About us

Welcome to Brixton Buzz

Established in December 2011, Brixton Buzz is Brixton’s largest and most comprehensive news, features and listings website.

Completely independent, we publish hundreds of stories covering local news, politics, sport, photo features, local history and more in and around the Brixton area.

With the site based on the same not-for-profit principles as our sister site, urban75, there are no sponsors to get in the way or cozy council relationships to tiptoe around, giving the site the freedom to report directly on issues local.

holding the council to account

We continued to examine Lambeth Council in the absence of other local media.

Stories we’ve broken recently include our exclusive on the Mayor of London withdrawing funding for three of Lambeth’s estate ‘regeneration’ projects.

We also revealed how loss-making Pop Brixton traded rent-free on Council land for five years with zero profit shared with Lambeth Council.

Our small team of journalists regularly keep an eye on Lambeth Council meetings, reporting on some of the political games that wouldn’t otherwise appear in the public domain. An example is the four hour Planning Committee meeting we covered for the Hondo Enormo-Tower.

Our live blog of the latest Lambeth Council elections received over 40,000 page views throughout the day. We were the only local media that regularly informed residents of developments.

We also investigated how Lambeth Council took legal action against 141 local businesses for non-payment by the controversial Brixton BID. We revealed that £24,000 of the Council’s money was spent on pursuing these businesses.

We told the story about Lambeth Council’s cultural consultation – even before it was announced by the Council. Our in-depth investigation into the proposals was used by other neighborhood groups as a starting point when responding to the consultation.

In March 2014 we broke the story of a misleading Channel 4 ‘vox pop’ news station about Brixton, with our exposé being covered in the national news media.

In early April 2014, we celebrated reaching a milestone of one million page views, with the site hitting a record 60,000 page views in the first 48 hours of the month.

By September 2015, Buzz had nine thousand Brixton events listed and three million page views, and in April 2018 this figure had reached 17,500 events and over seven million page views. By May 2023, page views exceeded 13 million, with the site publishing over 10,000 original articles about Brixton.

The site that gives back to the community

Brixton Buzz has been very active in supporting the community, getting involved in local campaigns and organizing fundraising events.

In June 2015 we organized a major concert for residents of the threatened Cressingham Gardens estate. Our Brixton Fightback show at Electric Brixton attracted over a thousand people, featuring local bands like Alabama 3 and Fat White Family, and raised over £1,500 for housing campaigners.

In July 2014 we helped the striking Ritzy workers raise over £1,000 at a benefit show and we were heavily involved in a fundraiser for local club Dulwich Hamlet in July 2015 – and we continue to help the club whenever we can.

In January 2017 we hosted a Bowie charity night in Brixton Prince Albert, raising a total of £600 which we donated to two local music charities, Raw Material and School Ground Sounds.

A year later we hosted a sold out charity show at Brixton Dogstar which raised over £1,100. In 2019 we raised a further £1,500 at our 2019 Bowie themed fundraiser, distributing the funds to local charities. We continued in January 2020 with our biggest charity show to date, giving £1,550 to charities and community groups.

We also stepped in to help when Lambeth Country Show regulars Chucklehead cider suffered a devastating theft in Brockwell Park, our crowdfunding campaign successfully raised over a thousand pounds to help the small family business.

In December 2022 we donated a further £1,500 to local charities.

Uniquely, we also occasionally brew our own selection of Brixton Buzz beers, with all profits going to local causes.

Produced locally by London Beer Lab, we give all profits to local charities and worthy causes and have raised thousands of pounds. Beneficiaries to date include Brixton Soup Kitchen, Loughborough Farm and Save Cressingham Gardens.

Free shows

Brixton Buzz also run regular club nights around Brixton where we organize fun events with exciting bands and party loving DJs. All our nights are free.

Our biggest clearance

In 2014 I posted the story of ‘Brixton to be renamed East Clapham’, described by The Guardian as ‘biting satire’.

