The Growing Communities food map shows all the pick-up points around the borough. Image: © Growing Communities

Saturday 18 September will be the day to celebrate Hackney’s food-growing sites.

The social enterprise Growing Communities, which provides organic boxes to 590 households in Hackney and grows 5% of their contents within the borough, will run a one-day tour of its five sites and give out a colourful map illustrating their market gardens and pick-up points. It will also feature in Open House London, a city-wide celebration of great London buildings.

Firstly, the Growing Communities tour. For £3, visitors can learn all about growing organic food and meet some of the growers that are making great things happen within Hackney‘s soil. A light lunch at Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market is also included.

For those who don’t fancy the full five-site visit, all the Growing Communities organic gardens will be open for guests to drop in between 10.30am and 4pm. This includes the enterprise’s Patchwork Farm microsites, which are not usually open to the public.

Secondly, an attractive map is to be released on the same day. Designed by local man Michael Georgiou, it shows the scheme’s organic market gardens and community pickup points for their box scheme. It also features well-known Hackney architectural landmarks such at the Geffrye Museum, Chats Palace Arts Centre, St Mary’s Church in Stoke Newington and the Castle Climbing Centre, which houses the Growing Communities micro-site that featured in last month‘s Citizen.

“We’re really proud of being a community-led enterprise working in Hackney,” said Julie Brown, Growing Communities director. “We commissioned our new map to show our links across Hackney, from our popular community pickup at Hackney City Farm to our organic market garden in Springfield, Clapton.”

And last but not least, the tour and map release coincide with the annual London-wide Open House weekend, where hundreds of different types of building across the city welcome members of the public. And included in this year’s programme is the Growing Communities eco-building in Allens Gardens. Visitors will come from far and wide to admire its green sedum roof and composting toilet, set within a flourishing organic market garden.

Growing Communities, based at the Old Fire Station in Leswin Road, is run for local people by local people. It seeks to create community-led alternatives to the current food system and find out ways of feeding urban populations in the face of climate change, ecological crises and fossil foil depletion.

It believes that if we are to create the sustainable re-localised food systems that will see us through the challenges ahead, communities and farmers need to work together to take our food system back from the supermarkets and agribusiness.

Growing Communities’ main projects are the organic fruit and vegetable box scheme and Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market at William Patten School on Church Street. It employs 26 part-time staff and also trains two apprentices in organic growing a year.

If you’re interested in going on the tour on Saturday 18 September, email growcomm@growingcommunities.org.

For more information about Growing Communities, ring 020 7502 7588 or visit their website.

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Stages & Screens. Photo: © Miriam Bokser

For over five decades British-born filmmaker and producer Peter Davis has been at the forefront of directing, producing and distributing works of socio-political documentary film. In two separate film cycles – each accompanied by documentation, archive materials, commissioned texts and slide show rotations – Davis draws from his own film collection, Villon Films, highlighting period works made by himself and others in order to present a personal journey through the 60s.

In total, sixteen films make up the programme.

Offerings by Davis himself such as Anatomy of Violence (1967), which details the Congress of The Dialectics of Liberation, an international gathering featuring Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Marcuse and R.D. Laing, will be presented alongside works by other directors such as The Russell Tribunal (dir. Staffan Lamm, 2004), a powerful short concerning Bertrand Russell’s 1967 war crimes tribunal featuring Tariq Ali, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beavoir and America Against Itself (dir. William C. Jersey, 1968), a documentary about the events surrounding the infamous 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago.

Stages and Screens: Peter Davis, Villon Films and Friends

Cycle I 3- 25 September
Cycle II 27 September – 16 October

Space Studios
129-131 Mare Street E8 3RH
Tel: 020 8525 4330

Romeo and Juliet is playing at Hackney Wick Festival 18-19 September. Photo: Peregrine Blue

One of the highlights of this year’s Hackney Wick Festival on 18-19 September will be LiveSpace Theatre Company’s unique production of Romeo and Juliet.

The classic Shakespeare drama will be broken up into a series of bite-sized chunks, to be staged at various points and times throughout the course of the two-day festival.

