In 2016, Futurecity commissioned artist Neville Gabie to create a public artwork responding to the long history of Wandsworth’s Ram Brewery during its redevelopment into Ram Quarter by Greenland UK. Now installed in the site’s Heritage Centre, Dinner (2018) reimagines a 1948 brewery Christmas meal through a contemporary lens - bringing together the people who built, lived, and worked on the site across generations.

“When I first started, I really wanted to understand not just the brewery but its context - what was going on in Wandsworth, who the builders were,” Gabie explains. “The thing that really came across to me was how much Young’s was a family. It was a business, it was a brewery - but it was really a family.”

Gabie’s work began in the brewery’s original archive, stored above the old pub. Among boxes of records, he discovered a black-and-white photograph of the 1948 Young’s Brewery Christmas Dinner, along with the original printed menu. The image became a starting point to explore both the history of the site and its transformation.

“Finding that photograph was incredible,” he recalls. “It became a way to look at not just the history of the site, but also the people involved with it now - the builders, the Greenland team, local residents - and to think about their stories, their memories, and their hopes for the future.”

In 2017, Gabie restaged the dinner in the exact same room at Wandsworth Town Hall where the original image was taken. Every person in the new photograph mirrored the position of their 1948 counterpart. Around the table sat a cross-section of the new community: construction workers, former brewery staff, residents, and members of the design and development teams.

“What I really wanted was a table mixing everyone - builders, Greenland staff, former brewers, people who live in and around Wandsworth - all on one table to spark conversation and dialogue,” Gabie says. “That was the most important thing: really honouring the sense of location, its place, and the community.”

The resulting photograph, transformed into a 1.5-metre by 3-metre illuminated lightbox, is now permanently displayed in Ram Quarter’s Heritage Centre alongside the original 1948 image.

“In 1948, it was just after the war; now we live in such a cosmopolitan city,” Gabie reflects. “I wanted the photograph to honour and acknowledge that this is who we are now.”

Dinner stands as both a tribute to the generations who worked at Young’s Brewery and a reflection of the diverse communities shaping Wandsworth today - a project that captures the spirit of heritage-led placemaking at the heart of Futurecity’s work.

Watch the full interview with Futurecity curator Alessandra Grignaschi below.