It proved to be a story that refused to die, resurfacing regularly year after year as people continued to fall in love with our satirical attack on gentrification. It is now seen by almost a quarter of a million people.

who’s who

We have a great team helping to run the site, but we’re always looking for more contributors – see below for more information:

Mike Urban: Co-founder of Brixton Buzz and long-term Brixtonite, Mike founded Brixton’s largest and longest-running website, urban75. A published author, photographer and journalist, he also hosts free Brixton Offline Club nights. He also spoke at Tedx Brixton.
Email: [email protected]

Jason Cobb:
Lover of Brockwell Lido, the Herne Hill velodrome was also Surrey’s cricket social butterfly. He can usually be found walking the streets of sunny Stockwell, preventing the gentrification of Brixton from reaching SW8. NOT an Essex man but definitely a Dulwich Hamlet fan.
Twitter: @Jason_Cobb

Marsha Lowe:
Marsha Lowe is the director of Oxygen Arts, a Lambeth social enterprise and creative production agency specializing in directing and working with diverse communities. As a columnist for SableLitMag, she has interviewed authors Nawal el Saadawi and Marlon James and has just written her first children’s book about the history of black British ballet. He also trains in the Brazilian martial art of Capoeira, with UINCAP.
Email: [email protected]

Phil Ross
Phil Ross: He is an actor, director and musician who has lived in the area since 1984, working in the music, club and bar industries. Phil writes mostly about culture and entertainment, always interested in new things.
Email: [email protected]

Max Magloire:
Our resident super-dedicated Dulwich Hamlet photographer Max can be found on the terraces in all weathers covering both the men’s and women’s teams.
E-mail: [email protected]

Sam Le Mort
Long-time Brixton resident, ace writer and illustrator, Sam is responsible for putting together our tireless huge guide to Brixton restaurants and cafes. There are currently over 100 food establishments listed and Sam makes sure they are updated regularly.

Martha loves
A long-term Brixtonite, Martha is a keen photographer originally from the Lake District. She moved to Brixton in the 1990s and refuses to move on… As well as contributing to Brixton Buzz, she has photographed for Brixton Community Market, Crafty Fox Market and Brixton Splash.
Email: [email protected]

Stevie SW9:
A born and bred Brixtonite, Stevie is always around town looking for stories and news. A talented nightclub and landscape photographer, Stevie provides great content for the site.
Email: [email protected]

Nigel H:
We owe it to the techie boffin and coding wizard who keeps this site fresh and crisp!
Email: [email protected]

About Brixton Buzz:

Why create the site?

As much as we love to see old bits of Brixton rejuvenated, anyone reading the media would think that’s all Brixton has: funky new clubs, stratagem restaurants, pop-up cocktail bars and events endorsed by Time Out.

But there’s always been a lot more to Brixton than where the hip, tight-trousered troubadours trot, and Brixton Buzz aims to level the playing field and try to ensure that smaller, ‘uncooler’ venues, bars and events it also enjoys the publicity it deserves.

We also have strong opinions about what’s happening to the Brixton we love, and we’re not afraid to post them.

What we list

There’s usually plenty going on in Brixton and our new record service will include events big and small, from a supergroup strutting their stuff at the Academy to a Tuesday night pub quiz in an old booze .

As we expand, we’ll include features about local history, interesting characters, independent businesses, grassroots campaigns and all the things that make Brixton a great place to live.

To get involved!

We’ll also be looking for people to join the team and contribute their own reviews, photos and features, and hopefully have some fun along the way.

We’ve got some pretty adventurous plans for Brixton Buzz on the back-burner too, so please get in touch if you can help with the technical side of things (in particular, advanced WordPress/MySQL skills and mobile app development).

Oh, and why do we do it? Because we love Brixton, of course!

Brixton Buzz contact details:
Address: Prince Albert
418 Coldharbour Lane
Brixton
London SW9 8LF
Email: [email protected]
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