Get festive in ‘urban style’ this Christmas, located on Curtain Road right in the heart of Shoreditch Hackney House is offering a cool urban & versatile space to do Christmas your way!
Full of Christmas cheer and spirit, our packages can be adapted to suit your style & number of guests, from intimate parties of up to 30 people to a full house of 450 people, the 3 floors of flexible space has a Christmas grotto just right for all.
These inclusive packages start from £48 per person and if you’re up for a Monday – Wednesday night party we’ll treat you to a glass of welcome prosecco on us!
Includes:
Venue hire (6.30pm – midnight)
Drinks package for up to 5 hours with unlimited beer, wine (mulled too) & softs
Christmas menu – from one of the following menu styles:
Bowl Food (based on 3 savoury & 1 sweet bowl per person)*
Hot Buffet (based on 2 mains, 2 sides & 1 dessert)*
Canapes (based on up to 10 bites per person savoury & sweet canapes) *served from eco friendly disposables & street food boxes
In house AV Equipment: projector, screen, 2 x corded mics, sound system for playlists
All staff & security required
You can also add some extra little touches like Photo booths, live entertainers, comperes or even a nitrogen ice-cream bar….
More films are probably watched in the current era than at any other time in movie history – the majority on TV screens, computers, tablets and even mobile phones.
But to experience the splendour of cinema on the big screen there are only two places in Hackney: the Rio on Kingsland High Street and Hackney Picturehouse on Mare Street.
This wasn’t always the case. Over 60 cinemas have existed at one time or another within Hackney, and although all 60 were never in operation at the same time, there were around 30 cinemas operating in the golden years between 1920 and 1950. It is difficult to imagine stepping out onto Kingsland Road or Mare Street on a Saturday night and having 30 cinemas from which to choose!
Many of the Hackney cinemas opened during a flurry of entrepreneurial activity just before the First World War. There were extraordinary profits to be made; it was like a gold rush and numerous speculators and opportunists were all trying to get in on the cinema act. Film historian Luke McKernan called it “a phase of greedy speculation in cinema building”, with 52 cinemas established in Hackney in seven years, between 1907 and 1914.
Above: Hackney Picture Palace, around 1940. The cinema first opened in 1914. Below: the site of the former cinema on Mare Street today
Above: Hackney Pavilion on Mare Street circa 1960. The cinema opened in 1914. Below: The site of the former cinema. which is now a bank, today
Some were converted shops, chapels, churches and skating rinks, whilst others were struggling theatres and music halls eager to boost audiences cash in on the phenomenon of moving pictures by installing screens and projectors. Still more were new, purpose-built cinemas. Although some closed down after a few years (their owners seemingly took the money and run), there was another flurry of cinema activity in the 1930s, when six luxurious ‘super’ cinemas were opened, with elegant art deco architecture and lavish interiors.
The Odeon on 211 Hackney Road, which later became a Mecca Bingo. Below: the same site, which is set to become flats, in 2016
Above: The ABC (formerly Regal) on Mare Street in 1970. Below: site of the former cinema today
These were the Regent (later renamed the Odeon) in Stamford Hill, the Regal (later the ABC) on Mare Street, the Savoy on Stoke Newington Road (later also an ABC), the Odeon on Hackney Road, the Ritz (again renamed the ABC) in Stamford Hill and finally the Odeon Dalston, along Kingsland Road, close to Dalston Junction. With gigantic interiors and massive screens, Hackney cinemagoers could wallow in the dark in warmth and comfort as the films unspooled.
Above: The Regent in Stamford Hill, which opened in 1929. Below: Sainsbury’s, which occupies the same site today
It is generally thought that the decline in cinema attendance in the 1950s was the result of the boom in television (the birth in fact of electronic home entertainment), but this is only part of the story.
