During the 2020 lockdown, Camden Town Highstreet was a ghost town. The usual throng of tourists had vanished and for the first time in broad daylight, shop shutters were pulled down. “I was standing on Camden high street and I was the only person there.” Finn Brewster Doherty, the founder of Camden Open Air Gallery recalls. “I don’t think that’s anything I’ll ever experience again”. From there Finn, an artist and curator, began asking traders if local artists could paint the closed shutters. “There was a massive community aspect to it, and the people that came out to support us, they’re the artists of Camden, all Camden boys, born and bred”.
Over the next two years, the project developed into Camden Open Air Gallery, based in a shop front on the high street. “We are trying to create a platform for young and emerging artists from the area and around London,” Finn tells us. The gallery, a sleek new addition to the high street, stands out from the tourist-orientated stalls that surround it. “We stand out like a sore thumb” as Finn puts it. “I think we’ve really got to think about how we use spaces on the high street to shift focus from just tourists to bring local people back to the area.”
“We are trying to create a platform for young and emerging artists, from the area and around London.”
Finn Brewster Doherty, founder of Camden Open Air Gallery
Finn’s parents used to run a restaurant on the high street in the 90’s, “it’s like going back to my roots” he tells us. But Finn echoes that sentiment shared by many locals that the development along the highstreets has caused it to lose its former charm. “Locals don’t come to the highstreet anymore because the offering is too focused on tourism and takeaways”. In the future Finn, always the curator, hopes to use the space not just for art but to curate a connection between the old and new Camden Town. “I really do care about this place, I feel I could really help curate a space that serves both tourists and Camden locals”.
