Following the success of the first season last December, Making Connections has returned to The Old Waiting Room with a brand-new series of free and affordable art events. Running until 14th July 2024, this summer’s series will include film screenings, large scale artworks and site-specific theatre, plus several talks and community workshops.
Hidden above Peckham Rye station and closed to the public since 1965, The Old Waiting Room has been dormant, derelict and waiting to be repurposed. It sits between two working platforms, with trains and passengers visible beyond its windows. Originally a waiting room, it has been a billiards hall, an illegal rave venue, and a pop-up arts space. Making Connections 24 will engage new audiences and maximise the potential of the space as architects, artists and activists reimagine and reinterpret it.
Designed and directed by majority female, marginalised or under-represented artists, Making Connections focuses on community, care and social connection through creative experiences. The series highlights the importance of these narratives and the need to stand together in the face of adversity and conflict. Work presented explores how healing and solidarity have an impact on mental-wellbeing and our sense of belonging. Making Connections is funded by Arts Council England and Southwark Council’s Thriving High Streets Fund. Produced by Lost Text/Found Space, the series aims to be a platform to share and connect, to enable future collaborations in Peckham and beyond.
Highlights include:
HOMETOWN
7th – 14th June, free
An exhibition of large-scale canvas by Russian artist Pavel Otdelnov, who moved his family to London on a Global Talent visa after protesting against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Otdelnov casts an exile’s jaded eye on his birthplace, uncovering the lives of those who have worked and of those who remain working in Dzerzhinsk, a Soviet city built on sand, once a chemical capital and now one of Russia’s largest munitions hubs. Otdelnov’s paintings, which are often populated by ghosts, feel tailor-made for the Old Waiting room – a space haunted by exoduses. These fantastical ghosts, from his grandmother standing in what was once her plexiglass workshop to gang members who are now often in positions of power, depict the toxic legacy that has poisoned the environment. Hometown narrows in on Otdelno’s first London exhibition, Acting Out, which looked at the wider signs hidden in Russia’s history that led to the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe.
A BRIEF ENCOUNTER – PECKHAM’S OLD WAITING ROOM
Presented within London Festival of Architecture’s ‘South Focus’ week
Thursday 13th June 6-9pm, tickets £6/11.50 price includes free drink and nibbles
An innovative event to explore the Old Waiting Room’s history and its present. A panel discussion will be followed by a Brief Encounter conversation, which will invite people to hear about the process of rediscovering the space and the ambitions for its future from the architects, artists and activists involved. Small, one-to-one conversations with strangers will explore what we can imagine and dream from our public, civic and community spaces. Chaired by Rumi Bose, the event will feature architect Benny Looney, and artists/creatives Anna Burns, Pavel Otdelnov and Creative Director Rebecca McCutcheon.
GUT FEELINGS
18th – 23rd June, free
Launch event: June 18th, 6-9pm
Peckham-based artist and set designer Anna Burns will question human intuition’s role in the current age of algorithmic monotony. Apps now tell us when to get up, when to get pregnant, who to date, and what to
listen to. Burns urges us to pay attention to our gut – encouraging us all to allow the analogue sound, vibrant colours, ritualistic iconography and literal spilling of guts to physically move us through a speculative, ritual space of the future. 13 female doll figures spill their guts and attempt to connect, to tap into an interconnected, cosmic and divine feminine spectacle.
OVER EXPOSED
26th – 30th June, free/PWYC
Junkerry’s Together Apart London preview: 26th June 6 & 8pm
Fulldome Gathering: 28th June 6-9pm
South London based film-maker Em BW curates a four-day immersive 360 dome film festival celebrating experiences of connection and togetherness. Audio-visual experiences will illuminate the collective space to explore our mental state with softness, creativity and without judgement. Visitors will step into the immersive dome and discover untold narratives of female, non-binary and non-human vulnerability.
The film festival also includes the London preview of Junkerry’s Together Apart. This 55-minute immersive feast unfolds in five chapters, delivering strong positive messages of how we disconnect, divide, belong and unite. The piece uses music, songs and spoken voices, along with beautiful, intriguing visuals tailored for the full dome, by artists Alice Kilkenny, Lucy Hardcastle and Natalia Oliwaik to transport audiences into another reality.
STILL LIVES
2nd – 14th July, Tuesday – Saturday, 7.30pm (& 4pm matinees Saturday) tickets £22.38/13.70 or PWYC
Press performance: 3rd July 7.30pm
90 mins
A new, site-specific production of Noel Coward’s Still Lives, which inspired the film Brief Encounter. Directed by Peckham-based Rebecca McCutcheon and adapted by award-winning playwright Dan Rebellato, this version interweaves Still Lives with Coward’s lesser-known Quadrille, creating a world of shifting relationships, desires and missed opportunities for love in the comings and goings of a station platform. Delicately written and deceptively light, the play explores life’s deepest dilemmas, the sliding doors effect of each of our decisions, which carry us along, away from other lives which might have been. With an all-female cast playing cross-gender roles, women’s desire and agency is placed at the heart of the production. With live music, installations and movement, Still Lives will create a world of charged beginnings and endings in the symbolic and literal space of The Old Waiting Room. The production will combine emotionally engaging narrative with immersive theatre techniques to create an unforgettable experience.