Bombing during the Second World War had destroyed over a million buildings in London, and left 1.2 million Londoners homeless. As families moved to new towns such as Stevenage, Harlow, Hatfield and Basildon, communities broke up and traditional work and leisure patterns eroded. Cinema-going and many other pursuits were abandoned or displaced. By 1970 there were just nine cinemas in Hackney and by 1980 only three remained. When I left the Rio in 1989, it was down to one: the Rio was the only cinema still operating in the borough. But again leisure patterns have changed, and that number has now doubled.
Today there are campaigns and plans to restore both the Clapton Cinematograph Theatre (the Kenning Hall cinema) and the Castle in Brooksbys Walk. If successful, an additional two cinema venues in the borough will mean that the opportunities for Hackney residents to see films on the big screen will have doubled yet again!
The accompanying pictures show some of Hackney’s glorious cinemas; how they once looked, and how the sites look now. If you have any memories of cinemas and cinema-going in Hackney, leave a message in the comments below.
This article is based on a talk given to the Friends of Hackney Archives on 7 September 2016.
Playwright Tosin Alabi’s debut play about foster care opens next month
Tosin Alabi was 15 when she was placed into foster care with her 10-year-old sister following the death of their mother.
Now aged 25, she has started a theatre company Azai Gallery, and written her debut play about her experience in care.
Four Paintings, which opens in November at Space Studios on Mare Street, recounts those tough initial months after her mother’s death.
“I went numb for a very long time, I blocked everything out. The experience made me a lot less family orientated,” she says.
Being without a family meant Tosin struggled to grieve properly or even process what had happened.
But her foster home she describes as a house “filled with love” – she was even surprised to learn that her foster parents were being paid.
The experience of being in foster care she found on the whole positive, and credits it for improving her grades and behaviour as a teenager.
She has less kind words about her social workers, however. During her time in care, she only had one positive experience of a social worker.
“A lot of people go into social care as a job, not because they want to help,” she explains.
At 18, Tosin was placed into shared accommodation for care leavers, where she said she received “no support”. So while her sister stayed in foster care, she was “just thrown out into the big world”.
Four Paintings combines art and performance, with the stage set up as a gallery with paintings on the walls.
“I thought it would be nice to have art and performance combined as I love both,” she writes on her blog.
Tosin sent three artist friends the play’s opening monologue and asked them to create paintings based on it.
“I gave them no creative direction apart from the minimum canvas size of the painting,” she says
Tosin always wanted art to complement the performance, to challenge and explore its meaning on a deeper level.
The idea spurred her creativity, and before she had put pen to paper she knew art would play a massive role in her debut play.
Enter the secret world of The Night Museum — an unmissable week-long exploration of the hidden, the illicit and the lost.
Coinciding with Museums at Night, join us in and around the Museum of London for a free after-dark mini-season of late-night parties, ghost clubs, dark electronica, dystopian visions, lost sounds, night voices, drinking dens, walks into darkness and mythical creatures of the night.
Events include the museum of lost sounds (29 October), the museum of dark places (2 November) and on 4 November, dress up to dance the night away and celebrate the history of nightclubbing in the museum of last parties.
Strut & Cluck sounds like it might be one of those places where disappointing slabs of buttermilk coated fried chicken (always buttermilk) are served in an ironic basket.
In fact, the meat on the table at this Spitalfields venture is turkey – and almost a whole menu full of it.
But rather than doing Christmas dinner 24/7 all year round, Strut & Cluck aims to showcase the potential of this bird by pairing it with Middle Eastern-cum-Mediterranean elements: from harissa and tahini to fiery Pul Biber peppers.
General Manager Kelly Willett told me the owners, husband and wife Amir and Limor Chen, went all out to get their ideas across to her on what Strut & Cluck should be – even whisking her to Tel Aviv to meet some of the suppliers, as well as scoping out the dining scene for inspiration.
The resulting dining area evokes an unpretentious Mediterranean terrace, albeit one with a great big long bar at the front.
Macramé features on the walls without feeling chintzy, and the furniture is mismatched, but in a way that says ‘eclectic’ rather than ‘something went seriously wrong here.’
