A Camberwell pub will have untried young performers on its roster next year in a bid to draw a young new audience. 

The Old Dispensary, will have new young performers on stage once a week from January.  

Hope Sielaff, 19, a university student, will be organising the bookings. Sielaff, who bartends at the pub, hosted the first youth performance on December 1. It attracted a large youth audience of around 40 university students and other young Camberwell residents. 

Camberwell is increasingly seen as a place that attracts university students. Sielaff told SouthLondonLines: “I have been to gigs around Peckham, New Cross and Deptford and I really wanted to bring this also to Camberwell”.  

For December 1, Sielaff reached out to five groups – electronic, rap and pop. Sielaff herself and two other university students were part of one of the groups.

The night was a success and Sielaff says she hopes to get some funding from the pub because of it. She stressed to SLL that she wants the money for students and small artists. “I don’t really care about how much I’m getting for paid. I’m passionate about artists getting money because we have all enjoyed their art so much” she said. 

Her passion drove the promotion for the December 1 event. Sielaff created a stop-motion promotional video and a poster. On the first night, the audience took pictures holding the poster, which was circulated via the platform of Instagram. Some young photographetrs who attended that night have also reached out to Sielaff, offering her professional photographs for the events next year, to be posted on the pub’s Instagram page. 

Stella Schwartzman, a Goldsmiths university student, who attended Sielaff’s first event at the Old Dispensary, said “the venue was really nice. It is comfortable and it is cool to see people who go to your school perform and be talented.”  

She said she noticed the pub is bringing in something new and fresh. “I no longer only see older adults, but also younger generations are coming here”. She described the pub as becoming more “lively”, with a more diverse age group of audiences coming here to drink and enjoy the evening. She said more varied events might allow her to meet new people. This will be “a great opportunity for younger people in Camberwell to get to know each other and socialise,” Schwartzman said.  

From January 12, the pub will have performances like the one Sielaff first organised. 

It will be free entry, one Thursday a month.