More unusually still, LiveSpace will be involving local residents in all aspects of the performance, including production, acting, singing, and propmaking.

LiveSpace Artistic Director Matthew Carter explained: “This is a new idea-venture for us and the festival will be the first experiment, so it’s exciting stuff. We will continue to develop this concept with Romeo and Juliet and other classics as well as mounting straight theatre-events in site-specific locations.

“We chose the play because it’s a story most of the public are already very familiar with. We now need to implement games and tricks to get them to the next level which will be acting out the dance, love and fight scenes with us!”

Participants of all ages are invited to take part in dance, voice and stage combat classes to prepare them for their roles in the performance. LiveSpace’s productions have been described by the Independent as ‘robust, visceral, visually arresting’.

If you would like to be involved in the production of Romeo and Juliet, contact Matthew Carter at livespacetheatrecompany@gmail.com or phone 07960 399 911.

Ryan Fletcher in Beautiful Burnout. Photo: Gavin Evans

York Hall, the world-famous boxing ring in Bethnal Green (Hackney fringes) which has hosted fights featuring the likes of Lennox Lewis and Chris Eubank, will become the stage for a Scottish physical theatre production based on the sport from 16 September to 2 October.

Beautiful Burnout is a National Theatre of Scotland and Frantic Assembly play which blurs the line between fiction and reality thanks to this perfect realistic setting.

Its audience, watching from three sides of the ring, are invited to forget they’re in London and witness the story of five youngsters shedding blood, sweat and tears in a Glasgow gym in the hope of becoming champions like Joe Calzaghe – who once fought at York Hall himself.

The play is touring the UK after a successful premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Featuring music from electronic group Underworld (of Trainspotting fame), it tells a bruising and lyrical tale of aspirations and counterpunches, delivered in visceral, hearts-in-yourmouth style.

And with a cast trained by the former coach to Scotland’s national boxing squad, Kevin Smith, viewers are guaranteed a real feel for the emotions and passions behind this sport.

Beautiful Burnout
York Hall Leisure Centre
Bethnal Green
E2 9PJ
Tel: 020 7638 8891

Thursday 16 September to Saturday 2 October at 8pm
Matinee performances at 2pm on 18, 22, 25, 29 September
£18/£10/£5 for Tower Hamlets residents (limited availability)

Pieces of Vincent is showing at the Arcola until 25 September

David Watson got into writing early on in life. At 17, his first play, Just A Bloke, was staged at the prestigious Royal Court. At 22, his second play, Flight Path, was put on at the Bush Theatre in a co-production with highly respected director Max Stafford-Clark’s Holloway-based theatre company Out of Joint.

And now his third play, Pieces of Vincent, is poised to get a three week outing at a venue midway between his home (Walthamstow) and his birthplace (Islington) – Hackney’s Arcola Theatre.

The play tells the story of Vincent, a man estranged from his family, adrift in London and described as “human shrapnel”.

“Hopefully the experience for the audience will be as if a bomb has exploded and we’re picking up the fragments,” says Watson, now 25. “It’s definitely not a linear narrative. I suppose part of the experience for the audience is working out where the story is as it’s not a conventionally structured plot.”

Eight other lives are introduced during the course of the drama, set partly on London’s Southbank. “It’s almost a series of vignettes,” explains Watson. “Hopefully some of the excitement comes from there being several different worlds at work in the play.”

The playwright’s off-the-wall style is perfect for the Arcola, which has a reputation for fresh and radical modern theatre. The show will take place on the venue’s main stage – Studio One, a large but intimate space – throughout this month (September). The Arcola’s blurb describes it as “a mini epic about love, passion and violence in contemporary Britain”.

“The collisions of urban life: that probably describes what the play is about,” says Watson. “But there is an act of violence that lies beneath this. There is a perpetrator and a victim, but I’m loathe to go into that as it’s part of the discovery. I don’t want to spoil it.”

Watson wrote short stories while in primary school and got involved in the theatre while he was in his teens in Birmingham (he lived in the city briefly with his family after his dad got a job there working for British Gas).

“At the Birmingham Rep there was a group that got teenage dramatists together and about the second play I wrote for them, when I was 17, got picked up by Royal Court as part of their young writers’ festival,” he says.