To start, I went with Ms Willett‘s recommendation and had the cauliflower, served in either a quarter, half or whole, and dressed with crème fraiche and pomegranate molasses. I was told that this dish is popular with their weekday regulars: what’ll keep them coming back is the sumptuous flavour combination of citrus and cauliflower, to which I am a huge recent convert.
In this case, the citrus is of various types (predominantly lemon zest) and added to the crème fraiche, with more zing coming from the quintessentially Middle Eastern, concentrated flavour of the molasses. The leaves, extra charred from the cooking process, are a particular standout.
Alongside the starter I tried an Israeli beer, Maccabi, which had the pleasantly malty, extra thirst-quenching quality that seems to suit warmer climes so well. At this point, Strut & Cluck was beginning to feel so comfortably holiday-esque that, naturally, I began to worry. Surely an outlook this sunny on a chilly October evening is begging for a disappointment of some kind? And after all, this is turkey – which doesn’t really have a consistently positive reputation (fancy a twizzler?)
I needn’t have worried – the ‘classic slow-roast thigh’ was very fine indeed. Served with a liberal jug of buttery gravy, the turkey has amazing depth of flavour underneath its delectably crisp, spiced skin. The slow-roasting promotes turkey’s natural qualities – its arid fibrousness and gamey taste – and strengths, with the meat swaddling your tongue in warming tastes.
The chunks of sweet potato and caramelised red onions are a smooth treat, and the barberries puncture the pure comfort with a welcome sourness. The dish could have used something with a firmer edge for an extra twist texturally – one of the sides (from pitas to salads) or something from the “roasted and tossed” selection, may work well for this purpose. But it’s more than enough to satisfy and enjoy on its own, especially with the cold winter nights drawing in.
Strut & Cluck’s website makes a significant amount of bones about turkey as a medical marvel – talk of amino acids, zinc and tryptophan abounds. This is all fair enough of course, but their turkey-based menu delivers more of a tangible, delicious reward than that – and if you get a chance to gobble at it, take it.
Gavin Turk with ‘L’Age d’Or’, his new public sculpture that was unveiled this week
A surreal sculpture by renowned British artist Gavin Turk has been unveiled in Hackney Wick.
Members of the public walking past Here East this week might have spotted a large, painted door standing alone in the breeze.
People are encouraged to walk through it and let their imaginations run wild.
The sculpture, called L’Âge d’Or, is made out of bronze but has been painted to give the appearance of being wooden and well-used.
It is a “surrealistic suggestion looking at the idea of threshold”, according to the Wick-based artist.
“There’s a historic touch to it – let’s call it old-fashioned – that brings to mind a sense of history.
Turk fizzes with ideas and curiosity about what the door represents for both himself and his audience – and it is designed to provoke exactly that kind of reaction.
“I am interested in trompe-l’oeil [French for ‘deceive the eye’] and the illusionary element of art. It encourages people to think deeply and more creatively about what they are seeing,” he explains.
As if giving his own example, he adds: “Before I made the series of doors, I was making giant eggs, and it’s exciting for me to compare eggs to doors. Because an egg is basically a big door for a baby chick.”
There is a playfulness to L’Âge d’Or. The title, which translates as ‘golden age’, is more than a glaring pun – it derives from the 1930 surrealist comedy of the same name, written by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.
And Turk also drew inspiration from Belgian artist Rene Magritte, whose famous painting of a tobacco pipe was underscored with the words ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’, meaning ‘This is not a pipe’.
“When is a door not a door?” Turk asks. “When it’s ajar. It’s an old English joke but it brings to mind Magritte’s pipe, which asks a similar question. When is a pipe not a pipe? When it’s an image of a pipe.”
On a simpler level, the door symbolises Here East’s commitment to providing homes for the local creative community. The venue, which is located in the heart of the Olympic Park and includes workspaces, shops and restaurants, is to offer 22 affordable studios for artists from next year.
