Local Christmas markets, Friday 6th – Saturday 8th

Art Hub Studios Art & Design Fair

Friday 6th December, 4-9pm

Saturday & Sunday 7th & 8th December, 12-5pm

Art Hub Gallery, 5-9 Creekside, SE8 4SA

Buy direct from the artists and designers: Textiles, Jewellery, Glassware, Furniture, Art, Ceramics, Prints, Hand-crafted gifts, T-shirts – plus mulled wine and music! 

FREE ENTRY

If, on a Winter's Day – Deptford Society Christmas Market

Saturday 7th December, 10am-4.30pm

Deptford Lounge, Giffin Square, Deptford High Street

The recently formed Deptford Society (sign up to their mailing list here) hosts its first event in collaboration with The Albany and Deptford Lounge. Featuring the monthly Giffin Square Food Fair, live music from Heart of Steel and Tidemill Academy school choir, performance art from Something Human, cooking demos outside Codfathers (11am-2pm) and interactive art installations along the high street.  

Plus local heritage project Build The Lenox will be showing off their restored 17th century ship's cannon, along with displays about Deptford's Royal Dockyard, 

the Deptford Shanty Crew will sing bawdy songs at 2pm, 

followed by talks about Deptford Dockyard from maritime historian  

Richard Endsor and children's novelist and black history expert S I Martin.

Also pick up a free glass of mulled wine when you join the Deptford Society!

Cockpit Arts Christmas Open Studios

Friday 6th December, 11am-9pm (FREE ENTRY), 

Saturday & Sunday 7th & 8th December, 11-6pm (£3 entry)

Cockpit Arts, 18-22 Creekside SE8 3DZ

165+ designer-makers, gifts, kids workshops, demonstrations, 

live music, mulled wine & festive fare.

More details at www.cockpitarts.com/shopping-events

APT Christmas Parlour

Friday 6th December, 6-8pm

Saturday & Sunday 7th & 8th December, 1-5pm

APT Gallery, 6 Creekside SE8 4SA

Drawings, paintings, prints & sculptures by APT artists + cards and jewellery

Little Nan's Christmas Market with Cocktails

Saturday 7th December, 12-6pm

Little Nan's Bar, Deptford Broadway

Featuring gifts, textiles, home objects, bags, clothes, vintage garb, hoodies & Ts, 

Little Nan's Hampers, plus cocktails & treats in the bar.

Coming up...

Deptford Wives Vintage Christmas & Craft Market

Saturday & Sunday 14th & 15th December, 10.30am-4pm

Albany, Douglas Way SE8 4AG

Ceramics, classy vintage items, jewellery, decorations, arts & crafts, leatherwork, T-shirts

Xmas Extravganza at New Cross Learning
Sunday 15th December, 1–7.30pm
Puppets, stories, Santa, jazz + surprise guests...and the NXL AGM somewhere in it all...

Deptford X continues till Sunday...

Photo by George Avvakoumides

The Deptford X banner "Art Makes People Powerful", created by a flash mob of artists in Giffin Square last Saturday (see video) now hangs on the front of the LESOCO building on Deptford Broadway.

We wonder if Art Can help Make Powerful all the highly qualified staff who have been made redundant (at Southwark, at least, without any renumeration packages) as a result of the merger of Lewisham and Southwark colleges and education cuts in general.

Meanwhile, this weekend there are Open Studios and an Art Quiz at the Dog and Bell on Sunday as well as a multitude of gallery shows and shop takeovers. We like the installation at the new Vinyl cafe in Tanners Hill – called Soft Wax, it looks at music and culture of the Jamaican diaspora at the end of the 1950s. The new cafe is lovely, and there's a secondhand vinyl shop in the basement, along with the exhibition.

On Saturday at the Albany (10am-4pm), artist Bernadette Russell asks "Is it possible to change the world just by being kind?" in her interactive show 366 Days of Kindness. The idea is that members of the public can write a few words about how a kind act from a stranger touched their lives, on a ticket which is attached to a balloon. The balloons are then released at the end of the day.

There is still much for us to see, and too much to cover in detail, but we especially like Deptford Is Forever, who have given out paper bags to high street shopkeepers and market traders with a tattoo design printed on them that says "Give Us Back Our Bloomin' Anchor". The design is lovely, and to pay for the free bags the group has also had printed some T-shirts and cotton shoppers that locals seem to be snapping up. The T-shirt has the Deptford Is Forever logo on it (see below, the shirt being worn by Niaomh from the Deptford Community Cookbook team). You can pick up your T-shirt for £10 at Kids Love Ink, the tattoo parlour at 138 Deptford High Street.

The Waiting Room Coffee shop, Little Nan's bar on Deptford Broadway, and Ralph at High Street Flowers also have some cotton shoppers for sale apparently (£5), and the group commissioned High Street Flowers to make a "ghost anchor" to hang in the window.

Not only that but the group have organised a day of FREE tattooing (a little anchor of your choice) at Kids Love Ink. That's tomorrow and is apparently oversubscribed – those wanting to take up the offer had to book today, or else take a chance tomorrow. Participants will be asked for a donation to Deptford Reach, the project that looks after Deptford's street drinkers and anyone who's hit hard times, and Build The Lenox, the local project that wants to build a replica 17th century ship at Convoys Wharf.

The Deptford Is Forever "Anchor Fest" continues on the weekend with a musical procession along the high street at around midday-2pm which features a huge cardboard anchor made by Arthouse artist Laura X Carlé that was last spotted in the My Deptford show at the South Bank and seen by anyone attending London Open House at the Master Shipwright's House. The procession gathers at the Dog & Bell pub at 12 and aims to end up before 3pm at Lewisham Arthouse on Lewisham Way, where there's an exhibition and Open Studios all weekend.

We also hear that Little Nan's will be having a bit of a "Deptford Is Forever" night on Saturday, with nautically themed cocktails, some of which will feature Pusser's rum, the preferred drink of the Navy which used to be stored in Deptford Dockyard.

The group certainly seem to have run with the Deptford X theme Art Makes People Powerful, and have an informative website about the Anchor and the Deptford Dockyard (some of which has been taken from this blog). But whether the Deptford Anchor returns to the high street and its environs is another matter...

More info at www.deptfordisforever.net
Or like their Facebook page

www.deptfordx.org

New Deptford nights out

 

A new Comedy Club launched at The Big Red last Saturday. Click on the image above for details of days, times and prices.

Meanwhile, Little Nan's Bar launched last Friday. It's downstairs in the old Bunker Club at 46 Deptford Broadway and has 'popped up' to stay for six months, open every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 5-11pm.

Tiger beer for £3.40 a pint, Strongbow Cider for £2.90 a pint and loads of vintage priced cocktails and premium spirits, bottled beers, ciders, ales and wines - along with Victoria Sponge cake, Cheese straws (88 year old Recipe) and Million Dollar Shortbread.

See Little Nan's Facebook page.