It often seems as if no stone has been left unturned in documenting the history of Hackney’s famous Woodberry Down Estate.
But just when you thought all the stories had been told, a self-proclaimed “diaspora of punks” who once squatted on the estate are adding their voices to the choir with an upcoming exhibition on its regeneration, entitled “They’ve Taken our Ghettos: A Punk History of the Woodberry Down Estate.”
This mixed-media show will comprise of etchings, comics, photographs and graphics and will be exhibited in the gallery space of Craving Coffee, an independent coffee shop in Tottenham recently partnered with social enterprise scheme the Mill Co. Project.
Woodberry Down’s colossal overhaul, which has seen one of the borough’s poorest housing estates transform into a mixed-tenure development with flats for sale at over £1million, prompted former squatter Rebecca Binns to coordinate an artistic response to the changing landscape.
Contributors include graphic designer Kieran Plunkett, etcher Joe Ryan, whose submission examines the relationship between institutions and control and Mik Insect, comic artist, tattooist and guitarist in punk-squat band Coitus. All three squatted on Woodberry Down in the late eighties and early nineties.
A collage entitled Reality Gap, which depicts Rebecca Binns in her first squat in a Haringey tower block aged 17 has also been submitted by web designer Millie Guest.
Mobocracy by Kieron Plunkett
Binns, who is a PhD candidate at University of the Arts London, researching the work of anarcho-punk band member and artist Gee Vaucher, told the East End Review she wanted to commemorate the estate’s alternative history “before it changes beyond recognition”.
The title “they’ve taken our ghettos” is drawn from the title of one of Joe Ryan’s etchings. “I think it is meant to be a bit ironic,” explains Binns. “It was hard then. We stayed in houses unfit to live in and were moved on a lot. I guess Joe is reflecting on the fact that while they were far from ideal homes they provided something very important – a sense of community and freedom.”
Like many asked to pass judgement on the redevelopment of Woodberry Down, Binns is ambivalent. She raises familiar concerns such as the management of the estate’s deterioration, residents’ unhappiness at the lack of social cohesion in the estate’s new ‘two-tier’ social structure and anger that leaseholders were not reimbursed at market rate for their properties.
Conquest, Colonisation and Social Cleansing by Joe Ryan
But Binns concedes that the council has “made an effort for it not to be a wholesale sell-off” and says it has tried to provide a decent component of social housing.
Following the Manor House Development Trust’s ‘memory bank’ exhibition and extensive media coverage on the council’s flagship scheme, Binns hopes the show will give voice to the estate’s radical past.
“I thought it would be a good idea to commemorate the alternative history of the estate. Ours is a different narrative,” she says.
“They’ve Taken our Ghettos: A Punk History of the Woodberry Down Estate” is at Craving Coffee, The Mill Co. Project, Gaunson House, N15 4QQ until 26 July
Roy Khalil playing Khalil al-Sakakini and Elena Voce playing his daughter Sala. Photograph: Andrew Bailey
Back in my school days, history lessons seemed either to be about the World Wars or Henry VIII and his six wives.
So speaking to Brian Rotman about his new play A Land without People, a staging of the historical events that led to the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, I have to admit to being on shaky ground.
“British people know nothing about this,” he says, to my awkward silence on the other end of the phone.
“They say: ‘Do you mean pre-Israel was in the hands of the Brits? And it was the way the Brits dealt with it that produced the historical narrative?”
It might be wise to do some cursory Wikipedia-ing before going to see Rotman’s play, which premieres at the Courtyard Theatre this month.
The play centres on three crucial episodes in the run-up to the declaration of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, with the main characters all historical figures.
But Rotman, a retired university maths professor who lives between London and the United States, insists the play is driven by events not characters, with modern events in Israel the play’s inspiration.
Rotman returned to London last summer during the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, which according to the UN resulted in 2251 (mostly Gazan) deaths.
“I realised immediately that my daily reading of the New York Times at breakfast had not served me well in terms of informing me what was going on,” says Rotman.
“So out of anger and being deeply disturbed at what this state was doing I started writing this play. And it became an historical play.”
Rotman grew up in a Jewish family during the 1940s and 50s. His parents owned a confectionary shop on Brick Lane where he spent his formative years.
“I had a traditional upbringing in a Jewish household and had a Bar Mitzvah, but I rebelled and just became secular English middle class.”
Researching the play made Rotman aware of campaigns groups such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP), which opposes the policy of Israel towards the Palestinian territories.
“Because of this play I discovered there was a split in the Jewish population caused by Israel, and that made me very interested in who would be sympathetic to my response.
“I feel that with this play I’m putting my shoulder to the wheel, saying this is the historical truth of how the country was founded. People can make of it what they want.”
A Land Without People is at The Courtyard, Bowling Green Walk, 40 Pitfield Street, N1 6EU thecourtyard.org.uk 9 July – 1 August
Being a drag queen is about saying “fuck you” to everyone else, declares DJ John Sizzle to the camera at the start of Dressed as a Girl, a new documentary about East London’s alternative drag scene.
