Southwark Mayflower 400 Fund

The Southwark Mayflower 400 Fund supported community led events and activities in SE16 (and the wider SE1 area) to mark and commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower sailing, through micro grants up to £1K and medium grants of £1K and above. The following grants were awarded:

Medium Grants

Community Magazine for Bermondsey & Rotherhithe (Peak Centre UK)

Mayflower 400 Commemorative Brochure (September 2020). A special edition brochure dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower sailing and public events in Southwark that mark it. Click on the link above to view the publication.

Dockland Settlements

The Pilgrim’s Camp (October 2019). A 3 day holiday camp for young children aged 6 to 11 years at Dockland Settlements, Rotherhithe, focusing on the Mayflower Pilgrimage. Artists will facilitate the creation of art works by the children that will be permanently exhibited at Dockland Settlements.

London Sea Shanty Collective

Heave Together! (August-September 2019) Mayflower musical event bringing together the boat and sailing community and local residents for sea shanties and folk music on lantern lit vessels in Greenland Dock, Rotherhithe. A celebration of the working sailor life of the river Thames and its docks.

People’s Company

The Mayflower – A voyage through history (November 2019-March 2020). Animated bus tour, with actors, taking local residents on a journey through the Mayflower story, a community food sharing event with Migrateful that highlights modern migration stories at Crossway Church, and community film screenings on the story of migration at various venues in SE16 and SE1.

Restorative Justice For All

Sailing the Mayflower to Equality & Justice (August 2019 – October 2020). A competition for local children and young people to commemorate the Mayflower Story in a number of categories. The winners will took part in a public Awards Ceremony and an e-book, featuring all of the submissions, has been disseminated. Click here to download a copy.

What’s on Rotherhithe Group

Leaflet to support selfguided walk: “Rotherhithe-history, art & The Mayflower” (August 2019). This accessible 2 hour walk includes the key sites of Old Rotherhithe and The Mayflower. The leaflet has comprehensive coverage, clear maps and explanatory text for each site. It will also be available as an app and web download. The walk has a “guided” option, led by London Blue Badge Guides. The objective is to promote the hidden historic gems of Rotherhithe and its links to The Mayflower.

Bermondsey Artists’ Group

My Story, My Neighbourhood: Mayflower Art Projects (August 2019-November 2020). The project will offer participants the opportunity to retrace the Mayflower story and examine its current resonances. This will be done through addressing the themes of community, migration, tolerance and enterprise, in a series of art projects led by four artists working in poetry, radio broadcast, art-making and film. Each project will include free inspiring workshops open to the local community and digital content created by the artists that will create a long-lasting online legacy for the 140,000 visitors who visit the website each year.

Illuminate Rotherhithe

Illuminate Rotherhithe 2019 & 2020. ‘IR’ is one of many festivals taking place nationally and internationally inspired by the Separatist Governor William Bradford’s famous quote “Just as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many”. IR commemorates 400 years since the Mayflower sailed from Rotherhithe in 1620. The grant will fund 2 Illuminate Rotherhithe Festivals to mark and celebrate the sailing of the Mayflower.

London Bubble

The Mayflower Inquiry: The Deal, The Measuring and The Arrival and The Inquiry (September 2019-November 2020). A programme of inter-active performance events presented either as indoor performances or outdoor events. There are four elements ‘The Deal’, ‘The Measuring’ and ‘The Arrival’ will be short interactive and visual. Also to include large scale intergenerational theatre.  The Mayflower Inquiry – a newly commissioned script, design and score deploying a large cast to tell the story, and the story of ‘the story’ for today. This will be performed at Southwark Cathedral.

Rotherhithe & Bermondsey History Society

Mayflower 400 London Lectures (May-November 2020). A series of five talks plus a guided walk to take place on the last Wednesdays of the month during Summer/Autumn 2020.

