JohnPerivolaris. Why this 'Shoreditchification' of London must stop. Is art to blame for gentrification? | Matt Bolton. Bold Tendencies is the art space and cocktail bar standing imperiously on top of a Peckham multi-storey car park. It is charged with so much architectural symbolism it's almost funny: a sky-high contemporary gallery in one of London's poorest districts, packed each evening with painfully well-dressed young white people supping Campari bitters, who gaze down upon the streets of pound shops, mobile phone stalls and cheap clothes stores below. The Evening Standard loves it, naturally. A recent piece extolling "Peckhamania" was filled with picture after picture of white "creatives" making art or tucking into artisan street food, with Bold Tendencies held up as the "epicentre of new Peckham".
Not one black or brown person was featured, despite Peckham being one of the most ethnically diverse areas in Britain. At last, the paper seemed to be saying, we can finally welcome Peckham into our white supremacist fantasyland of a city and we've got art to thank for it. But why art in particular? Should social housing in expensive locations be sold? Chatsworth Road: the frontline of Hackney's gentrification | UK news | The Observer. It's late morning on a Sunday and Venetia's Coffee Shop on Chatsworth Road, London E5, is teeming with the elevenses crowd.
Mums sip on flat whites, nibbling courgette cake and chatting as their kids fight over an abacus, splattering "babyccinos" across the wooden floor. It's hard to reconcile this scene of middle-class chaos with the surrounding area of Clapton – once one of Hackney's worst and home to the real chaos of nearby "Murder Mile". As local childminder Sue Burton says: "Here in Venetia's you can often forget where you are.
" Venetia's was the first shop unit on Chatsworth Road to go upscale five years ago. Since then, middle-class bohemians, often priced out of other areas in east London, have continued to put the chic into shabby here, with a creperie, pop-up gallery spaces and new Sunday market. The early stages of gentrification have created some stark juxtapositions here. Some businesses are doing their bit independently.