The film, set to be one of the highlights of this month’s East End Film Festival, charts six years in the lives of a group of people who share a love of partying, dressing up and a determination to express themselves however they want.
“Coming of age stories are usually people in their teens and early 20s but this is about people in their-mid 30s and turning 40 and growing up finally,” says the scene’s ‘ringmaster’, Jonny Woo.
Woo gained a cult following in East London after he founded Gay Bingo in 2003, a notorious night out which used bingo as a pretext for all manner of outrageous goings-on.
Complete with blonde wig and fake eyelashes, Woo presents each character in turn, building up the mythology of the group with a languid delivery that contrasts to the chaos on screen.
We meet Amber, a transvestite model who wants to transition into a woman. Holestar is a self-proclaimed ‘tranny with a fanny’, the only biological female of the group. Scottee is an ambitious show off with a troubled past, while Pia claims to have predicted the end of the world. And then there’s John Sizzle who, as he approaches the age of 45, wonders if drag is still for him.
The film begins with early footage of Gay Bingo, when the scene was in its infancy. Using the innocent concept of bingo as an excuse for madcap debauchery (you have to see it to believe it), it shows how ready excess and exhibitionism was the group’s stock-in-trade.
Jonny Woo as Dressed as a Girl’s narrator
The film then leaps ahead to Glastonbury in 2009, a gig at the Royal Opera House and Lovebox.
“The idea initially was for it to be a year in the life of all these East London alternative performers as a time capsule-type thing,” says Holestar, who came up with the idea to make a film alongside its director, Colin Rothbart.
“But because of funding we decided to make it a longer project, which was quite beneficial in the long term because you see how everyone changes as people.
“It’s a celebration of that alternative, new artistic wave of creativity that was taking over at the time, especially in Hackney. I like to think it’s an East London celebration.”
Colin Rothbart moved to East London in 2008 and makes television programmes for the likes of MTV by day. He wasn’t part of the gay scene when he agreed to direct Dressed as a Girl, he says, and as an unknown quantity he wasn’t trusted from the outset.
“Because I had a TV background I think some of them thought oh he’s going stitch us up, so there was always that suspicion and it took a long time to get the core characters on board.”
But once signed up, the core characters had their own ideas about the filming. Some wanted their performances to be the film’s focus but that, says Rothbart, would have made it a “home video for the scene”.
“They didn’t really want me to meet their family or ask some probing questions about their past or anything like that, so that took a long time. I think that’s why it benefitted from having six years to film.”
Looking past the wigs and false eyelashes to darker and more serious issues such as suicide, addiction and mental illness gives the film a far broader appeal that will hopefully ensure it gets an audience outside East London.
“We’re all eventually talking about quite low moments in our lives, or very personal things,” says Woo.
“I think this idea, that everything’s great, everything’s fun, but actually we’re all dealing with some quite serious shit… it kind of destroys the illusion a little bit.”
Each of the characters is a star in their own right, and a few of them could carry a film on their own. Amber’s story, from holding a fundraiser in Dalston to raise money for a boob job, to opening up her own shop and a difficult reunion with her family, is at turns funny, moving and inspiring.
“She really wanted her story to be a beacon for people who are growing up, and being transgender in countries where it wasn’t accepted, so she let us into every aspect of her life,” says Rothbart.
For Woo, the excesses of the drag scene almost proved fatal. The film shows him coming back from the brink and redefining his life.
“It is about the glamour and hedonism, but it’s also about the effects of it,” says Rothbart. “The scene is great fun but it can kill you if you’re not careful. And if you’re being offered unlimited drink and drugs some people take it a little too far sometimes.”
Jonny Woo, John Sizzle and co at Hackney Empire
The six-year filming period allows you to see each character, in all their fabulousness and all their flaws. Holestar, who was this year named Best Drag Act at the London Cabaret Awards, talks freely about her struggles with depression.
“My aim for the film was for anyone who thinks they’re different to be able to watch this and think it’s ok, you can be whatever the hell you want to be.”
Two of the characters, Jonny Woo and John Sizzle, as well as the director Rothbart, now own a pub called The Glory on Kingsland Road, while Scottee has become a Radio 4 broadcaster as well as associate artist at the Roundhouse. So has the scene grown up and disbanded?
“Not so much actually,” Jonny Woo insists. “The drag scene in East London is as vibrant as it was back then and is bigger, and has far more people doing drag.
“People moan and say there’s nothing’s going on and things are closing down, but the East London drag scene is absolutely buzzing. That scene was of its time, but the party isn’t over.”
DRESSED AS A GIRL will be released by Peccadillo Pictures, where it is playing throughout the UK as part of the POUT Fest Tour followed by the DVD late 2015.