MAKING CONNECTIONS 24
Now – 14th July 2024
Peckham Rye Station, Station Way, London SE15 4RX
Website: losttextfoundspace.com
Instagram: losttextfoundspace
Tickets and listings: https://www.losttextfoundspace.com/makingconnectionsowr
ABOUT THE OLD WAITING ROOM
The Old Waiting Room at Peckham Rye station is a hidden gem of London architecture. Closed to the public since 1965, it has been dormant and derelict, waiting to be repurposed since falling into disuse. It sits between two working platforms, with trains and passengers visible beyond its windows. From the station
forecourt a beautiful staircase spirals up two floors to the room itself. Inside, a grand exposed-wooden vaulted ceiling rises above, on a grand scale, while below the space awaits new life to come and go.
ABOUT LOST TEXT/FOUND SPACE
Making Connections is produced by Lost Text/Found Space, an evolving female-led collective of artists and theatre makers who are passionate about working in found sites bringing lost and unheard voices and views to new audiences. We place site, play and text on equal footing, creating bold, layered performances in which audiences feel a strong, playful sense of engagement.
‘Lost Text/Found Space prove that in The Massacre they have found a play for today’ – The Times, 2017
‘Lost Space/Found Text’s approach is gentle and intimate, guiding the audience through the performance and inviting them to participate in small ways.’ – Exeunt Magazine, 2017
‘Most impressive is the fusion of linear narrative with immersive experience to connect Inchbald’s impassioned play to today’s refugee crisis’ – The Stage, 2017
KEY CREATIVES
Rebecca McCutcheon (Creative Director of Making Connections and Director of Still LIves)
Rebecca, a director and founder of Lost Text/Found Space, dedicated to innovative site-based practice with underperformed texts, creating unique productions for adventurous audiences. Site-specific directing includes Til We Meet in England in Safehouse in Peckham, Dido, Queen of Carthage at the House of St Barnabas and at Kensington Palace, The Round Dance at the Roundhouse, Camden. Other directing includes Mirabel (Ovalhouse), Vincent River (Trafalgar Studios) Town Hall (Camden People’s Theatre Calm Down Dear festival). As staff director Tartuffe, The Relapse (National Theatre), As assistant director As You Like It, Romeo & Juliet (Royal Shakespeare Company). Rebecca is Senior Lecturer in Acting & Directing at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Em BW (Senior Creative Producer of Making Connections)
Em BW, artist, designer and creative producer. Designing and producing spatial-narrative experiences using screen-based media, sound, text and Fulldome 360 projection. Em’s work centres female voices and experiences aiming to engage audiences with less spoken about issues. Em’s practice is particularly interested in how mental health and design connect. Em is the co-founder of Syrup Projects, a feminist social design studio that uses story-telling and co-design to create exhibitions and experiences that make research accessible. Em is also a senior lecturer at UAL on MA Design for Social Innovation and Sustainable Futures.
Anna Burns (Designer)
Anna Burns is a Creative Director and artist. Her work spans spatial and experiential design, large-scale site specific installation, ceramics, prints, books and film. Anna works commercially in the realms of fashion and since establishing her career specialising in still life sets for fashion shoots she now produces major works collaborating with creatives across the industry. Her ideas and research are informed by her studies in fine art and her early career in fashion magazines. Designing and directing all concepts from initial drawing to final creation – projects are nurtured with obsessive detail and enthusiastically interpreted with the chosen medium.
Dan Rebellato (Writer)
Dan is a multi-award-winning playwright and academic. Plays include Chekhov in Hell (Plymouth Drum, 2010), Static (Suspect Culture & Graeae, 2008), Here’s What I Did With My Body One Day (Lightwork, 2005/6), Mile End (Analogue, 2007), Beachy Head (Analogue, 2009), Theatremorphosis (Suspect Culture
& CCA, 2009), Outright Terror Bold and Brilliant (NYT/Soho, 2006) and A Modest Adjustment (National Theatre, 2006). Dan has written 12 plays for BBC Radio, including Cavalry, My Life is a Series of People Saying Goodbye, and Negative Signs of Progress. Dan is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Emma Lord (Associate Producer of Making Connections)
Emma is a producer, performer and founder of Lord Productions LTD, a brand-new production company which focuses on storytelling with a purpose. Emma’s production work centres around ensuring accessibility, equality and diversity is weaved through the heart of all projects. Emma is also the co-founder of Crowd Pleaser Events, a female-led, experience-first events agency curating unique, immersive events for real escapism.