Let's hear it for our lead sponsor!

We’re delighted to introduce international workspace provider HB Reavis as our lead sponsor for Waterloo Festival for the third year in succession. Waterloo is home to the company’s upcoming development project of Elizabeth House. Last October, HB Reavis secured resolution to grant planning permission to replace Elizabeth House with new office space, transform the public space around Waterloo Station, create a new pedestrianised retail street and improve access to the South Bank. Take a look at the plans, which even include a publicly accessible one-acre garden promenade, here.

Louise Loannou, Senior Marketing & PR Manager, said: "HB Reavis is proud to champion Waterloo Festival 2020 as part of our work to help make Waterloo an even better place to live, work and visit. The Festival is now more important than ever in giving people reason to be hopeful and to celebrate." We’re working with the HB Reavis team on some joint events for this year. Watch this space!

First there was a housing co-op...

Here’s to another week of amazing articles created by and for our community. This week there’s a bit of a Coin Street theme starting with the first instalment of our podcast series ‘Coin Street Remembers’. Abigail Tripp, Tom Keller and Natalie Bell reflect on their experiences of moving to Waterloo and the changes they have witnessed over the last 20 to 30 years - remember when the South Bank was sleepy and inaccessible?  Abigail is a member of our creative partner Flux Soup, Tom, a Coin Street Community Builders board member and resident of Palm Co-op, and Natalie is Head of Youth and Community Programmes at Coin Street.

Art4Minds for Mental Health Awareness Week

In celebration of Mental Health Awareness Week, we’ve asked Art4Minds, a collective that explores the healing potential of shared creative expression, to show us what they’ve been up to with Coin Street’s Youth Forum. If you are a local resident aged 12 to 19 contact Laura to join in. If you’re not, check out Art4Mind’s takeover of our Instagram. Instant feel good. Promise.

That’s lit!

The team behind Illuminated River, the project to light London’s bridges in celebration of the spirit of the Thames and its communities, has teamed up with Coin Street to provide art classes for those aged 9+ under lockdown - and we’re honoured that they’ve chosen Waterloo Festival as the platform to exhibit their work each week. Check it out!

If you’re still looking for inspiration, Coin Street has a whole Covid cupboard full of suggestions.

Ed to ed with SE1

Notes from The Cello Factory

Local artist Susan Haire once made a prayer tree out of hundreds of the rolled up reminder notes she obsessively writes to herself. We don’t need reminding that for Waterloo Festival 2018 she curated the prophetically named sculpture exhibition ‘Nothing Endures but Change' in St John’s churchyard. Now, from her studio in The Cello Factory, she reflects on her past work and finds that lockdown has her yearning for “the autonomy, the intimacy and human-ness of painting, the physicality of handling paint, the deliciousness of mixing colours but also chance, the spontaneity and serendipity, the unpredictable, the wildness and being devoured by it.” Read more...we dare you!

Story Radio Podcast

...are a group of volunteer storytellers currently providing us with a new Waterloo story every two weeks. Here’s Persepolis, by Miki Lentin, about a meeting between Tony, a volunteer, and Ali, a refugee, at a refugee support centre in Waterloo, with the backdrop of 'End Game' playing at the Old Vic Theatre. Who needs Radio 4? Listen now.

Over to you!

The website will be continually updated with new content between now and the end of June. Anyone who has ideas for contributions please email us - we want to hear from you!