Unlike the reputation of its politicised proprietor, Trew Era café is inconspicuous. Nestled between a barber and a printing shop, it’s easy to miss. Russell Brand’s venture – a potentially awkward coalition of coffee and community action – is located just metres away from the New Era Estate in Hackney, whose residents recently fought off eviction, arm in arm with Mr Brand himself.
This particular arm of Brand’s ‘Revolution’ is a non-profit social enterprise, funded by proceeds from his book and run by people in abstinence-based recovery from addiction. At its opening, Brand announced: “Politics is dead, this is the end of politics. What we are discussing now is what comes after… and it will start with small enterprises such as this, which put the power where it belongs – with people.” Cue eye-rolling from those who don’t believe Russell Brand to be the arbiter of societal sea change.
And yet call me an undiscerning apologist, but I think it’s nice. It feels sincere, warm even; a far cry from popular complaints about Brand’s apparently shaky integrity and narcissism. Granted, the seating is coolly uncomfortable and the décor ‘stripped down’ chic, but it is certainly the only coffee shop I’ve been to in Hackney that isn’t almost exclusively frequented by MacBook-toting white people.
Indeed, New Era resident Ann Taylor proclaimed at the opening: “This will be our meeting place.” And she wasn’t lying. Every time I have been to Trew Era, something remarkable happens – strangers talk to each other. During my last visit, I ended up abandoning my emails in favour of a rather heart-warming conversation with an 80-something woman waiting for a Dial-A-Ride taxi and a couple of long-serving primary school teachers. Amongst all the talking and activist posters, it actually feels like there’s such thing as community.
The coffee and sandwiches are arguably secondary in the midst of revolutionary ambitions. Nevertheless, as they say, the revolution will be fuelled by flat whites and toasted sandwiches. There is breakfast food aplenty and cakes made by locals. The main menu changes often, depending on who’s working and is locally-sourced, organic and vegetarian. Recently there has been a vegan chilli and various vegetable soups. There are also appropriately healthy juices, including one called Chai Coff Ski. The prices are reasonable (as they should be). As a benchmark, a latte is £1.80.
Everything that I’ve tried is tasty, though you get the feeling that if you wanted something completely different, that’d be fine too. If this café is to be the headquarters of a post-politics, people’s revolution, you’d better show your face. If not, it’s definitely worth a visit anyway. You don’t even have to meet Russell Brand. But you might; I did, and he bought me a coffee.
There’s a buzz around Korean food in London today. Although the hub of Korean life is still in New Malden, a long way to the south west, we can spare ourselves the somewhat arduous journey, and explore local sources of this delicious food, influenced in some ways by China and Japan, but with a joyful identity of its own. Oriental stores stock the basic ingredients, and a visit to Yu Xiao in Kingsland Road, or the Longdan supermarket in Hackney will yield freshly made kimchi, some take-away items, and many of the strange and wonderful fish and plants that you need in order to try Korean food at home.
But since the cuisine depends so much on an assortment of different dishes that take quite a time to put together, it is a good idea to eat out to experience the delights of the full range. Hackney has a small, busy and friendly place in Shoreditch, On the Bab, and up the road in Finsbury Park is the legendary Dotori, a crowded little Japanese-Korean restaurant with a huge following, a contrast to the wide open spaces of Bibigo at the Angel, while Hurwundeki on Cambridge Heath Road offers a haircut as well.
Potted history
In spite of a long history of friendly and unfriendly contact with some of its neighbours (and the recent, unhappy division of the country), Korea has a strong sense of its individuality, with history, geography and various religious influences all shaping a vibrant and varied gastronomy.
You can see this all summed up in the pottery: not the (boring) elitist collectors’ pieces of greeny grey celadon or ghostly white porcelain or even the less posh buncheong stone-ware, but in the glorious range of everyday black-brown glazed onggi storage jars. They contain the country’s past and maybe its future – literally, for within these beautifully crafted forms lurk the essential elements of Korean cuisine. The jars and pots come in all sizes and various shapes, and until a few decades ago every household, in what was then a mainly rural society, would have an array of them clustered outside on terraces or rooftops. They held grains, especially rice, and water, wine, oil, vinegar and the defining condiments that enhance Korean food: soy sauce, brown soybean paste (denjang), fermented red chilli paste (gochu jang), and above all different kinds of kimchi: (salted and fermented vegetables with various flavourings, especially garlic and chilli). The beauty of these pastes is in their sweet, rich, dense flavour, not the amount of chilli in them. Never forget that chillies are enjoyed for flavour and not the macho impact of heat.
Kimchi
Kimchi evolved because things did not grow during the harsh winters, so preserving vegetables and fish was an essential domestic skill. This unique process, salting and fermenting, produces over 200 different kinds of kimchi, free of the harsh acidity of most European pickles. Every family had its own version. The fermentation process did not just make the stuff keep, it actually produced added nutrients, vitamins and minerals that make Korean food some of the healthiest on the planet. Kimchi has a clean, fresh-tasting zing and crunchiness. Different kinds can be served as side dishes, or it can be added to soups and stews.
