Louise Rondel is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research in Sociology at Goldsmiths. She is researching London’s beauty industry and its vibrant materialities to examine the co-constitutive relationship between bodies and cities. Louise is also the co-curator of Infrastructral Explorations, a series of participatory encounters with the impacts of infrastructure on the urban landscape.
@LouiseRondel
[email protected]
@LouiseRondel
[email protected]
I was delighted to be invited to take part in #Hairytage at the Peckham Festival and at Peckham Levels as part of HGAED’s Black History Month programme. My PhD research explores the relationship between bodies and places looking at how these influence and shape each other and, in particular, I am interested in London’s beauty industry - following people and products to and through the salon - as a way of examining these relationships. Alix Bizet’s Hair by Hoodwork, then, is fascinating for me as she collects hair from different neighbourhoods before creating clothing which represents the identity of the people living and using the salons in that place. This relationship between bodies, places and beauty salons is of huge importance given the changes which are taking place in Peckham at the moment, with many of the Afro hair salons being closed down and moved elsewhere to provide space for the regeneration of the station forecourt.
Alongside a short film by Alix in which she interviews Peckham’s hairdressers about the changes and Ria Addison Gayle’s photography exhibition exploring the changing face of Peckham, in my workshop for the events, I asked the participants – both members of the public and Year 9 textile students – to think about the ‘craft of beauty’. I asked them to think about the hair and beauty salons to which they might go, asking why they go there, what they like about the salon and what would it mean for them, the other customers, the hairdressers and beauty therapists and the community if that salon was to be closed. I asked them to think about the message they might send to the local council, the planners or the developers. We then used the materials – fabrics, cardboard, magazines, coloured paper, glitter paint, scissors, glue, lipsticks, false lashes, fake nails, nail polishes and weave – to create posters with our messages on them.
For the students who live, go to school and pass through Peckham and who can see it changing as, as one student put it, ‘more posh things are coming in’, the #Hairytageinstallation and workshops provided an important space to have conversations about and debate the impacts of gentrification on the neighbourhood and on the communities who live there. Interwoven in these debates, we also spoke about the politics of black hair, ideals of beauty and representations of people of colour both in the media and historically.
Through asking the students to engage with these questions, I wanted them to think critically about who and what is valued when processes of change take place in a neighbourhood: whose heritage is seen as valuable, whose custom or work is seen as unimportant and as moveable, as well as to think sociologically about how gender, race and class are also entwined in these.
As we experimented with the different materials – gluing fiddly false lashes and nails to the cardboard, writing in lipstick, finding and cutting out pictures in magazines, attaching weave to the posters, splurging glitter paint – important messages emerge. Some relate to the closure of shops and salons: ‘#leavepeckhamalone’, ‘don’t let them close down the beauty shops’ ‘don’t close Peckham Rye salons’, ‘time to wake up’. Some, with a spray of perfume as a finishing touch, attest to the transformative power held within the salons. Another affirms that ‘my beauty is black, #selflove’, a striking and powerful message in a time and place when Afro hair and beauty salons are being closed.
With thanks to Alix Bizet and Clare Stanhope for inviting me, to the members of the public who participated and especially to Year 9 textile class for your imagination and engagement.
Alongside a short film by Alix in which she interviews Peckham’s hairdressers about the changes and Ria Addison Gayle’s photography exhibition exploring the changing face of Peckham, in my workshop for the events, I asked the participants – both members of the public and Year 9 textile students – to think about the ‘craft of beauty’. I asked them to think about the hair and beauty salons to which they might go, asking why they go there, what they like about the salon and what would it mean for them, the other customers, the hairdressers and beauty therapists and the community if that salon was to be closed. I asked them to think about the message they might send to the local council, the planners or the developers. We then used the materials – fabrics, cardboard, magazines, coloured paper, glitter paint, scissors, glue, lipsticks, false lashes, fake nails, nail polishes and weave – to create posters with our messages on them.
For the students who live, go to school and pass through Peckham and who can see it changing as, as one student put it, ‘more posh things are coming in’, the #Hairytageinstallation and workshops provided an important space to have conversations about and debate the impacts of gentrification on the neighbourhood and on the communities who live there. Interwoven in these debates, we also spoke about the politics of black hair, ideals of beauty and representations of people of colour both in the media and historically.
Through asking the students to engage with these questions, I wanted them to think critically about who and what is valued when processes of change take place in a neighbourhood: whose heritage is seen as valuable, whose custom or work is seen as unimportant and as moveable, as well as to think sociologically about how gender, race and class are also entwined in these.
As we experimented with the different materials – gluing fiddly false lashes and nails to the cardboard, writing in lipstick, finding and cutting out pictures in magazines, attaching weave to the posters, splurging glitter paint – important messages emerge. Some relate to the closure of shops and salons: ‘#leavepeckhamalone’, ‘don’t let them close down the beauty shops’ ‘don’t close Peckham Rye salons’, ‘time to wake up’. Some, with a spray of perfume as a finishing touch, attest to the transformative power held within the salons. Another affirms that ‘my beauty is black, #selflove’, a striking and powerful message in a time and place when Afro hair and beauty salons are being closed.
With thanks to Alix Bizet and Clare Stanhope for inviting me, to the members of the public who participated and especially to Year 9 textile class for your imagination and engagement.
Further Hair and Identity Explorations