Young he may be, unworldly he is not.

Pieces of Vincent is at the Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola Street, E8, from 2-25 September.
For tickets call 020 7503 1646.

The Thousands by Burning Candy Crew. Photo: RomanyWG

Ever seen a big set of teeth gnarling on a canal? Or how about a giant monkey with a shiny gold chain chilling on a shop shutter? These iconic images are the work of Burning Candy (BC), an ingeniously creative street art graffiti crew. Now a groundbreaking documentary is in the process of being made about them – directed by an elusive member of the crew who is know simply as The Baron.

The other members of the collective go by the names Cept, Dscreet, Mighty Mo, Cyclops, Rowdy, Sweet Toof, LL Brainwashed, Goldpeg and Tek 33.

“We are a collective of eccentric artists whose core work comes from the street but also crosses over to galleries,” The Baron told the Citizen when we met him at a secret location. “We try to think outside the boundaries and do some loose and funky stuff. We are all different ages and do different artwork but when we come together, we have a common cohesive thread where we all see the world as a big canvas.”

The Baron was quick to point out who he is and why he is best positioned to document the work of Burning Candy.

“I am a filmmaker and a graffiti artist,” he explained. “So I am combining my two passions and, as I deal with the BC members on a daily basis, the natural progression is for me to make a film about graffiti artists. As a friend, they talk to me truthfully, which they won’t do to an outsider.” Many locals will be familiar with BC’s work – and The Baron claims that it has attracted tourists to our borough.

“BC’s been good for Hackney,” he said. “Many Londoners and tourists come internationally, just to photograph the work. Certainly in preceding years the prominence of BC in Hackney was because it was a thriving artistic community and a creative place. There was cheap rent, free attitudes and dilapidated buildings – prime conditions for artists and our work. Street art thrives in transitional places, money gets pumped into an area and then saps its soul into no return. I hope that doesn’t happen to Hackney, but the soul will not be taken completely – there’s still people keeping it real”.

The Baron’s film will differ from other graffiti films. “We’re going to the most unlikely and inaccessible spots around the world to show how and why graffiti can have such a potent presence,” he told the Citizen. “It’s an expression that transcends language and cultural barriers. This is why the film is called Dots – it is the joining of all these cities that are connected through this art form. It’s gonna be action packed, hands on, visceral and tactile. We are going to the deepest darkest Siberia, Brazil, India and Australia amongst other places.

“A lot of documentaries, they just turn up and film what’s already there, but we will be creating work as we go. In Brazil you see kids who can’t afford spray cans and instead use stolen road paint, scaling the side of massive buildings trying to paint the craziest spot they can reach. It’s a rare combination of death-defying extreme sport and artful expression. That’s a big part of what sets graffiti apart.

“To be a true practitioner, you have to work in the elements – you have to work in the snow, the rain, extreme heat and avoid the authorities. It’s the challenges that make you a stronger, more intuitive artist.”

More at www.dotsthefilm.com

Spindle and Wit

Despite forming just over a year ago, Hackney based indie-folksters Spindle and Wit are already making noise in all the right places. Having just completed a UK tour as well as a six-date jaunt in New York, they have now been asked to play the Isle of White’s Bestival at the personal request of founder Rob da Bank. The youthful six piece consists of Paul (drums), Charlie (guitar/banjo), Charlotte (cello/vocals), Elliot (bass), Philip (vocals/guitar) and Nathalia (violin) and their fusion of laid back folk songs with a harder indie edge has been well received in the music press, leading to comparisons with Mumford & Sons and Noah & the Whale.

Growing up in the New Forest and playing in various ‘crap bands’, the four lads already knew of each other, but hooked up with the girls after sharing a flat with them in Stoke Newington. Deciding they all wanted to be in the same line-up, a plan was hatched which involved Charlie learning to play the banjo, whilst on holiday and carrying a fracture. No easy feat, he explained: “I had to do my homework; I was going away, they wanted me in the band and I wanted to be in the band. A broken collar bone while trying to learn the banjo was pretty difficult.”