The craftsmen who made the kimchi containers were socially inferior, their skills taken for granted, but every Korean family owned a range of their pots that survived generations of use, and the sensitivity and talent that went into their manufacture can perhaps now be seen in the cutting edge skills of modern Korean technology in other fields. The pots are now collected and treasured in museums, but also used for their original purposes. The Korean soul and genius is in these unique artefacts, the pots and what they contain, and eating the food is to enter into a world of innovation and tradition, of past history and a new future.
Korean meals
Another magic ingredient is Korean sesame oil. It works best as a condiment, sprinkled over a finished dish just before serving, or dribbled onto a salad, along with a few drops of Vietnamese fish sauce, transforming a banal mixture of lettuce, avocado and spring onions into an exotic treat. I don’t know what they do to make it so delicious, but there is no substitute. Seaweed gives flavour and texture, from slithery to crisp, and a big blast of umami. And tofu adds extra goodness.
A Korean meal might consist of rice, soup, stews, dumplings, pancakes and a lot of differently flavoured side dishes, something to eat out. But you can give your home cooking a Korean tinge by using the two densely flavoured pastes in fish and meat dishes, in soups and stews, and mixed with soy sauce, sugar and fish sauce to make dipping sauces and relishes.
Here are a few Korean-inspired recipes to try out at home:
Bibimbap
The endearingly named bibimbab or pibim bap has become an iconic Korean speciality. It began as a peasant dish, when a frugal bowl of rice had to be eked out with any raw or cooked vegetables and herbs that could be got hold of for free. Now it has become restaurant performance art, with the cooked rice brought to table in an almost red-hot iron bowl (together with the necessary health warning) sizzling and hissing as the other ingredients are stirred in, while the rice sticks to the bottom, forming a delicious crust. Ingredients can be luxurious (thin slices of beef, seafood) or simply sautéed vegetables, chopped kimchi, mushrooms, a sprinkling of dried seaweed, sometimes topped with a raw or fried egg, and of course the red chilli paste. It gets its name from bab or bap, a word meaning a dish of cooked rice. And that is exactly what this is: a recipe to do at home, using cooked rice and plenty of fresh and preserved stuff to give contrasting texture and flavour.
1 bowl of cooked rice per person
An assortment of things such as: sautéed shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced rump steak, an egg, raw or fried, thinly sliced crisp lettuce, Korean radish kimchi, raw bean sprouts, rinsed and dried, matchstick courgettes, raw or stir fried, chopped herbs (basil, coriander, mint).
Marinated Chicken
Chicken breasts and thighs
cut into pieces
Marinade: finely chopped ginger, garlic, spring onion, fresh green chilli,
soy sauce, sesame oil, a teaspoon of red chilli paste, a pinch of sugar,
all mixed together.
Rub the marinade into the chicken pieces and leave for an hour. Then put everything in a shallow pan with a little water and cook slowly until done, about 45 minutes, when the liquid should have evaporated. Taste for seasoning and add more chilli paste if you think it needs it. Serve sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and a few drops of sesame oil and some rice and kimchi on the side.
Seaweed and Shellfish Soup
This is traditionally made with miyeok seaweed and oysters, and given as a restorative to women who have just given birth, three times a day for seven weeks! You do not have to suffer though to enjoy a version of this, and the iron, calcium and vitamins in the seaweed will do you lots of good. There is a legend that the Samsin Grandmother, a folk goddess, caused the blue marks on the buttocks of Korean babies by hastening them into this world with a good slap, and so is offered this nourishing brew in gratitude.
1 cup of dried miyeok (wakame) seaweed, soaked in cold water for half an hour
½ kilo each of mussels, clams, uncooked jumbo prawns
2 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
Vietnamese fish sauce
Sesame oil
Cook the shellfish separately, covered, with the garlic and strain off the liquid, filtering it through muslin to keep out any sand or shell. Take the flesh out of the shells and put to one side. Tear the soaked seaweed into pieces and cook in water until soft and a nice dark green. Then add the shellfish, their juices, and season with sesame oil and fish sauce. Serve hot.
With an aesthetic combining minimalism and grunge, Louise Alsop draws on a love of hardcore music and zines, while reimagining graphics and logos for each season. A 2013 graduate of the prestigious University of Westminster design course, Alsop launched her own label for AW14, on-schedule, as part of Fashion East. Here, the London-based womenswear designer talks about the design process, education and branding.
What made you want to be a fashion designer?
I’ve always had a huge fascination with fashion, clothes, looking at catwalk shows on the internet and studying my favourite designers. But it hadn’t occurred to me that this was something I could pursue as a career. After studying art, design and textiles and completing school I started to look into fashion courses. Prior to that, I spent a lot of time drawing and making garments and taught myself to pattern cut at home. So I can’t pinpoint a time when I made the decision that fashion was the direction for me, it just seemed kind of gradual and very clear.