Gavin Poole, Here East’s chief executive, said: “This participatory public artwork fits perfectly with our vision for Here East as a major cultural and creative hub for London, and will greatly enrich the experience for visitors and for the creative business and individuals based on the site.”
This aspect of the artwork is not lost on Turk. He is all too aware of the plight of artists at nearby Vittoria Wharf, many of whom were recently evicted to make way for a new development.
“It is important for any culture to have artists,” he says. “They bring energy to any social environment. I would encourage respect for them. The problem in the UK is that they have become an underclass. They’ve just been acknowledged as the lowest rung of the gentrification process, but actually it’s because artists are adaptable. They can make good of run-down places.”
The hope is that the door is now opening onto a golden age of art in East London.
The final phase of the 26-year conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces and the rebel Tamil Tigers is the biggest unreported war story of our time, according to human rights theatre company Ice and Fire.
Their new play, The Island Nation, is set in Sri Lanka during the latter years of Asia’s longest-running civil war, a conflict which is thought to have claimed the lives of 100,000 people.
Playwright Christine Bacon wrote the play, which opens this month at the Arcola in Dalston, to address what she calls a “black hole in history”.
“It’s one of those things that seems to have passed the world by and it really shouldn’t have,” says Bacon when we meet in her Bethnal Green office.
“I think people know snippets: they’ve heard of the Tamil Tigers, or maybe they’ve been there on honeymoon, but the final stages of it were extremely brutal in terms of the extent of human suffering.
“It’s something that in any other context would have been headline news.”
The Sri Lankan Civil War began in July 1983 with an armed insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers).
The Tamil Tigers wanted to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island.
The conflict ravaged the population, environment and economy of Sri Lanka.
In 2009, after two decades of fighting, with several failed peace talks and false dawns, the Tamil Tigers were defeated.
In that same year, Bacon recalls international outcry at the bombing of civilians in Gaza.
She compares it to the situation in Sri Lanka. where civilians were bombed “indiscriminately” with nothing reported and only a muted response from the UN. So why the disparity?
“There’s multiple reasons why and that’s what this play delves into and tries to address,” says Bacon.
“Sri Lanka is basically an authoritarian country and way down on the press freedom list. It’s one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist so dissent on a domestic level is very rare, and the media weren’t even reporting it in Sri Lanka itself,” Bacon says.
The play, partly based on true events, tells the story of Nila, a young Tamil woman trapped in rebel-held territory, and a British aid worker desperate to get her out.
“There are three strands to the play,” Bacon explains. “It looks at what was happening in the war zone and the people who were trapped there.
“Then there’s the role of the UN and how they basically shut their eyes and ears and hoped it was all going to end.”
The final strand of the play is the peace process itself. Norway was asked to mediate in the conflict, and one of the politicians who tried to broker the cease-fire is a character in the play.
“His involvement in the conflict spans around 10 to 15 years,” says Bacon.
“So the play begins in around 1999 and goes up until 2009. It compresses a lot into an hour and a half.
“But for an audience that has no idea of what was going on in Sri Lanka you have to give them that history about where the conflict came from, who the Tamil Tigers were and what that wrangling was all about before you go into what happened at the end.”
The civil war officially ended in 2009, but that doesn’t mean that the minority Tamil population are still not suffering human rights violations, Bacon stresses.
“Freedom from Torture, a UK charity providing clinical services to torture survivors, has reported The Sri Lankan Tamils as the highest proportion of their case load for many years since the conflict ended,” she says.
“There was a cut off point but the abuses and the human rights violations certainly have not stopped – our play ends with a nod to the fact that it isn’t over.”
Living Wage campaigners protesting outside Hackney Picturehouse in 2014
Disgruntled Hackney Picturehouse staff are set to down tools this Saturday in protest against the cinema’s refusal to pay them the London Living Wage.
