CR Blog
Lend us a Ziggy, mate?
Posted by Mark Sinclair, 5 October 2011, 13:01 Permalink Comments (14)
The Brixton pound, which launched as the UK's first urban local currency in 2009, has been redesigned featuring images of four notable cultural figures from the area...
The currency (known as the B£) is designed to help support local businesses and encourage trade in the area. It is used largely by independent shops in the SW2 and SW9 postcodes in south London.
For the redesign, Brixton-based agency, This Ain't Rock ‘n' Roll, incorporated images of some of the areas most respected sons and daughters.
David Bowie (as Ziggy Stardust) features on the B£10 note; Chicago Bulls basketball player, Luol Deng, on the B£5; and WWII spy, Violette Szabo, on the B£20. Len Garrison, the co-founder of the Black Cultural Archives appears on the B£1 note.
The reverse of the B£1 note (shown here as running sheet) features details from the Aytoun Road graffiti wall, and the Stockwell Skatepark
The reverse of the B£5 note features details from the Brixton Recreation Centre and the Evelyn Grace Academy
TARAR also looked to Brixton's architecture and public artworks to create various visual designs and patterns for the reverse of the notes. An element of the recent RIBA Stirling Prize winning building, Zaha Hadid's Evelyn Grace Academy, features as a device on the back of the B£5 note, for example.
The new notes use a host of printing techniques such as fluorescent inks, foils, holograms and watermarked paper stock and were produced by Orion Secure Print Ltd of Derby.
The B£ was the UK's first local currency to launch in an urban area and follows similar schemes in Totnes in Devon, Lewes in Sussex, and Stroud in Gloucestershire. The project was initiated by volunteers from the Transition Town Brixton community-led organisation. More on the Brixton pound at brixtonpound.org.
The reverse of the B£10 note features detail taken from Coldharbour Lane's mural, Nuclear Dawn
The reverse of the B£20 note features details from public art on Electric Avenue
14 Comments
They really are great designs. It would be great to see more modern culture on all bank notes alongside historical figures.
2011-10-05 15:27:27
The best money I've ever seen! Being local - it means so much more. Fantastic work.
2011-10-05 15:48:46
Great idea. Hope it really encourages people to shop locally though. Crap headline though. That's Bowie as Aladdin Sane, not Ziggy Stardust.
2011-10-05 16:05:00
What a great design project. Would love to design Chelsea ponds.
2011-10-05 16:26:10
Yep as Jonathan points out. By the time of that cover... the kids had killed the man.
But boy could he play guitar!
2011-10-05 22:43:49
Holland / Nederland was there decades ago.
2011-10-06 10:33:49
@Jonathan, @ian m
No, it's Ziggy Stardust 'as' Aladdin Sane. The Aladdin Sane album was released in April 1973, Bowie "retired" the Ziggy persona on stage in London in July that same year. Bowie even described Aladdin Sane as "Ziggy goes to America" and, furthermore, "it [the album] was Ziggy meeting fame... a subjective Ziggy talking about America, my interpretation of what America means to me." (Sources: David Bowie: An Illustrated Record; Avon Books and http://www.5years.com/aladdin.htm - no direct ref given). At any rate, it was just an attempt at an amusing Bowie-related headline. But it is Ziggy. http://www.roundaboutmidnight.com/www.hotpot.se/Bowie.jpg
Mark Sinclair
2011-10-06 10:40:00
@Finn Sloth: Holland is still there! Check out these amazing new art money banknotes by Amsterdam artist Dadara for his Exchanghibition Bank project: http://www.artasmoney.com
2011-10-06 11:30:28
david bowie only blinkin' lived in brixton until he was 5 or 6. bromley was where he did his first proper gigs. grasping at straws methinks.
2011-10-06 13:21:52
Wow, Bowie is taking over here.
Didn't he launch his own Bowie Bonds?
Perhaps Bowie could replace the Queen on all British Bank notes. Queen Bitch - great track.
Oh, I nearly forgot - Love the Brixton Pound designs.
2011-10-06 14:01:45
What about the Lewes Pound? That was around before this came out. It has pictures drawn by school children on, so its not as cool though.
2011-10-06 14:28:07
Firstly, the designs look great, and strong palettes, and clear themes of unifying multiculturality.
So how does this work- I assume t must be legal tender nationwide? If so, how many more locations will receive their own designs, and how will they be chosen?
I don't mean to be a whiney-pants, but in terms of practicality money works best when it is a consistent visual convention, an easily identifiable design nationwide.
You may have seen the problems Scottish money gets in shops, with customers and vendors preferring to use up English notes first. I understand they can be changed in a bank for 'normal' notes at will, but will this system cause unnecessary confusion?
And that's before we get to all the national problems of counterfeiting.
Have they thought this through?
2011-10-08 10:17:25
didn't know this currency existed - nice graphics, but it doesn't look real!
2011-10-10 10:27:06
the last 'Ziggy"tour was in fact called 'The Aladdin Sane Tour'!
2011-10-23 16:15:59
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