You graduated in 2013, from University of Westminster, which has also produced the likes of Liam Hodges, Claire Barrow and Ashley Williams. How did this experience shape your work?
Westminster has an amazing reputation for producing really strong graduates for sure, with the likes of Liam, Claire and Ashley all graduating before me. Westminster was great for allowing you to figure out where you sit within fashion. There was never one pathway for all. It has a strong list of alumni and the classes are small so you easily built relationships with really interesting and creative people, which made for such a good working environment. Westminster always pushed me to produce work that was to the best of my ability, while never pressuring me to decide what I wanted to do once I’d finished. It was about self-development.
For your final collection, you referenced hard rock and nuns. Tell us about that.
I’d been playing around with so many ideas for my graduate collection and when it actually came down to it and the final result, I just simplified everything. I didn’t want to make a final collection that was huge and brash, uncommercial and unwearable. I always loved making clothes and wearing them, so I felt really strongly about that. Because I kept the colour palette just black and white, the prints and fabrication needed to be special. Many of the references were from zines and posters and books I’d collected, and growing up listening to punk rock and hardcore I felt like it was important to reflect that within my work, which I still do to date.
How do you go about designing a collection now? What is the process?
There is always a lot of research to start with, which gets heavily edited to make sure each collection is strong. I love developing my own prints, so sometimes I start there and then work on shape and silhouette and how I can make them work together to create something new. I also love mixing unconventional fabrics together, so there’s also a lot of fabric development and hand work.
You have developed a unique aesthetic with a young rebellious edge to it. What inspires you?
None of my collections have a specific theme. They’re all just a culmination of lots of things I really love which come together.
You use a lot of layering techniques. What got you interested in this?
I really like being able to mix sheer and light fabrics with heavy and matte ones, so I think the layering came from this — seeing fabrics sitting together and complementing each other. I also like things to be really tactile and want people to want to touch my clothes.
Tell us about your use of branding and logos.
I’m obsessed with logos and fonts and graphics and I’m constantly playing around with them. I want this to always be strong and when people see my work, for it to be instantly identifiable. I spend a lot of time getting this right and working out new and interesting ways to do so. I’ll often create seasonal logos, which makes each collection special. It also makes them of a time.
What are you working on now and what is next for Louise Alsop the brand?
I’m currently working on my SS16 collection. I’m constantly working on new ideas and how I can make each new collection the best one yet. I’m hoping the brand continues to grow and in seasons to come I’m enjoying it as much as I do now.
Som Saa, a Thai pop-up off of London Fields, cooks out of a shipping container for 30-odd covers at a time. This simple setup, accompanied by a wood-fired grill, serves a changing menu of ‘street food’ from Northern Thailand, dishes that rarely grace a London menu.
Since opening in winter word has travelled, and when we showed up for dinner at 6pm on the dot on a Sunday afternoon, a long queue had already formed. “It’s not too bad,” the door manager said apologetically when he took our names, “about an hour and a half or so”.
London is arguably the most international city in the world, but it remains challenging to find a Thai menu that isn’t an unholy mishmash of pan-Asian hits: green curry, vegetable tempura. Growing up in Southeast Asia, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to authentic Thai cuisine, and I miss the sheer variety of dishes, such as steamed lady fingers dipped into a spicy shrimp paste, deep-fried pomfret and olive fried rice. When the most inventive Thai available locally appears to be Alan Yau’s chain Busaba, there is a gap in the market.
There are no noodles or green curry on Som Saa’s menu, and the food ranges from good to sublime. The most familiar dish, green papaya salad, is studded with chillis, as it should be. Highlights are the grilled octopus salad, with cubes of meaty, fresh octopus that taste of wood smoke; and smoked aubergine with prawn floss. My dining companion delighted in the comforting pork belly curry as well as the fried whole sea bass covered in fresh herbs, perfect with our sticky rice. We finished off our meal with a palm sugar ice cream that was elegant and decadent. There’s also an interesting variety of bar snacks to see you through the wait for a table.
With its £7.50 glasses of Riesling, DJ sets, and plastic cups, Som Saa certainly has a whiff of its trendy American counterpart, Pok Pok, where a young Western chef, armed with nothing but a dream, a barbecue and a marketing plan, went on to build a small empire around Thai ‘street food’ and signature chicken wings.
There’s very little here that is reminiscent of Thailand in the dining room or the clientele and, at £30 a head or so with drinks, I can’t afford to make this a regular haunt. But this is undoubtedly the best Thai food I’ve had in the 10 years I’ve lived in England, and my dining companion solemnly said it was the best he’d ever had. So until something else pops up to compete, Som Saa is certainly a most welcome newcomer.
Site of proposed mural. Photograph: Lee Valley Regional Park Authority
Artists are invited to apply to paint a neglected underpass under the Lea Bridge Road.
