Rosie Niven

A week or two ago, I got a sneak preview of the new look Royal Festival Hall when I attended a free concert as part of the reopening weekend. On 29 June, I’m back again, this time to watch This is tomorrow, a show by artists in residence Saint Etienne.

Best known for being part of the London music scene that preceded Britpop in the early 1990s, Saint Etienne have a penchant for nostalgia, cinema and increasingly, regeneration. In the past few years they have collaborated with director Paul Kelly to reflect these interests in a series of films.

This is tomorrow, is the latest of these collaborations. The 75 minute film documents the history of the Royal Festival Hall site from the 1951 Festival of Britain through the years of boom and neglect to its recent rebirth. It includes interviews with people who worked on the hall and the Festival of Britain as well as Waterloo residents. Saint Etienne will be playing a live, specially written soundtrack, backed by a 60 piece orchestra and choir drawn from local schools.

If This is tomorrow is anywhere near as good as Saint Etienne’s last venture into cinema it should be well worth watching. What have you done today, Mervyn Day? captured the Lower Lea Valley, while still an overgrown wilderness. Shot a day before the 2012 Olympics were awarded to London, the film documents the changes that the Lower Lea Valley has seen and looks forward to its future.

Saint Etienne’s most recent album Tales from Turnpike House is a concept album based on a day in the life of a tower block. It included references to bakeries being turned into tanning salons and streets feeling like no-go zones at nights. It’s great that the urban environment can still strongly influence a pop music.
Tickets for This is tomorrow are still available from the Royal Festival Hall box office, www.southbankcentre.co.uk