Event Details
The Peckham Experiment was a visionary health initiative. From 1935 it was housed in the Pioneer Health Centre – the beautiful modernist building on St Mary’s Road. With the birth of the NHS, the experiment closed; the building was eventually redeveloped as private flats in the 1990s.
Guy Ware’s latest novel, The Peckham Experiment, takes place in the Centre over one night in June 2017, as the 85-year old Charlie Jellicoe looks back in preparation for his twin brother’s funeral.
The Experiment was their Eden; after the war they set out to build the New Jerusalem. Idealism turns to compromise, corruption and tragedy however, when a tower block they’ve built collapses.
Together with Daniel Liston of the Pioneer Health Foundation, Guy will present an exhibition of archive photographs and discuss the complex lessons and challenges the Peckham Experiment offers for our own times as social housing and the NHS struggle with changes in politics, funding and public expectations.
Ticket price deducted from book purchase. Doors open at 6.30pm