Peckham Platform is a creative and educational charity based in Peckham, south London. We bring local communities together with leading artists to co-produce social art that responds directly to the needs and concerns of the people involved.

We commission new work, run workshops, talks and exhibitions and provide progression routes for young people. For each new artist commission we work with people in our community to jointly identify themes, develop a brief and select artists. The group then collaborates with the artist to create new work. The model of joint decision-making continues right through to the exhibition, installation or event.

Our Programme

Our artistic programme strives to be both relevant and useful to artists and the communities with whom we work. Reflecting our values and concerns as a cultural organisation with a civic duty. We are committed to community-led co-commissioning and creating a genuinely collaborative process.

What's on

Our Impact

Our Impact Reports reflect on the difference we have made to the people we are working with and the issues that we are responding to.

  • Impact Report 2021-2022
  • Impact Report 2020-2021
  • Impact Reports 2009-2013
  • What is social art?

    Socially engaged art can be broadly defined as what happens when artists work with people in the co-creation of a public outcome. In the context of Peckham Platform, this means that we support artists to work with Peckham’s communities in the process of making something together.

    image of a group of people taking part in an art session around a table with Peckham Platforme

    Vision

    Our vision is to create a connected society by working with communities and artists.

    Mission

    Our mission is to create opportunities for artists and communities to come together and creatively explore and respond to political issues that matter people in Peckham.

    Values

    Connection

    We form meaningful relationships with the people, places and communities we work with.

    Access

    Our work creates welcoming, transparent, open and responsive accessible spaces even when dealing with complex and difficult issues.

    Rigour

    Our work is considered, thorough and often resource intensive.

    Reflection

    Our work responds to the places and people where we work, and we are always reflective in our delivery.

    Our Pledge

    We stand together

    Addressing racial inequality has always been an important element of Peckham Platform’s work. We work holistically across all aspects of our organisation to dismantle racial inequality.

    On 3 June 2020 Peckham Platform made a public statement voicing our grief and anger during a time of collective mourning and action.

    Events in the UK and beyond have exposed the extent of systemic and institutional racism, leading us to deepen our commitment to address the structural inequities of how we operate as an organisation.

    As part of this process we pledge to:

    • Actively work to diversify our senior leadership and ensure that the artistic vision and governance of Peckham Platform is relevant to the needs of contemporary society and the communities of colour we serve
    • Advocate for and support change across the creative sector. This includes asking our funders to financially support deep institutional change and encouraging the wider cultural sector to address the depth of institutional racism within their own organisations
    • Encourage younger people of colour to enter the creative sector through support and mentoring Progress those already in the sector through leadership roles and other avenues of personal and professional development
    • Embed anti-racism into all our work and artistic programme
    • Provide a publicly accessible archive to promote anti-racism and black activism in the arts
    • Review policies, procedures and recruitment processes
    • Promote respect, self-care and positive wellbeing as central to the work of dismantling racism

    We are continuously revising and working to deliver this pledge. We are evolving our pledge to be accountable and to reflect where we are at as an organisation. 

    Read in our 2020-21 Impact Report about the action we have taken.

    From 2021 our Annual Reports document our progress on actions taken to deliver our pledge. 

    Meet the team

    Our dynamic team includes producers, curators, artists and entrepreneurs from our local community

    Meet the Team

    Our Space

    We operate from Peckham, south London, and currently don’t have a permanent home. Instead we use a range of sites, locations and venues to display public artwork throughout Peckham, collaborating with local partner organisations to hold workshops and events.

    Our Future

    Securing a physical venue for Peckham Platform and our communities to engage creatively with social art is more vital than ever in the wake of COVID-19. In 2025 we are launching a new home on Peckham Square that we hope will become a space for connection for everyone in Peckham, putting culture and creativity at the heart of our area’s future recovery.

    While work is underway, we’ll be delivering events and installations in different venues across Peckham – sign up to our newsletter to receive all our news.

    If you would like to get involved or hear more, please contact Karin Kihlberg at karin@peckhamplatform.com

    Our History

    Peckham Platform today is the result of many years of bringing together artists and communities in an open ended conversation about how art can help us build a better, more connected society. Set up in 2006 by Emily Druiff, the organisation is embedded in Peckham, south London

    • From 2005 to now – our history timeline

      2020

      The COVID-19 pandemic leads to the shutting down of schools, workplaces and leisure facilities across the country. Peckham Platform responds by developing and distributing art boxes with Meals on Wheels to support and encourage community cohesion and creativity.

      2018-2019

      Peckham Platform continues to work off-site, developing partnerships with Frieze London, Horniman Museum, Flat-Time House and being one of the founding associates of Tate Exchange.