They are demanding the Mare Street cinema ups staff wages to at least £9.40 an hour, a figure independently calculated as the basic cost of living in the capital.
The current rate of pay for front-of-house Picturehouse staff in London is £8.77 an hour plus £1 commission for every membership sold or renewed.
The cinema workers are also calling on Picturehouse to grant “adequate sick pay, maternity and paternity pay” as well as recognition of their chosen trade union.
This Saturday the strikers will be demonstrating outside Hackney Town Hall in a programme consisting of music and speeches, with “generally excellent vibes” promised.
Members of The Ritzy Living Wage campaign will be there in solidarity, after they last week disrupted the BFI London Film Festival in a march on central London.
Staff at the Ritzy have already managed to secure a higher wage than employees at other Picturehouse cinemas, with those working front-of-house receiving a flat rate of £9.10 an hour.
Both cinemas are part of the Picturehouse cinema chain – owned by screen giant Cineworld – which posted after tax profits of £81.3 million during 2015.
Ritzy staff are represented by media and entertainment union Bectu, whereas representation in other Picturehouse cinemas, including Hackney, is provided by the Picturehouse staff Forum.
The Forum is a collective bargaining unit set up by Picturehouse Cinemas that the strikers argue lacks the independence of their preferred union, Bectu.
A statement on the A Living Wage for Hackney Picturehouse Staff campaign page read: “Cineworld/Picturehouse is a company that can easily afford to become a living wage employer and still run a massive profit. It is a company that can easily afford to give a pay rise which would greatly improve the health of its workers.
“If they won’t give it to us then we are going take it.”
Alisdair Cairns, a staff member at Hackney Picturehouse and a Bectu representative, told the Hackney Citizen: “After the Ritzy workers’ strikes in 2014, it became clear to us at Hackney that we had the power to change a situation that was so obviously wrong.
“We’ve worked hard to get to where we are now. We hope by joining forces with the Ritzy we can inspire not just other Picturehouse workers or other cinema workers, but people being paid poverty wages everywhere to take action. Everyone deserves a wage that is enough to live on.
Picturehouse management have refused to pay us Living Wage, they have refused to recognise our chosen trade union, and they have refused even to meet with us to discuss these matters.
Regrettably, we have been left with no option but to go on strike.”
But in a statement, a spokesperson for Hackney Picturehouse pointed out that the decision to strike was taken by a minority of staff.
“We negotiate pay rates each year with the Forum and negotiations for 2017 have not yet started. We are therefore disappointed by the decision of a minority of staff, 26 out of 82, who voted for strike action on Saturday 15 October,” the spokesperson said.
“Increases in pay for front of house people in Picturehouse Cinemas have far outstripped inflation over the last three years.
“Our staff are hugely important to us, we pay fair wages and have a wide range of benefits within a good working environment.”
At the UK premiere last month of his new film, I, Daniel Blake, director Ken Loach threw his weight behind the strikers.
He said: “Picturehouse is owned by Cineworld which is a big multinational corporation. They make fortunes. The idea that they pay starvation wages because they can get people who are desperate for work is absolutely shocking.”
It will not the first time that Hackney Picturehouse has been in the firing line over failure to pay the London Living Wage.
In June 2014, footballing legend Eric Cantona, who was in Hackney for a film screening and Q&A, lent his support to strikers outside the cinema, and the following Christmas the cinema was awarded a ‘Scrooge of the Year’award by London Living Wage campaigners.
The London Living Wage, which is set independently and updated annually, recommends businesses pay London workers £9.40 per hour and is calculated according to the basic cost of living in the capital.
Check It, a documentary about a queer street gang in Washington D.C. screens at Fringe! in November
The travails of the world’s only documented gay street gang, the daily life of a ‘third gender’ family in India and some sexy and shocking short films are set to hit East London’s screens at the Fringe! Film and Arts Fest next month.
The annual queer arts festival was launched in 2011 and has become a mainstay of East London’s cultural calendar.
