Peckham is now the place Britons go to for counterculture art, with artists, makers and galleries lured to the area by cheap rents and a recently established East London commuter train line connecting the neighborhood to the center of the city. With the recent arrival of the arts space Peckham Levels that puts a premium on creativity within the community by encouraging local artists who were born and raised in South East London to have their studios at this newly opened center, Peckham is set to boom.

“Peckham has always been an area where things happened — art schools, squats, parties,” said Rozsa Farkas, director of Arcadia Missa gallery, located under the railway arches in the center of the neighborhood, “but it’s only in recent years that it’s been known for this.”

Farkas’s gallery is typical of the area and of its commitment to exhibiting avant-garde art such as the current exhibition Mouth, a video installation that explores gender binaries by New York-based artist Maja Cule as well as exhibitions about marginalized communities, like last summer’s show We Lost Them at Midnight, about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture in London.