Artists are usually the first to be squeezed out when the developers move in, but Veronica Simpson uncovers a courageous collective in Vauxhall that is staking a claim on its territory

摘要

There's a well-worn trope that artists are the true placemakers, the ones that move into an area that appears unloved - even unloveable - and, through their care and craftsmanship, make it somewhere worth living. Then the developers move in, buildings get demolished or the rents shoot sky high and the artists are forced to move on. That narrative is being endlessly replicated right now all over London during the apparent race to maximise profits on every square inch of land owned by London's voracious developers and cash-strapped councils alike. Nowhere is the scale and pace of change more jaw-dropping than in Vauxhall, where the new American Embassy is nearing completion among the cranes and construction hoardings, while billboards advertise Nine Elms - this once poverty-blasted enclave of post-war housing estates and post-industrial riverfront dereliction - as the ultimate in diplomat-friendly living, renaming it with a theatrical flourish fictional adman Don Draper would be proud of: 'Embassy Gardens'.