Continuing the discussion from Shop local banners - it looks like the banners have been replaced with newer WeAreLewisham ones, probably to celebrate the 2022 Borough of Culture:
Money well spent by the council, itâs improved the area alreadyâŚ
Yes it helps me forget about all the services we donât have
These wretched banners are all over London, alas. I used to live in Southwark and they loved bannering every high street. Never knew why⌠Does it make the street more attractive? No. Is it advertising anything useful? No. Does it make the council feel good about it itself that itâs âdoing something positiveâ? ProbablyâŚ
Agree, they add to the street clutter as if we didnât have enough For Sale/To Let signs already. Not to mention the A-Boards which every establishment seems to consider essential to run their business and put them out even on the narrowest of pavements.
Better spend the money on some more important services.
Much as people like to gripe about the council, this is paid for by Borough of Culture funds and I would think is earmarked as part of the wide ranging detailed plans proposed for a year of culture that meant Lewisham won the award of funds against stiff competition from other Boroughs. You canât just spend it on anything you like. Money for services comes from other very poorly funded pots of money.
My only problem with these banners is that they donât really promote anything much. Unless you know WeAreLewisham is the borough of culture effort, itâs unclear what they are about. The text for wearelewisham.com is small and hard to see and the @wearelewisham is smaller still, but even smaller is âLondon Borough of Cultureâ. What are we celebrating?
The previous âshop localâ ones were much better designed and also gave some individual identity to each high street and area which I liked.
Iâm still none the wiser as to aim or function of these banners is - so I canât see any justification for whatever money they cost from whichever pot funded it 
Every pitch for something like this will require that you promote the year itself and include a marketing/promo plan across the Borough. Itâs easy and I would think cost effective for lewisham to use some of its existing and established infrastructure for part of this.
Itâs hard when the funder insists on use of its own branding / logo (Mayor of London) plus its initiative branding (Borough of Culture) plus you have to have your own branding (We are Lewisham) and a website address too. Hardly any space for creativity and on some promo activity you end up with a compromise thatâs effectively just a list 
It is a good way of âplacemakingâ so it would be really stupid to change all the roundels on Overground so that half of them say #WearLewisham rather than the station you are at. What could possibly go wrong?
Ticket to Lewisham please 
Yeah but sorry-no trains are going there todayâŚ
Only a bus replacement service
I complained about this and basically got laughed out of town by our Cabinet Member.
TFL agreed to this as well of course.
I wish we had put signs up like âalight here for Lewisham Borough of Cultureâ and stuck them underneath the roundel - rather than removing the most important information all together.
That sounds much more sensible to me Leo, which probably explains why they didnât like it.
Itâs part of a cunning plan by Southern and TFL to remove the names from all stations so we canât complain about lack of train / overground services not running through certain stations which will, well, no longer have names.

Re the platform roundels: I think (having looked at them when passing through the stations) that the âLewishamâ label is only on one sign per platform, at the end where the front carriage stops. Perhaps the logic is that people in the front carriage will have noticed the name of the station as their carriage passes along the platform, so thereâs less chance of them not knowing the name of the station by the time the front carriage comes to a stop next to a âLewishamâ roundel.
Good to here the council are laughing at confused train passengers. They must find the lack of trains even more hilarious.
Ooft.

