The Dickens News

CoolTan Arts, a Southwark-based arts-in-mental health charity, has been working with a group of participants and volunteers for the last six months to create 'The Dickens News', a 4-part exhibition series and accompanying newspaper inspired by Charles Dickens' life and work.

The project looks at Dickensian poverty, homelessness, substance abuse, prostitution and the great recycling industry of London's poor and tells the histories of those excluded and without a voice.

The Winter Edition exhibition will explore Dickens' creation and popularisation of Christmas traditions - etchings and linocut prints will reveal Dickens lesser known Christmas stories and the Victorian Christmas, and Scrooge and Marley are revisited in the shape of prints and drawings by CoolTan Arts participants.

The exhibition will also look at the sources of Victorian food & cookery; with research on the 'costermongers' of Dickensian Southwark, the history of Borough Market, and the flamboyant and charitable chefs of the time such as Alexis Soyer who invented the Soup Kitchen and cook & poet Eliza Acton.

Traditional Victorian recipes have been collected, accompanied by beautiful original illustrations and contemporary interpretations.