “There was none of the flow and motivation from the soundtrack that you can get today. Relying on generic music just seems so dated, but then gyms also seem to want to make classes feel generic in the way they name them, too. There are masses of different styles that people seek out, and yet all it will say on the timetable is ‘dance fitness’. They don’t seem interested in what’s most attractive to potential customers.”

One year ago, as the Central YMCA was ruthlessly evicted from its historic West End home, Camdenist declared the gym as a cultural asset. With nightclubs and live music venues enduring their own challenges, fitness studios are one of the only remaining third spaces where all manner of people gather regularly to move to music together.

If we’re now stripping creative playlists out of those spaces, replaced by auto-mixed, no-name impersonations of popular sounds, the gym looses much of its cultural significance, and therefore its social impact. There’s even a rumour going around that AI instructors projected onto screens could be the next ‘innovation’, cost-cutting on the very need for any humans to lead the classes at all.

I’d like to say people won’t possibly stand for it, but as explored in the recent edition of Camdenist about fake videos, there’s a strange acquiescence towards once-scary AI that seems to set in rapidly if the experience is just about acceptable, and cheap.

“There’s a dumbing down in all this,” says Marcus. “Beginners trying out yoga used to be able to stumble upon an authentic class at their gym and that would be the gateway to discovering a whole new world. Now, if all those teachers have been forced into more authentic specialist studios only, newcomers might just get the impression yoga is a few stretching exercises and never get the chance to know better. It’s putting a barrier up.”

However, this is not an unavoidable process, if customers do indeed vote with their feet. My Better insider remembers it all happening when she was a member of The Gym Group pre-Covid, when beloved teachers upped sticks and left, memberships duly tanked, and ultimately their PRS licence was restored to prevent further damage.

As Gavin from the PRS told us, “we’re proud to have developed licences in partnership with the fitness sector so studios and instructors can use the music people want to move to, while ensuring the songwriters and composers behind these brilliant tracks are paid. We’ve seen venues move away from licensed music only to return, realising that popular tracks are far more engaging for both staff and customers. Our members’ music isn’t a luxury in a third space; it’s part of the value.”

If you’re a gym operator and would like to have your say on this issue, do get in touch. It’s obviously harder than ever to balance the books, but killing the music really doesn’t feel like the correct line on the spreadsheet to strike out.

Studios will only remain the kind of vibrant, creative spaces that draw customers back every week if teachers are allowed to express themselves fully once inside. Ignore that vital ingredient of the sweaty, interactive and, above all, human experience that you’re selling at your peril.

 🧖 More wellness! As KX wild spa programme continues & new local openings abound

Slomo sauna and cold plunge in Lewis Cubitt Square

The Slomo tipi and pop-up wild spa, featuring various sauna and cold plunge experiences right in the middle of King’s Cross, runs for two more weeks, as the centrepiece of the area’s ongoing Equanimity Festival.

Among this week’s highlights are the soul-soothing sound baths streamed live from the Academy of Integrated Sonic Medicine each evening in the tipi, and Rob Da Bank’s gloriously restful lunchtime sleep training/nap sessions in the round under the canvas on Thursdays.

♨️ The latest permanent sauna facilities in the borough come from Lowlu, who have opened a collection of five swishly designed saunas and six plunges, each offering varying degrees of steamy heat or icy water. Sessions are affordably priced but can only be accessed via an app. You’ll find this Finnish-style oasis has transformed an odd little car park space the sits above the Thameslink line at Caversham Road in NW5.

🧘I’m not sure of their playlist policy, but London’s affordable yoga chain More Yoga have just opened a very bright and airy-looking 2-studio centre in the middle of Kentish Town. It doubles as their new teacher-training facility, so is clearly going to be a priority location for this fast-growing brand, and the introductory offers are pretty tasty if you sign up and try it out soon.

🏋️‍♀️Your first three sessions are free at Guardians Studios, which began life based at Parliament Hill Lido for nearly a decade, and has now moved to a unit at Hawley Wharf, facing Caversham Road and another deep inside the historic Camden Market Stables on Chalk Farm Rd. They’re big on personal and group training, Pilates, plus mother and baby post-natal sessions, from a growing team of top trainers.

MORE CAMDEN CURATED

STAGE: 🎭 Bird Grove is the latest Hampstead Theatre World Premiere from Fri 13th Feb. Set in the 1840s, Mary Ann Evans is of marriageable age - just - and her father, Robert, has recently moved with her to Bird Grove House, with the sole purpose of finding her a suitable husband through the local church. But Mary Ann’s remarkable intellect and growing self-confidence are forming progressive new ideas in her mind; ideas that challenge her father’s most strongly held beliefs. Runs to 21st Mar.

MUSIC: 🎛️ South African live house music heroes GoldFish play Chalk Farm’s iconic Roundhouse on Sat 7th Feb with a few remaining tickets up for grabs - if you’re quick.

COMEDY: 😂 Award-winning comedian Sarah Keyworth gently meanders through an evening of playful crowd work in new show Roll To Me, rolling at The Pleasance Theatre on Wed 11th Feb.

CLUB: 🪩 Daniel Sehnawi is a DJ/producer known for blending cultural influences with contemporary electronic music with a distinct fusion of minimal and deep house. He goes B2B all night long at The Cross this Sat 7th Feb with Rahbani, who brings influences ranging from the Arab world to Detroit’s underground to his own eclectic sets.

MAGAZINE: 📚 Brilliant little off-Camden dive bar Spiritual launch another edition of their Spirit(ed) magazine this Tues 10th Feb, which is also their regular weekly open mic night, so come along, sing up, and grab a copy.

MUSIC: 🎸 Memphis Tennessee’s breakout rock band Sleep Theory play the 02 Forum Kentish Town on the London leg of their first ever UK and European tour on Thurs 12th Feb.. The gig has moved up the road from KOKO to rock even bigger and even harder.

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