Leake Street Disaster

As a former City Banker & Partner at the largest UK real estate company the proposed change of Leake Street to more coffee shops and dull eateries is a disaster. This is a unique area for real underground arts, fashion, design and music from which many hundreds of jobs are indirectly created.

A very sad day for SE1

Gosh! A former City Banker, and top Estate Agent to boot! What a busy and varied life you have. Especially considering that you also described yourself as: "I am a marketeer and sales specialist having worked in a number of Blue Chip professional services companies. "

Good luck with The Apprentice.

Are any of the arts, fashion, design or music jobs actually threatened by this development? The only jobs I see going are in the car wash. The other businesses on the street seem likely to continue. And more jobs will be created in the new development. I'm not exactly excited about the proposals but I cant see what great damage would be caused by them.

The Apprentice is not quite my style - but thank you. The area is a subterranean living art gallery. London needs pockets like this.

Neil. This strip is amazing. There are UK, European, International graffa & street artists (Banksy Tunnel!) who come here. There are fashion shoots, music videos, art shows who all use this space. Banksy will be back to save it :)

Just a quick one - Ivanhoe Martin - who are you really before hiding behind a name which appears not to be you..

The quality of the street art seems to have significantly improved recently but at times over the last number of years it's been little more than tags up and down the street (I walk through it at least 20 times a week). I'm sure the fashion shoots and video filming can move to an alternative site representing the urban grimness they are looking for if the development cleans the place up too much for their taste. The plans dont imply that the Vaults will close I dont think (why kill the goose that lays the golden egg) so I'm still struggling to see any of those creative jobs being threatened. It certainly looks like bye bye car wash though.

Neil, it's a living organic art gallery - well know nationally (see Graffa & Street Art) girls who take it over for a big charitable breast cancer bash. Hence the pink you will see in there. Its known and used by Europeans & International artists. If you wish for education on Graffa and street art, I can take you from Cornrow (Philadelphia - tag to his sweetheart like etching into an oak tree) which started this movement to today. There are so many spinoffs - graffuturism - calligraffiti - comics and so on. They now have auctions at the finest auction houses for graffa.

This area needs to be preserved

I agree this area is one of the last quirky bits of lower marsh that maybe left when the money has moved in.
A space used by young people to express themselves and well used. Always interesting and ever changing. Long may it remain as it is.

ljgiles wrote:

Just a quick one - Ivanhoe Martin - who are you really before hiding behind a name which appears not to be you..

In case you hadn't realised, this is the internet...you don't know who anyone is, whatever their username says.
Who I am is someone who's posted on here for years, who's actually met some of the other people on here in real life, and who doesn't tell strange tales about my employment history...