Southwark Park is hosting a free afternoon of music, food and arts and culture workshops next Saturday (June 18) to raise awareness of the dangers of air pollution.
The Live+Breathe event, which runs from 12pm-6pm at the bandstand, will feature south Londoners like Peckham BMX founder Michael Pusey, Peckham’s Finest star and DJ Mark Ashley-Dupé, football club Peace Ballers and Brixton-based spoken-word charity Poetic Unity. The day will be hosted by Love Ssega, part of the pop group Clean Bandit.
As the News reported recently, every one of Southwark’s air pollution monitors is over the limits set by the World Health Organisation.
Southwark is the fourteenth-worst local authority in the country for air quality, out of more than 300, according to research by Asthma + Lung UK.
The British government’s requirements are less strict, at 40 µg/m3, but Southwark’s air still falls foul of these rules at several monitoring stations. Many of these monitoring units are by schools.
Every Southwark air quality monitor breaks World Health Organisation safety levels
Peckham-based Peace Ballers will organise a football tournament on the day. Director Zion Zachary said: “Having been made more aware of the issue of air pollution in our borough and being an enterprise that primarily holds its activities outdoors, we felt it important to support the campaign. Most of our members are unaware of these issues so the event will be an opportunity to educate them further, so they see the significance of such an issue and how it affects them.”
Michael Pusey, founder of Peckham’s BMX Club where Olympian Kye Whyte trains, said the air quality issue affected his cyclists.
He said: “We have some of the best athletes in the world and our members will be a lot happier with clean air in and around the BMX Track. We breathe in very hard air if we’re training, and clean air is going to give us the best performance for us to meet the Olympic team.”
Southwark Council has brought in several measures to tackle air pollution in recent years, including school streets, the programme to close roads outside schools at pick-up and drop-off times, banning engine idling, and introducing 20mph speed limits on every road that it controls.
Not everything in the borough is under the council’s control. Campaigners have warned that Transport for London’s (TfL) Silvertown Tunnel in Greenwich, backed by mayor Sadiq Khan, could lead to more traffic jams and more cars heading for Tower Bridge, as an alternative route across the river.
For more details and to sign up for a free ticket click here.