The meeting at the Angell Town HQ of Football Beyond Borders in Angell Town
Users, friends and supporters of Brixton’s Max Roach Park met in nearby Angell Town to plan a campaign to care for and clean up the nearest green space to the town centre.
Local community members were joined by Lambeth council and Metropolitan police staff and grassroots campaigners at the headquarters of Football Beyond Borders charity.
They discussed ambitious plans to “Make Max Roach Park Brixton’s beautiful front garden”.
The park contains the Loughborough Community Centre and its adventure playground which provides play and support for local children.
Obstacles they face include Lambeth council’s cash crisis. The council has some money and is planning to replace worn out children’s play equipment, but the campaigners are determined themselves to keep the park clear of the drug paraphernalia and other evidence of its use by people with substance abuse and mental health problems.
The meeting was unanimous that the approach would not be to shift the problem elsewhere by trying to drive people with the problems out of the park.
One participant at the meeting is involved in the Communities Assembly project, a new community campaign to pressure the council to provide support for “homelessness, addiction and mental illness on our streets”. Its launch meeting will be at the Karibu Centre on Gresham Road (SW9 7PH) at 7pm on Thursday 30 October.
The Max Roach campaigners also plan to work with the StreetLink organisation that is dedicated to connecting people sleeping rough to local services. Its online platform enables members of the public to help someone sleeping rough by submitting an alert to local authorities and outreach teams so that they can locate and provide them with support.
The campaigners working towards a low-key celebration of the park in mid-November with music and a picnic.
Created on land originally used for housing and shops, and formerly called Angell Park, the park is named after the world famous US jazz musician, percussionist Max Roach, from Brooklyn, who also played locally.
Max Roach at the opening of the renamed park in 1986. Image: Jet magazine
The new name was a result of a Lambeth council initiative to name local sites after people of African descent. Max Roach was at the opening ceremony in March 1986.
His work includes the album We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, created when he was invited to contribute to commemorations of the 100th anniversary of US president Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of 1 January 1863 – during the American civil war – freeing enslaved African Americans in the rebel states trying to leave the United States.
The park consists of four small areas on the eastern side of the A23 Brixton Road, running from central Brixton to Angell Town.
The Soweto statue in Max Roach Park
It is home to the First Child sculpture by Raymond Watson, commissioned by Railton Road’s 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning and dedicated to the memory of children killed in the 1976 Soweto uprising, during the apartheid era in South Africa.
The father Nature and Brixton BID team after planting the maze
In April 2023 Father Nature and the Brixton Business Improvement District (BID) planted a previously underused grass area in the park with a sensory lavender maze. It is due to take a couple more years to develop fully.
The project was designed to support local pollinators like bees and as an oasis for residents and local workers.
Scan the code to join the Max Roach Park community chat and follow the group’s progress.
The group is also seeking support from local businesses or organisations able to offer financial support for its work.
More about the park: lambeth.gov.uk/parks/max-roach-park
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