The Lee Valley Regional Park Authority wants a community mural to be painted on the walls of a pedestrian tunnel that connects Leyton Marshes to the nature reserve by Hackney Marshes.
The Park Authority claims the subway is the target of “vandalism and anti-social behaviour”, and wants to initiate a “community rejuvenation project” to transform the space.
Alex Farris, Green Spaces Manager at Lee Valley Regional Park Authority said: “We’re very keen to be able to work with local talent in creating this mural and I hope to see many artists get in touch with us.
“The underpass is well-used by residents and visitors and we want it to be inviting and a pleasant route.
Lee Valley Regional Park Authority will work with the artists and local people in Waltham Forest and Hackney and run workshops to transform the space.
Anyone who would like to apply for the commission should email a covering letter and CV citing examples of relevant work before Friday 3 July to procurement@leevalleypark.org.uk with the subject heading, ‘Leyton Marsh Art Project’.
The front of one of the Omega Works warehouses on Hermitage Road, Harringay. Photograph: Ossi Piispanen
“Artists and African churches always move in at the same time,” says Ellis Gardiner, as he describes how he arrived in what is known variously as the Manor House or Harringay Warehouse district in 2000 with plans to set up a recording studio.
Fifteen years on, we are sitting in the ground floor of an old Courtney Pope building on Eade Road – part of a sprawling industrial site consisting of around 322 units across 42 sites. Once the area’s major employers in the shop fitting business, Gardiner and others have transformed the building into the New River Studios, comprising a recording studio, affordable office space and a café. Rising above the other side of Seven Sisters Road is a glinting totem of plate glass that is Hackney Council’s flagship development Woodberry Down.
The cross-subsidising model of Berkeley Homes’ mammoth project – where luxury penthouse flats are sold to fund the building of new council homes – is an increasingly popular one among cash-strapped councils.
Walking around the warehouse cluster the Berkeley tower pokes up above every chimney turret and single storey factory, a constant reminder of top-down regeneration and the steady spread of capital inching up from Shoreditch via Dalston and Stoke Newington.
Shulem Askler began buying up property on Eade Road in the nineties, when the ‘rag trade’ fell into decline and Harringay’s smaller textile factories accommodating Greek and Turkish dressmakers, sewers, packers and button makers began to close. His company Provewell Ltd now manages around 70 per cent of the warehouses in the area on behalf of its owners (mainly offshore investors).
Beginning with blank slates (“They had no bedrooms or doors,” laughs Askler) these industrious new tenants designed their own homes and workplaces. Other than a few rogue ‘architectural nightmares’, many are spaces that could grace the pages of interior design magazines; vast communal spaces decorated with projector screens, pool tables and wild plants, daring staircases and the obligatory space-saving mezzanines.
Gardiner – something of a warehouse everyman – is also a leaseholder on a former Fed-Ex warehouse appropriately named Ex-Fed, home to around 25 people. “It’s like a vacuum, creative people just flood in,” says Gardiner.
Now more than 1000 people live here. Hundreds of self-employed artists, makers, musicians and entrepreneurs have set up shop inside the live/work units. An internal Facebook group, fiercely guarded by its administrators, is a good place to view the micro-economy in action. Services and jobs are advertised, alongside parties and odds and ends for sale. Organisations like Haringey Arts work to connect artists with each other and provide a legal framework for those looking to apply for arts funding, while events such as May’s InHouse Festival offer a jam-packed programme of film, music, theatre and art held over six warehouses venues.
Row of former furniture factories now warehouses on Hermitage Road. Photograph: Ossi Piispanen
Unauthorised living
All this was bubbling away nicely until a Haringey Council officer visited one of the units on Hermitage Road in summer 2013 following a fire and was shocked to discover bedroom after illegal bedroom tucked away in an industrial unit. Despite the fact tenants had been paying council tax for over 10 years, the authorities were apparently unaware of the scale of the residential use. Initially Haringey Council went in guns blazing and requested £660,000 to tackle “unauthorised living in industrial areas”. One councillor described the warehouses as “cramped, cold, unsanitary and dangerous”.
Opposition to the evictions was quickly mounted by Warehouses of Harringay Association of Tenants (W.H.A.T.), and after an enforcement notice seeking to reverse the unauthorised residential use in Ex-Fed was quashed in a legal case, the council was pressured into performing a tentative yet significant U-turn. In the Haringey Local Plan released in February 2015, policymakers describe their ‘Vision for the Area’ as: “The creation of a collection of thriving creative quarters, providing jobs for the local economy, cultural output that can be enjoyed by local residents, and places for local artists to live and work.”
So begins the momentous task of legislating an alternative way of living – coming up with what might sound like a contradiction in terms, a “warehouse blueprint”. Normalising an alternative lifestyle whilst retaining its authenticity is a tricky balancing act. W.H.A.T. member Tom Peters says: “Blueprinting is about trying to ring-fence off areas in a way that limits the rampage of gentrification across the city. The state is supposed to be hedging against these big development models. Otherwise the city will become unaffordable dead space.”
