Mix it Up at Brockley Max

This year’s Brockley Max festival willl run for nine days from 27 May to 4 June and is dedicated to the memory of the beautiful and vibrant Gill Fraser, co-organiser of Brockley Max. The Opening Night starts at 2 pm on Friday, 27 May outside Brockley Station with the legendary evening of entertainment. With the best line–up ever including more than ten groups, the evening will be hosted once again by ‘Dre the coolest, smoothest MC in Brockley and produced by Richard Swan, one of Brockley’s best known musos. What follows is eight more days of exciting, surprising, family-friendly activities, events, workshops and exhibitions across Brockley, Ladywell, Crofton Park and Honor Oak.

Now in its eleventh year, Brockley Max brings the best talent and creativity the area has to offer for your enjoyment. The theme this year is “Max It Up – Join The Fun” where the community has come together to keep Brockley Max alive and thriving despite the cuts. It still is the best place to celebrate the summer in SE London. Full details of all the events can be found on Brockley Max's website

Brockley Max is run by Max Media Arts, a community-led volunteer organisation. Shops, churches, cafes, bars and local businesses support the festival by hosting events, giving raffle prizes and displaying programmes. The festival only happens because of the hundreds of volunteers who give their time, whether performing, organising, or helping at events. All of them make this area a special and better place to live.

DLR Extension to Forest Hill?

According to London Reconnections, TfL Planning is now developing five Sub Regional Transport Plans which propose projects which can deliver the Mayor's Transport Strategy in each of North, East, South, West and Central London. These proposals include a number of DLR schemes to improve connectivity and capacity to Docklands.

One of these schemes includes bringing the DLR from Lewisham to Catford and on to Forest Hill. While the idea of going to Catford is a relatively old one (it appeared in Horizon 2020, a previous proposal on which these options are based), the surprise addition is the idea of DLR coming to Forest Hill. Catford is an obvious choice for a DLR extension and it would follow a disused railway line which would provide new journey opportunities and numerous benefits to the Hayes line and the Catford loop.

There are no details of what route the DLR would take from Catford, but a solution at ground level or involving a viaduct does not seem very attractive whereas a tunnel would be very expensive. While all four proposals had a BCR exceeding 2.0:1 (which means that the scheme should be built), this option has the lowest BCR of the four proposals and so is probably least likely to go ahead.

The other three proposed extensions are Gallions Reach to Dagenham Dock, Bank to St Pancras and Bank to Victoria.

Craft Fair at The Hob

The Hob will be having their Craft & Design Fair next weekend - Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th May.

All the stalls will be by local artists; there will be ceramics, glassware, pre-loved vintage, photography, jewellery, textiles, lights & lamps, hand made cards & soaps, homemade cakes and a local author with his new book.

The fair will be downstairs in the pub from noon to 5 pm.

Royal Wedding Party Photos

Thank you everyone who came and made the Royal Wedding Party at the old Post Office/ Sylvan Post such a success. At last, we have uploaded the photos and these can be found on our Flickr site - feel free to add your own!

Havelock Open Weekends

This weekend is the first of two Open Studio weekends on Havelock Walk as part of the Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House trail. As usual, you will be able to see wonderful works by photographers, a glass maker, painters, sculptors, furntiture makers, illustrators and more! The studios will be open betweem 11:00 am and 6:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday, 7/8 and 14/15 May.

FH Space (9 Havelock Walk) will host a talk by Humphrey Ocean RA on Saturday, 14 May at 6 pm. Tickets are available at £5 from HavelockWalk.com. Humphrey Ocean was born in Sussex in 1951 and went to art schools in Tunbridge Wells, Brighton and Canterbury. From 1971 to 1973 he was bass player with Kilburn and the Highroads and was elected a Royal Academician in 2004. He also designed album covers for 10CC and Paul McCartney, toured with The Who and Ian Drury, then returned to painting, became a professor and an RA at the age of 50.

This year's mural at the entrance to Havelock Walk by Supermundane (Robert Lowe) is titled "You thought it was all for you". Supermundane is a designer, illustrator, graphic artist, art director, typographer and writer living in London, England. He is the art director of the children's magazine Anorak and the food writing quarterly Fire & Knives.

Rockbourne Relaunch

For the last two years, Rockbourne has been working in partnership with Aiming High to secure funds to develop and renovate the Youth Club. Despite the recent budget cuts, approval was given for internal and external alterations to the Youth Club, including a new, disabled accessible entrance, changing facilities and a floodlit, multi-use pitch. The work started in December 2010 and was finished by the end of March.

They will be holding an open day on Saturday, May 7th from noon to 4 pm which will allow you to see the great work that has and is being done at the Youth Club.

Noon to 2pm

Roller Disco, Basketball/Football Classes, Food Stalls, Raffle, meet the staff, Young People and the Friends of Rockbourne Committee, tour of the Youth Club.

3:00 pm

Premier Film Screening of ‘Rockheros: The Club of flying Swords’ - the latest film from the Rockbourne Film group.

3:30pm

Presentation and Thank You’s

Forest Hill in Bloom

Many thanks to everybody involved in planting the flowers around Forest Hill station over the last couple of weeks. We hope everybody enjoys the improvements this will make to the station forecourt and the station platforms.

Royal Wedding in Forest Hill

The Forest Hill Society in conjuction with the 'Sylvan Post' will be organising a celebration from 2-5pm at the old post office on Dartmouth Road.

From 2-5pm, on Friday 29th April, we will be holding a wedding party in and outside the Old Post Office. Antic (the owners) will be selling bottled beers/ciders and if a nice day set out a living room outside. Please bring food to share as well as friends & family and lets enjoy a day off in Forest Hill!

Fun activities for all:

• Pin the crown on the prince and princess
• Fancy dress competition best prince and princess
• Guess the weight of the cake
• Royal wedding themed art activities

Bunting provided by Messy Makers and Stag & Bow.

Bursting into Bloom

The Forest Hill Society’s entry in the London in Bloom ‘It’s your neighbourhood’ category has been accepted. The Localities’ Fund award from Lewisham Council is agreed and dates are set.

Forest Hill station forecourt will be the centre of our attention – being the most visible point of entry and exit in our town, but with a leafleting and poster campaign in the offing, we hope to inspire individuals, shops and businesses to brighten up their homes, shops and premises with flowers.

The programme is: Saturday 9 April 10.00am – 1.00pm: work with volunteers from Nature’s Gym to help dig the existing beds.

Saturday 16 April from 2.30pm: All ages welcome to help with the replanting. If you join in, many hands will make light work of transforming the station forecourt into a thing of beauty. Forest Hill will bloom this year!

Bring & Take

The Forest Hill Society and The Friends of Devonshire Road Nature Reserve are running another Bring and Take Day at the Devonshire Rd. Nature Reserve, 170 Devonshire Road, SE23 3SZ on Sunday 10th April 11.00 – 3.00pm

Bring something you no longer need…….

Bicycles, Push-chairs, Hard-back books, CD’s, DVD’s, Small items of Furniture, Household Ornaments, Musical Instruments, High-quality Clothing, Footwear, Tools, Electrical goods, Kitchenware etc

Take something you can put to good use!!

All items should be in good working order
No bric-a-brac or general re-cycling


Tea, Coffee and homemade cakes for sale and the Nature Reserve will be open for visitors