Speaking of the groups’ formative days, Paul and Charlie are self-effacing: “We played everywhere and anywhere people would book us. We played round Old Street, the Hoxton Bar and Grill, one of the first ones was Catch. We played 93 Feet East – our friends were putting on a night and we needed some petrol money to get to a festival.”

The formula worked – crowds got bigger and word spread, so much so that Radio One DJ Rob De Bank contacted them out of the blue asking them to play at Bestival, alongside The Flaming Lips and The Prodigy.

They play the Band Stand stage, which suits them better than a bigger platform: “It’s perfect for us, as we can take the live show and translate it to an outdoor stage without feeling out of our depth. We just hope it doesn’t rain.”

July saw the release of the group’s first single Way Down the Street on indie label Smoky Carrot Records, which has been critically acclaimed and received air play on BBC Radio 6. Despite this success, the band are still looking to improve: “Recent recordings we have done don’t really emulate our live show. That’s the most appealing thing about us – the energy we have on stage – and that’s what you want to hear through the speakers. Some bits [of our music] are really heavy for a folk band, bits that are meant to be like ‘bang!’ and we need to get that on the record rather than being all twee.”

If you want to catch Spindle and Wit but can’t get to the Isle of Wight, they have a series of secret gigs planned around Hackney during the autumn in a variety of unusual locations. Spindle and Wit play the Band Stand Stage at Bestival on Friday 10 September. Their debut single Way Down the Street is available now.

www.myspace.com/spindleandwit

This month, Pages of Hackney bookshop is returning to its usual full schedule of events with three unusual topics. Covering everything from the brothels of Georgian London, the love between a man and his bike, and finally the new authors behind a new wave of feminism, Pages, in the best Hackney tradition, opens its doors to some of the most interesting writers‘ of the last year.

On Wednesday 8 September Pages of Hackney welcomes historian Dan Cruickshank to talk about The Secret History of Georgian London. Cruickshank acknowledges the idea of Georgian London as one of elegant buildings and fine art, but his account also details London as a city where prostitution was rife and houses of ill repute were widespread with many thousands of people were dependent on the wages of sin in order to live and eat.

Many years and many great minds’ worth of work away from Georgian London, on Thursday 23 September Pages hosts an evening of New Feminist discussion with authors Kat Banyard and Catherine Redfern.

Calling a new generation to arms, this talk will focus on the idea that in today’s post-feminist society, men and women are considered equal and feminism is often portrayed as being unfashionable and irrelevant. Banyard’s The Equality Illusion argues that feminism continues to be one of the most urgent and relevant social justice campaigns. This book sets out the major issues for twenty-first century feminism, from work and education to sex, relationships and having children.

Redfern and Aune’s Reclaiming the F Word is a groundbreaking examination of how and why the new feminist movement affects women in today’s society.

How many people in Hackney ride a bike? How many people in Hackney always go on about needing to buy a bike? Well, if you can’t find motivation by Wednesday 29 September, then come along to see bike purist Rob Penn travel to Hackney to talk about his hugely popular memoir, It’s All About the Bike.

Penn tells the story of a journey to design and build a dream bike. From Stoke-on-Trent, where an artisan hand builds his frame, to California, home of the mountain bike, the author spans the globe in search of the perfect modern bicycle. Penn’s narrative extends beyond merely his search for a bike to detail the history of bikes and capture our love affair with cycling.

Downstairs in the basement. For 30 years, Doffy Weir has stalked the canals and derelict industrial sites of East London with her camera, transforming the most unlikely subjects into beautiful, surreal and tranquil otherworlds. Her show, Icespace, which opens at Pages basement gallery this September, was taken during the last two winters’ freeze on the Hertford Union and Regents Canals. The show runs 2 – 30 September.

All events start at 7pm and are in Pages basement gallery space.
Tickets cost £3.

Pages of Hackney
70 Lower Clapton Road
E5 0RN
020 8525 1452
info@pagesofhackney.co.uk

Diane Dyer outside the house where she lived for over three decades. Photo: © Josh Loeb

A grandmother whose council home fell into such a state of neglect that she was warned it could collapse has criticised housing authorities for not acting fast enough to stop the rot.

