Friday Night by Stuart Halton

Last Friday evening saw Vivienne opening a variety night at ‘Omnibus’, a new arts centre located in the old Clapham Common library building. Before I write about the night it is worth mentioning a little bit about the actual arts centre.  Originally the building (called The Clapham Library, opened in 1889) contained a reading room, meeting room, a flat for the librarian, and also an extensive reference library, which Vivienne, who has lived in Clapham for over 40 years, regularly used.  When the library was threatened with demolition (in around 2007 to make way for yet more ‘luxury’ flats), a campaign was set up to save it. Finally, after 7 years of campaigning by locals, Lambeth Council gave Omnibus a lease to create, within the existing building, a local arts centre. People Power!

Since then, Omnibus has been committed to providing a diverse programme of art (classical and contemporary musical performances, visual arts, children’s theatre, and straight drama) at good prices. If you live in London keep an eye on this place, they have some good things coming up!

Back to the evening, Interrobang!  – the venues second micro festival, “a night of comedy and thought”. This month, the theme was ARTCOP21- the global arts festival which coincides with the 21st UN Conference on Climate Change.

As I mentioned in my opening, the opening speaker was Vivienne who spoke for over 45 minutes (her slot was 20 minutes!) on Climate Change and essentially what we need to do to try and avert it (regular readers of this site should already know what they need to do…hopefully!)

Vivienne then joined the audience and I will just mention a couple of the acts which she really rated;-

• We Are Goose- a satirical musical comedy duo, who’s energetic ecologically inclined songs really got Vivienne excited  – lots of their work is on You tube if you want to see what they are about.
• Sara Pascoe – a stand-up comedian which some of you may already be familiar with. On stage she is very endearing and intelligent, she’s also super honest particularly about the tangle of principle and prejudice we get into when trying to make ourselves and the world a better place. At one point it was decided that both she and Vivienne would take over Britain….as a joint dictatorship!
• Dr Simon Foster – a Solar-terrestrial physicist from Imperial College London. He regularly speaks about Space science, Astronomy, solar physics and climate change. Tonight he was missing his sons first bath time to inform us all that the Climate Change deniers claim that what is happening is part of a natural cycle and connected to activity on the Sun, is a myth…facts came think and fast but never felt overwhelming and was all very easy to follow (even when he was let down by technology and the projector / laptop died)

Overall, the evening presented an eclectic mix of speakers and performers through which we were exposed to important facts, eye-opening views and often hilarious witticisms all of which the brain got working but in a really entertaining way.