The South London house will be restored and used for creative and skills workshops for young people.
David Bowie would have been 79 years old yesterday. The music icon released his final album, ‘Blackstar’, on his birthday and died two days later, on 10 January 2016, following an 18-month battle with cancer.
Now, the Heritage of London Trust, a charity organisation based in London, has announced that Bowie’s childhood home in South London is set to be restored and opened to the public.
They have acquired the terraced home – 4 Plaistow Grove in Bromley – and will recreate the exact interior layout as it was when the young Bowie lived there between 1955 to 1968.
David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947 at 40 Stansfield Road, SW9, in Brixton, but moved to Bromley when he was 5 years old.
The project is set to be completed in 2027, and it will be used for creative workshops for young people, acting as a “solid foundation for the next generation” and a way to teach confidence and communication skills in the arts.
The Heritage of London Trust’s director Dr. Nicola Stacey said: “David Bowie was a proud Londoner. Even though his career took him all over the world, he always remembered where he came from and the community that supported him as he grew up. It's wonderful to have this opportunity to tell his story and inspire a new generation of young people and it’s really important for the heritage of London to preserve this site.”
Dr. Stacey added: “We are thrilled to have already secured a major grant of £500,000 from the Jones Day Foundation towards the project, and hope that people everywhere will want to be involved.”
Geoffrey Marsh, who co-curated the Victoria and Albert Museum’s David Bowie Is exhibition, worked on the restoration project. He said: “It was in this small house, particularly in his tiny bedroom, that Bowie evolved from an ordinary suburban schoolboy to the beginnings of an extraordinary international stardom – as he said, ‘I spent so much time in my bedroom. It really was my entire world. I had books up there, my music up there, my record player. Going from my world upstairs out onto the street, I had to pass through this no-man’s-land of the living room.’”
Bowie’s widow Iman and his daughter Lexi both posted tributes online yesterday, and fans will be gathering tomorrow to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the musician’s death.
Meanwhile, a new documentary titled Bowie: The Final Act has been released in UK and Irish cinemas, and the BBC have announced that a new Bowie doc, Bowie In Berlin, will be released later this year. The documentary film will explore the icon’s time in Berlin between 1976 and 1978.
Stay tuned to Euronews Culture for our 10-year anniversary tribute to David Bowie, as we explore the European locations to visit in order to pay tribute to the much-missed (Black)star this Saturday.