This might be what beckons for Hackney Wick, just a few miles down the River Lea, where the artist community has never tried to officially change its use from light industrial to residential or live/work.
Imposing: front of a warehouse by night. Photograph: Ossi Piispanen
As developers put in gigantic planning applications, artists are working out their notice period in leaky studios with nothing but vague Section 106 promises of “affordable workspace”. Going for legitimacy might mean the council makes you put banisters on the staircases, but it also offers protection.
When I get Askler on the phone, known as simply Shulem to his tenants, he tells me he “deserves a reward” for how he has developed the warehouses. “It’s a vibrant and fantastic community. We’re trying so hard to keep it like this. Of course! We could have gone for planning permission and built a Berkeley Homes out of it, but it’s crazy, these people do so much for the community. We have over 1000 tenants, not one single one of them takes housing benefit.”
While the council’s decision to draft a warehouse policy is generally thought of as “pretty progressive, for Haringey”, many of the residents – especially those familiar with the implementation of City Hall’s London Plan – express concerns about the council’s strategic policies to bring back the employment function of the area. This means big change. Local historian and founder of online forum Harringay Online Hugh Flouch says the boom and bust story of the British Industrial Revolution can be read in the history of this sprawling site.
Heavy industry arrived around 1914 in the shape of the redbrick Maynard’s sweet factory, Courtney Pope Holdings and a collection of piano manufacturers. Industry has been trickling out of Harringay since World War II, and many question exactly which types the council thinks it could tempt back. John Gregory, son of Jim Gregory who opened J. Reid Pianos in 1952, has worked in the piano refurbishment shop on St Anne’s Road since he was 12 years old. He says:“The factories have gone and have been converted. What was industrial is now residential.”
Except it is not just residential. The site is already home to the kind of burgeoning creative industry that the council says it wishes to create. The judge in the enforcement case at Ex-Fed recognised Provewell’s point that under the current occupation the building was generating a higher level of employment than when it had been used for its lawful purpose.
Gardens at the back of Omega Works. Photograph: Ossi Piispanen
Popularity problem
With Haringey Council tentatively on board, the other threat is the district’s ‘popularity problem’ or gentrification. The clumsy waves of big money are already appearing, one frozen yoghurt shop at a time. A shop called Simply Organique is the latest addition to Manor House Station – its healthy wares incongruous against the dusty fug of kebab grills, knackered bakeries and greasy spoons. Nathan Coen, 24, moved to Overbury Road from Dublin in 2010 and now lives in Omega Works. “When I moved it was just before the Tottenham riots, no one wanted to be here. Now you can see the changes creeping.”
But while it is easy to point the finger at the wider market for the rent rises, the internal organs of the warehouse district are not immune from profit-motives. Within the tangled power structure some ‘bad apple’ leaseholders are taking a less than positive artistic licence and making big bucks by squeezing bedrooms into former communal space. Gardiner, who is a leaseholder himself, says: “It’s a problem, and it’s not sustainable.” W.H.A.T. hopes to tackle the problem by starting a housing cooperative together with Provewell and taking on units themselves.
Using Haringey Arts as a vehicle to connect with its tenants, Provewell has invested £50,000 in the area’s external appearance. A huge hand-made light-up sign shaped like a cotton reel reading ‘Artists’ Village’ hangs over Overbury Road. There is also a heat-reactive mural depicting both the dystopian and utopian elements of warehouse life which turns opaque when you place your hands on it, and a QR code bookshelf encouraging passers-by to download a warehouse-recommended read.
Tom Peters from W.H.A.T. sees the ‘Artists’ Village sign’ and the landlord’s artistic patronage as a commodification of the area’s hitherto organic creativity. “It is branding. There’s a tension between wanting to celebrate what we are doing and preserving it.” But Co-Director of Haringey Arts James West disagrees: “Artists complain about having no funding, and that they can’t get Arts Council funding because of the cuts, but there’s money on the doorstep. So yes it is loosely gentrified, but at least you are being involved.”
When compared to the whopping towers of Woodberry Down or the gradual erosion of artistic areas like Hackney Wick, it is tempting to see the growth of the Harringay warehouse district as a genuinely bottom-up or grassroots process of regeneration. Peters resists such a simple narrative. “It’s not as linear,” he says. “The city is created and recreated all the time and it is a more complex process than looking at it top-down or bottom up. It’s about different interests clashing.”
Home grown: Residents decorate warehouse front with plants. Photograph: Ossi Piispanen
Protesters at the wake for Dalston Lane terraces in January 2015. Photograph: @TimePlaceE8
Every year, more than 10,000 people from around the world descend on Minneapolis, in the United States, for the international Internet Cat Video Festival. They gather in gigantic auditoria to watch the pick of the year’s crop of Internet cat videos, and chat about them afterwards.
