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Each of the new Brixton notes commemorates a local hero, voted on by the people of Brixton and celebrating the diversity of the South London suburb, here below are our 2nd Edition heroes:

  • B£1 – LENFORD (KWESI) GARRISON (1943-2003), Academic, community activist and co-founder of the Black Cultural Archives. Len’s life’s work was to catalogue the development of the black British identity and its history. Len co-founded the BCA in the heart of Brixton Market, Coldharbour Lane in 1981. www.bcaheritage.org.uk
  • B£10 – LUOL DENG (born 1985), professional basketball player for the GB national basketball team and the NBA’s Chicago Bulls. Born in Sudan, Deng emigrated as a child and moved with his family to Brixton. There he joined England’s 15-and –under basketball team at Brixton Basketball Club marking the beginning of his basketball career. www.luoldeng.com
  • B£10 – DAVID BOWIE (born 1947) musician, actor and record producer. A major figure and pioneer for over four decades in the world of popular music. Bowie and his family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton, from 1947-1953. He has sold an estimated 140 million albums worldwide. www.davidbowie.com
  • B£20 – VIOLETTE SZABO, GC, MBE (26 June 1921 – c. 5 February 1945) was a Second World War British secret agent. Born in Paris, she moved to London with her family and attended school, and later also worked in the Bon Marche’ department store, in Brixton. Violette was involved in a number of dangerous missions in France during the war, depicted in the 1958 film ‘Carve Her Name with Pride’. She paid the ultimate price for her heroism. www.violetteszabo.org

And here below, our beloved 1st Edition Heroes.

  • B£1 – Olive Morris, a radical political activist and community organiser who established the Brixton Black Women’s Group, and played a pivotal role in the squatters’ rights campaigns of the 1970s; Olive was born in Jamaica in 1952 and moved with her family to Britain aged 9. She was a Brixton resident from 1961-1975 and died at the age of 27 from cancer
  • B£5 – James Lovelock, the independent scientist and environmentalist who, whilst working for NASA, first developed the ‘Gaia’ theory, that the earth is in a delicate but dynamic steady-state that human activity is disturbing, in particular through global warming. James was a Brixton resident from 1925-1933
  • B£10 – C L R James, the Trinidadian journalist, historian, socialist thinker and anti-colonialist who chose to spend his final years on the ‘front line’ of Brixton
  • B£20 – Vincent Van Gogh, who moved to Brixton aged 20, reportedly returning to Holland a changed man, having seen first hand, the impacts of poverty on his daily walk from Brixton to Covent Garden
B£ notes

B£ notes