      2017

      The organisation moves out of the gallery. The last show in the old building is Peckham Platform Retrospective, celebrating over 20 commissions of artists working with communities across Peckham.

      2016

      London Borough of Southwark puts Peckham Square up for redevelopment, meaning that the gallery is to be demolished and rebuilt. Peckham Platform win the public tender to be the operator of new venue when it is complete.

      2015

      Peckham Platform is awarded National Portfolio status by Arts Council England.

      Original artworks by Bob & Roberta Smith, Jeremy Deller, Janette Parris and Fatima Begum are shown in the gallery as part of Vote Art, a national campaign encouraging people to vote in the 2015 UK general election.

      The organisation launches its Social Art Map, the start of a resource and budding network for those interested in research and practice of social art.

      Peckham Platform’s Youth Platform is launched.

      2014

      Peckham Platform launches as an independent charity, opened by MP Harriet Harman.

      The organisation works with mental health service-users for the first time, commissioning Kathrin Böhm to co-create the interactive exhibition Money Distribution Machine and Other Useful Contraptions. It is Peckham Platform’s most popular exhibition with over 4,000 visitors in 10 weeks.

      2013

      Kimathi Donkor’s ‘Daddy I want to be a Black Artist’ examines Black representation in national art collections. It is Peckham Platform’s first time working with Tate and its archives.

      Sarah Cole’s TRIBE fills the gallery with real turf and puts loudspeakers and an ice-cream van on Peckham Square for an exhibition created with Southwark’s Young Women’s group exploring their ideas of place, safety, language and disguise.

      2012

      Garudio Studiage work with Southwark Youth Council to commemorate the riots with the Peckham Peace Wall permanently installed outside the gallery on Peckham Square.

      Peckham Platform commissions Barby Asante, working with Leaders of Tomorrow, to create the South London Black Music Archive. The gallery becomes an open archive, inviting the public to send in their memories of nights out in musical venues across south east London – these are then broadcast on a tickertape and added to an interactive map. A call for personal items to be added to the archive leads to over 100 donations – from tshirts to gig ticket stumps.

      2011

      Peckham Platform starts using its community led co-commissioning model, inviting communities to be involved with setting the brief and appointing artists. The first commission is Sonia Boyce with Southwark Children’s Services’ Young Women’s Group to create Network, a multi-screen video installation.

      Shops in Peckham are burnt and looted during riots which take place across London in response to the killing of Mark Duggan by police. Hoardings go up over shopfronts and local people cover them in positive messages of peace and pride in Peckham. Peckham Platform collects the messages for an artwork when the hoardings are removed.

      2010

      The inaugural exhibition opens with new artworks by Rachael House, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Clegg & Guttmann and Southwark TV.

      “I felt excited to come to the opening. Like something was open to me. It is enabling and bringing together and it was respected by the art establishment and it had a respected position within it. It wasn’t just ticking the box about social engagement. This comes from the heart.”

      Tracey Smith – local resident who worked front of house in the gallery.

      2009

      The design and construction of the new gallery begins with Penson Group as architects supported by local councillors who join the breaking ground.

      2008

      Emily Druiff is appointed as Director and starts commissioning artists to work with communities in Peckham as an offsite programme, whilst the venue is developed.

      The first artist to be commissioned is Harold Offeh who develops Peckham TV, exploring the area’s potential and future with young people.

      “In Peckham Square you had less of the art world infrastructure but you had a completely open model…Working in that location in that way was a mixture of feeling vulnerable and not knowing what to say. But regardless of what people have to say, they are interested and I felt like that had to be reciprocated”

      Harold Offeh, artist

      2005

      Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London and London Borough of Southwark begin planning the creation of an accessible cultural space on Peckham Square, London SE15.

    Partners

    Peckham Platform is committed to working in close consultation with its partners to provide young people and residents of Peckham with direct contact to artists and positive creative experiences. We aim to develop partnerships with organisations that prioritise education, creativity and social art as key objectives and that are either geographically located close to Peckham Square, London SE15 or benefit local communities.

    Funders

    We are grateful for the funding and support we have received over the past years which has enabled us to deliver our vision, mission and programme of activities. A special thanks goes to our current and past funders: AHRC Royal Holloway, ArtFund, Artquest, Arts Awards, Arts Council England, Charter House Southwark, Cleaner Greener Safer LBS, David Family Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Heritage Lottery Fund, Horniman Museum, Jonathan Ruffer, Local Trust ‘Creating Civic Change’, Queen Mary University of London, Neighbourhood Fund LBS, Newcomen Collett Foundation, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, Riva, Southwark Council, St Olaves and St Saviours School Foundation, Sustrans, The Big Lottery, The Grocers Charity and all those who have supported us through individual donations and gifts.

     

     

    Artists

    Meet the socially engaged artists working with our communities in Peckham

    All Artists