Pensioner Diane Dyer was forced to leave the house in Church Walk, Stoke Newington, where she had lived for 37 years, after Hackney Homes – the arms length management organisation (ALMO) that works in partnership with the Council – failed to carry out repair work.

Plants had become so deeply lodged into the walls of the building that she was warned it was a danger to live in.

In November 2008 Hackney Homes rehoused her in the Victorian Grove estate and told her they would bring her house up to scratch within a year, but squatters subsequently moved in, further delaying repair work.

Hackney Homes now say major work on the property is imminent. Ms Dyer, who is acting chair of the Shakespeare Residents Association, last month criticised the “stupidity and deliberation” of Hackney Homes, which she says has caused the cost of repairs to rise above £250,000.

This in turn has caused further delays as the work is now so expensive that the contract for it must be put out to tender under “best value” legislation.

“I’m nearly 70,” Ms Dyer told the Citizen. “When I wrote to the district housing office I pointed out that our lifespan is three score years and ten according to the Bible, and I would like to die in Church Walk.

“When you live in a place for 37 years it isn’t easy to move. I was moved out of the house because it was unsafe to live in, but it wasn’t my fault the house wasn’t safe to live in, it was their fault.”

Ms Dyer said she had complained to the council and to Hackney Homes about the state of the building for many years. Ten years ago she wrote to the Town Hall’s repairs department: “The rent department has been receiving rent from us ever since the London Borough of Hackney acquired the property and your department has done very little in almost 15 years.”

Records show the building was acquired by Hackney Council in 1982 through a compulsory repurchase order. A document sent from the council to the Department of the Environment in that year states: “The Council seek to acquire the order lands so that they may be cleared and redeveloped for car parking and offstreet loading purposes.”

The squatters were kicked out last month, with the Council paying the associated legal costs.

The house has now been boarded up and is surrounded by supports to stop it from collapsing. A Hackney Homes spokesperson said: “We do not tolerate squatting under any circumstances. We have taken possession of the property, it has been secured and significant major works will commence on the property.”

Could it be magic? The Mayor presenting the business awards last year. Photo: Hackney Council

As mysteries go, it may not be as glamorous as those penned by Agatha Christie or Patricia Highsmith. But the prosaic-sounding Mayor of Hackney’s Business Awards 2010 have nonetheless delivered a trio of baffling questions that are calling out to be investigated by some Hackney Sherlock.

The awards initiative, an annual affair that has been going for five years, will this year culminate in a reception due to be held this month (September).

According to the Council, the accolades are “dedicated to recognising and celebrating the excellence and diversity of business in the borough”. But now some seasoned observers of the Town Hall and former award winners are privately wondering whether “and mystifying people” might justifiably be added to that list of high-minded intentions.

Mystery Number One: A category for the 2010 awards – the “Best Disabled” category – has gone missing. It appeared in the literature the Council released to applicants but had managed to inexplicably vanish by the time the winners were announced this month.

The Citizen asked the Council for an explanation of this baffling disappearance. We received a reply telling us that there had not been enough nominations for a shortlist to be drawn up for this category. But this only serves to provoke another question: Why, in a borough the size of Hackney (which has a fair few businesses accommodating the needs of disabled consumers and employees), were there not enough nominations?

Mystery Two: Even among those categories that did attract entrants, some attracted so few that any business that could be bothered to throw its hat into the ring had a 50/50 chance of being shortlisted (the daftly titled “Best in the Business” category, for example, drew a paltry six entries, of which three were shortlisted). Why the apparent dearth of interest?

The Third and Final Mystery: For a council that makes a big song and dance about “diversity”, it seems strange that the “Best Ethnic Minority” and “Best Women’s Business” categories, which were on the slate in previous years, were not included this time around. Asked to comment on this, a Council spokesperson said: “In light of feedback from local businesses who had told us that they felt many of the categories were not relevant to them…we changed the categories”.

Apparently this led to an increase in the number of entries received this year, although one wonders whether more imagination by those involved in promoting the awards might have resulted in a similar increase without the need to make cuts.

Step forward, please, anyone who can offer a solution to these riddles.