Cinemas, art galleries, pop-up venues and basement clubs are to host a raft of film screenings during November alongside a programme of experimental art, workshops, interactive walks and parties.
The grand opening of this year’s programme is on 15 November at the Rio with Viva, the story of a hairdresser in Havana who works at a drag cabaret club to make ends meet but has dreams of stardom.
Check It, at theInstitute of Light, is a documentary about the Washington D.C street gang of the same name (apparently the only documented queer gang in the world) and their struggles to claw their way out of gang life through the unlikely avenue of fashion.
Shorts supply: Natural Instincts is a series of short films designed to shock and arouse in equal measure
Other film highlights include Guru: A Hijra Family, a moving portrait of the daily life of a family of transgender women in India known as hijras, commonly referred to as ‘the third gender’.
A series of shorts tackling the theme of being young and in love and will, according to the programme “resonate like the first time”. Whilst another, Natural Instincts, veers towards the explicit, featuring depictions of spanking and light bondage.
Away from the films, spoken word night Queer’Say will see broadcaster and comedian Rose Wilby host performances by three acclaimed LGBT poets and the drag performer and dominatrix Holestar will be hosting a BDSM workshop and fetish party.
Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Fest 15–29 November various East London venues
For more information and the full programme, see here.
Still from Viva, which opens the festival at the Rio Cinema next month
Taken to Basque: A waiter prepares some of the excellent steak at new Shoreditch restaurant Sagardi
Some restaurant groups grow organically, opening branches that preserve the intimacy and quirkiness of their flagship and by extension the signature of the chef who made it famous. Ottolenghi or the international Momofuku spring to mind.
Sagardi on Curtain Road is not one of those restaurants. It is the first UK outpost of a global chain of which Basque restaurants are only one of many well-oiled components.
When we walk up, a smartly-dressed woman is by the front door, handing out Sagardi cards to passersby, reminiscent of the curry house frontmen on Brick Lane.
She ushers us in, past the long pintxos bar to our right and white-tiled butchery counter to our left, to the 100 plus cover restaurant where we are seated under a huge decorative boat suspended from the ceiling. The waiters all wear wireless headsets, like they are gamers, or in the secret service.
Sagardi makes a big deal of its steak, which is fair, because the steak is very good.
It also makes a point of its produce, flown in daily from Spain, presumably to emphasise the authenticity of its regional cuisine. The paradox of the much-vaunted ‘seasonal menu’ is that if you are not concerned with geography, it is always summer somewhere.
The heirloom tomatoes, which come drizzled in olive oil and a few slices of chilli, certainly taste of sunshine, but personally I would prefer something from Kent.
Our favourite small dish is the morcilla, rich Spanish black pudding served with roasted peppers that provide a sweet punch that cuts through the earthy sausage.
The steamed clams in green sauce come with its sauce thickened with starch, and I find it too heavy. But the tuna tartare is fine. To reiterate, the steak really is excellent: buttery and tender, grilled on a wood fire, sliced up and served rare.
The side of lettuce with spring onions, however, is priced at eight quid. There’s a lot you can do with a simple green salad, but this was just iceberg lettuce topped with spring onions – we could find nothing obvious to justify the hefty price tag.
While the earpieces remind me of the time I went to the Las Vegas Rainforest Café, Sagardi shares none of the former’s ruthless efficiency. Service is friendly but a little confused and drops off as the evening wears on.
I ask our server for a wine recommendation and she tells us a sommelier is on his way. The sommelier never appears but we are at least brought some pleasant, average white wine. Judging by the extensive wine list, and wine cellar that runs the length of the restaurant, this is not all Sagardi has to offer, but it is bustling and hard to get anyone’s attention. We have some non-descript desserts and head home.
I ask my dining companion what he thought of the place. “Very Shoreditch,” he responds. What that means is open to interpretation, but if you are looking for somewhere spacious, impersonal and expensive to dine then Sagardi is the perfect fit.