For Loyd Grossman, the pasta sauce maker and broadcaster who is chairman of the Heritage Alliance and Churches Conservation Trust, as well as president of the National Association of Decorative & Fine Arts Societies (NADFAS), the annual vid-fest is a good omen for the future preservation of England’s built heritage.
“People actually like something tangible, and they like something that involves other people,” he said at a recent talk for the East End Preservation Society (EEPS). “This is the power of reality, and if heritage doesn’t represent reality, what else does?”
Elaborating, Grossman posed and answered the obvious question on the cat-and-chat convention: “Why do they do it? They do it because they want to do something with other people. There’s this tremendous resurgence of social interest, and this is something that we who work in heritage need to harness.”
Grossman’s observation about the “power of reality” can be applied as much to William Morris and Octavia Hill as it can to the various campaigns to save heritage buildings in Hackney over recent years. From OPEN Dalston to the Save the Chesham campaign, these are campaigns that always rely on “social interest” in buildings people feel belong to them, even if they’ve never done more than look through the keyhole.
The Chesham Arms
In the case of Save the Chesham, many of the campaigners had looked inside a great deal more, frequently spending whole evenings at the popular 150-year-old pub on Mehetabel Road, Homerton, until it was closed in 2012 after being purchased by developer Mukund Patel, who converted it into an office space with a flat above.
Save the Chesham, a group of residents and former customers, formed to restore the pub and succeeded first in having it designated an Asset of Community Value and finally in having a highly unusual ‘Article 4’ direction served on the premises, which meant that any future change of use from being a free house would require planning permission. The Chesham Arms is to re-open as an ‘East End boozer’ this summer.
Mine’s a pint: Victorious Chesham Arms campaigners. Photograph: Save the Chesham
Save Dalston Lane
Less happy is the fate of 48-76 Dalston Lane, a terrace of Georgian buildings where demolition work has begun following a decade-long struggle. The planned development of ‘heritage likeness’-fronted non-affordable flats which will take its place was tenaciously opposed by conservation group OPEN Dalston, upon whose blog the ins and outs of the story are painstakingly documented by Bill Parry-Davies, prominent Hackney lawyer and OPEN Dalston founder.
The Dalston Lane buildings were bought by Hackney Council from the Greater London Council in 1984 and sold to an off-shore company in 2002. Severe structural damage followed, including fires, with the new owner subsequently applying for planning permission to demolish the buildings and replace them with shops and flats. In 2010, the council bought the terrace back for twice the price it had sold it for and promised a ‘conservation-led’ development scheme to preserve it. In January 2015, final approval for demolition of the terrace was given by a judge who turned down OPEN Dalston’s final appeal.
Bishopsgate Goodsyard
Looming on the horizon is the greatest heritage battle to have been fought in East London for a generation: the proposed Bishopsgate Goodsyard development (“the biggest thing to hit the area since the plague,” in the words of one campaign group) by firm Hammersons and Ballymore.
Hackney Council launched a campaign back in February to ‘save Shoreditch’ from the £800 million scheme for two high-rise luxury flat complexes to be built on the site. Pointing out that the development would stand almost as high as the Canada Place tower in Canary Wharf, Pipe warned it would threaten the “local, creative” tech economy in Shoreditch and “do nothing to help London’s housing crisis”. A heavily redacted financial viability report explaining why the developer had found it was only possible to make the scheme only 10 per cent affordable flats rather than the original 35 per cent was released under a Freedom of Information request in February.
David and Goliath
But what can three dozen people gathered in a church hall do about any of this? Grossman believes the struggle is intense. “Often David does slay Goliath, but you’ve got to remember that after David slew Goliath, he took the day off. Which is something that we can’t do, because we go to war every day, you know it never stops. It never ever stops.”
The resilience and sheer enthusiasm of heritage supporters is, Grossman believes, why the sector’s activities have managed to survive swingeing financial cuts, which have been inflicted by “governments of both colours”. “Exceptional individuals you know who often at great sacrifice, often with no resources, have gone in there and defended and protected the heritage – they’re the people who should be inspiring us,” he said, unveiling a Photoshopped “What would William Morris do?” poster, adapted from the more famous Jesus type.
Jonathan Meades – architecture critic and, like Grossman, a former restaurant reviewer – had a good line on Morris when he said Morris believed the world could be saved through expensive wallpaper. One wishes for a better inspiration when the slip from conservation to a reactionary anti-urbanism can be as easy as Morris proved it to be. Grossman is aware of the need for “dialogue” with developers, but during the whole of his talk there was little about what positive development might look like.
On the other hand, there was a proposal for positive cultural and civic engagement: “London isn’t crying out for more visitors, it’s not crying out for more inhabitants – it’s crying out for citizens. Citizens who feel that they belong and whose lives have joy and meaning and significance and pleasure, because they are citizens of London, because they belong to this place. And for me the most tangible sign of our citizenship is the way we care for our heritage.”
