JUSTINE SIMONS AND PECKHAM PALMS

‘Collaboration is integral to the way our communities have strived and thrived’

JUSTINE SIMONS OBE, deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries, has always been an advocate for the creative communities, but her work took on new meaning as the Covid-19 crisis reached its peak this year. ‘London is an international fashion capital and although the pandemic has presented real challenges, the industry has really come together. There is a genuine appetite to rethink and reset and it’s clear that fashion can play a key role in accelerating our economic recovery,’ she says.

Together with the Mayor of London, she launched the Covid At Risk fund to support London’s creative and cultural industries through the pandemic, aimed at artist workspaces, grass-roots music venues, LGBTQ+ venues and independent cinemas across the capital. One of the programme’s notable success stories was south London’s Peckham Palms, a new Afrocentric retail space in Peckham, which provides hairstyling and beauty services, and is home to more than 20 professional hair and beauty stylists and lifestyle businesses. The grant helped cover the rent for its stylists.

‘At the beginning of the year, most of the businesses at The Palms were looking forward to a very positive new year, and things started off well, especially after a busy and energetic first year,’ says Monique Tomlinson, director and general manager of Peckham Palms. ‘Then Covid hit us out of nowhere! The biggest threat was “how are we supposed to earn a living, as we are self-employed?” Cyndi Anafo, non-executive director at Peckham Palms, adds, ‘The fund was a fantastic lifeline at an incredibly difficult time. As a destination hub that incubates new businesses primarily led by Black women, the concept of collaboration is integral to the way our communities have strived and thrived historically and a crisis like this has most certainly encouraged this kind of working.’