‘A new world has opened up’: How a London street was filled with art – and brought the neighbors together | Art and design

IIn 1986, an exhibition called Chambres d’Amis took contemporary art beyond the confines of the museum and into the homes of 58 residents in Ghent. Forty years later, a similar experiment is taking place, but in a small street in Peckham, south-east London.

Neighbors Rooms is the brainchild of curator Ben Broome, who came across Chambres d’Amis while between corporate functions. With time and a desire to get to know his neighbors better, he began to wonder how he could apply the idea to his community, but with a broader focus. Unlike the exhibition in Ghent, which was held mostly in the homes of art world friends and museum patrons, its private street – a mix of privately owned council houses, flats and houses – represents a wider demographic, with different age groups, social classes and expatriates. He told me that few of the residents had any previous connection to the art world: “The majority of people had never been to the Tate, and had never even been to the South London Gallery, which is a local institution. But that doesn’t mean some of the neighbors aren’t really creative.”

Early last year, Broome knocked on his neighbors’ doors to introduce himself, before pitching the idea to them over cups of tea. The 12 families who signed up were paired with a mix of established and emerging artists, each of whom had an interest in domestic spaces or what Broome refers to as “social practice.” Since then, a range of custom and site-specific works have been installed in the homes, gardens and public spaces of participants.

The works span different media, from painting and sculpture to more conceptual and ephemeral forms. Alongside the olfactory work designed for resident Raluca’s pigeons, artist Rachel Crowther created a motion-activated speaker that emits soothing sounds at a frequency appropriate to her pet cat. A few doors away, 2023 Turner Prize nominee Ghislaine Leong, whose work explores childcare and family dynamics, has recreated her 2024 mural of a young family, using bold colors to interrogate childcare provisions made by the UK government. He lives behind the crib in their children’s bedroom.

Meanwhile, Raheel Khan, who has previously done work on sound in devotional spaces, developed a soundtrack to be played on the custom stereo in Nigel’s convertible. Inspired by William Blake’s childhood memories of Peckham Ray Park, it features a distorted, twisted rendition of The Lamb (the choral song based on Blake’s poem) with extra bass specifically designed for Nigel’s subwoofer. “It was a fun project, because we could take art history and critical theory around it, but it was actually fun to wander into that tone and learn about it a little bit.” The track is now among the UK garage on Nigel’s playlist, and he continues to play it while the car’s roof is down. “It’s nice to think that this work could just be part of the Beckham fabric,” Khan adds.

This community spirit runs through much of the exhibition, from developing ideas together to choosing a workplace, processes in which residents become collaborators and “curators of their homes,” Broome says. Multidisciplinary artist Olokemi Legado worked with Pamela, a retired social worker who has lived on the street for 40 years, to select images from her family’s photo albums to scan and turn into collages that connect the dots between their shared Caribbean heritage. “It was very refreshing and very real,” Legado says of the experience. “I think when you make a work that is going to live in someone’s home, there’s a responsibility, but there’s also an intimacy because they’re going to live with it every day.” After months of working together, the couple has kept in touch and Pamela now sees Legado as family.

In many ways, Neighbors’ Rooms is as much a social project as it is an exhibition. Many of the residents met for the first time, and now communicate regularly via the WhatsApp group. “It’s like a new world opened up for all of us,” says Pamela, who lives alone. “It’s good to know what’s happening on the road rather than living in our own little bubbles.”

Most of the works will remain in place indefinitely, living among residents’ plants and furnishings. An architectural sculpture by Liam Gillick, installed in one of the public parks, has since been reused by neighbours, who use it as a gathering place for barbecues and storage space for their garden furniture. Customized ping-pong tables designed by Rirkrit Tiravanija opposite houses gradually became unusable and became covered in graffiti marks, developments welcomed by the artist and Broome. “I think it’s important that these kind of projects are done, outside of the art world and in civic space, because they interact with people in a different way,” says Broome, who believes institutional spaces are increasingly failing both artists and audiences due to lack of funding. “Bringing art to people’s doorsteps can serve as a catalyst for something more.”