Time and Talents

Mayflower Ceilidh Project (September 2019-November 2020). The project includes folk dance and song workshops across eight local primary schools, followed by a Grand Ceilidh to bring all the schools together, and a weekend Family Barn Dance which is offered to families of the schools, as well as the wider community. Each event will be connected to the story of the Mayflower.

Albion Primary School, Rotherhithe

Albion Primary – From Past to Present (September 2019 – September 2020). Project for schoolchildren to bring the Mayflower alive, make links with modern migration, and explore what it means to be part of a community. It will involve a drama & dance event by children telling the Mayflower story from the viewpoint of the immigrants and Native Americans; a music video, and 2 pieces of art – a mosaic mural and an installation of a ship using recycled materials.

St Saviour’s and St Olave’s School

Mayflower 1620/2020. A celebration of migration, tolerance and community (September 2019-November 2020). Project to research and commemorate St Saviour’s and St Olave’s links with the Mayflower story through the School’s Mayflower garden – understood to be the location of a former church where Mayflower passengers met before the voyage. The project will include a public performance by students on the Mayflower story, a Mayflower exhibition and a procession.

Alfred Salter Primary School

Mayflower of the Future (April – July 2020). Performance festival including drama and arts to enable pupils, parents and the local community to learn both about the Mayflower’s journey and the more recent regeneration of the local area.

London Youth Choirs

The Mayflower Anthem (April – November 2020). London Youth Choirs will work with a historian, poet and composer to develop the text and music for ‘The Mayflower Anthem’, a new song to mark the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower.  The new anthem will headline a concert performance for the community in Rotherhithe in Autumn 2020.

Southwark Playhouse

Primary Playwrights (May – July 2020). Playwriting project for three SE16 primary schools around the themes of the Mayflower voyage, with plays to be performed onstage at Southwark Playhouse.

Micro Grants

Art in the Park

The Story of Prince Lee Boo at Cavendish School (May-June 2019). The project focuses on the story of Prince Lee Boo and its significance for Rotherhithe and communities then and now through a series of art workshops with Cavendish School to explore migration, tolerance, enterprise and community.

Bede House

The Mayflower Adventure (November 2020). Interactive performance and workshops specifically designed for adults with learning disabilities: telling the story of the Mayflower’s arrival in America and the pilgrims’ story of hardships and survival through storytelling, music singing and drama.

Club Herop

Photojournalism initiative (April-November 2019). An interdisciplinary photojournalism-based education programme and outreach opportunities for local teenagers to research the history of the Mayflower.

Draper Together

Unexpected Guests (November 2020). A public theatre performance at Draper Estate Hall presenting the testimonies of two fictionalised characters: a Native American Wampanoag and a Mayflower Pilgrim. Their dialogue will engage the audience to reflect on a crucial moment in history where two far away worlds collided: a migration that created a new and fragile concept of community. Refreshments afterwards will allow the audience to mingle and chat with actors and the authors.

Southwark Civic Society

The Mayflower Story (September-November 2019). A public meeting and talk by a local historian at Mayflower Hall, Canada Water, telling the story of the epic journey of the Mayflower to North America. The local community will be encouraged to volunteer as Tourist Ambassadors for tourists who will come to Rotherhithe during 2020 in the run up to the 400th Anniversary of the Mayflower sailing.

Mayflower 400 History Walks (April – September 2020). Free public walks in SE16 relating to the history of the Mayflower sailing.

St John’s Catholic School, Rotherhithe

Mayflower Whole School Project (September 2019). Project for the schoolchildren to learn about the reasons why the Mayflower set sail, the journey on board and the arrival in America. Includes an interactive walk of the area, free workshops in the Printworks, an inter-generational event in the School and Thanksgiving style party where each class makes food.

Surrey Docks Farm

Growing Mayflower (October 2020). Community planting of 80m native hedging at the Farm to include Mayflower (or hawthorn) trees, and providing a living legacy of the Mayflower sailing.