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Peckham’s working-class legacy is central to the vision and necessity of Living Threaded—A Studio of Becoming. This project is not parachuted into the area—it is rooted in, and responsive to, the lived realities of a community shaped by economic precarity, cultural resilience, and creative resistance.

According to recent ONS and Southwark data:

• 66.8% of Peckham residents rent their homes, with only 33.2% owning property—well below the national average, indicating limited wealth accumulation.

• The area ranks #1 in Southwark for employment in caring, leisure, and sales roles, sectors often associated with low pay and high emotional labour.

• Peckham is #2 in Southwark for households experiencing multiple forms of deprivation, including employment, education, and housing.

• 44% of residents were born outside the UK, and 46.8% identify as Black British or African-Caribbean, communities historically excluded from cultural institutions and creative industries.

These statistics are not abstract—they are the backdrop against which this project unfolds. Living Threaded seeks to reclaim public space as a site of care, visibility, and creative authorship for working-class youth and communities of colour. By embedding the project in Peckham, we honour its layered histories while resisting the erasure often brought by gentrification.

This context strengthens the ethical grounding of the project and justifies the need for funding that supports not just artistic output, but structural transformation. It affirms that creative practice can be a tool for equity, and that public art—when rooted in place and community—can become a living archive of resistance, belonging, and becoming.

​Creative PEC (2024) – State of the Nation Report ONS Census 2021 Southwark Council Equality Reports

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