Art and Activism – Page 2 – King's Cross Story Palace

1972 Crowndale Rd, London, UK

From life to art, and back to life again

George Eugeniou approaches playwriting as a cycle: it starts on the ground, with his community, where he embeds himself in the lives and struggles of the people around him. He then pours that experience back into the creative melting pot, and makes work that is rooted in the concerns of his time and place. This ...

1980s Argyle Street, London, UK

Window boxes and needle exchanges

Sioned Churchill’s first job in King’s Cross was at the Neighbourhood Centre on Argyle Street, where she organised activities for older people. At the time she was struck by the camaraderie and sense of community that she found there. The residents were cheerful, resilient and full of humour, despite the hardship that some of them ...

1980-2000 King's Cross, London, UK

Contestation on the dance floor

Huw Arfon Williams was born in 1959, and came to London in 1983. We meet him to discuss gay London from the 80s onwards, in a stylish members’ club in Soho. It’s a fitting place to meet Huw, who is a stylish man, but when he declares that the sartorial choices he made in the ...

1980 - 1990s Pentonville Rd, London, UK

There was something in the gritty, shitty air of King’s Cross

After graduating from Warwick University, Rob Pateman moved into a rundown flat in Finsbury Park and spent his 20’s exploring his sexuality on London’s gay scene. A key part of his education and centre of his social universe was The Bell, an iconic gay pub at Kings Cross. He worked on the door for several ...

1980s King's Cross, London, UK

If you can’t kill yourself, you get on and live

Jonathan Blake was born in 1949. That makes him 68 years old when we meet him to talk about his memories of King’s Cross and LGSM, in September 2017. He is officially a pensioner, he tells me proudly; he never expected to be able to say that, having been diagnosed with HTLV-3 – which later ...