Environment Archives - The Wick https://thisisthewick.com/category/environment/ A new media title dedicated to the creative spirit of Hackney Wick and surrounding neighbourhoods Tue, 25 Feb 2025 15:10:41 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 https://thisisthewick.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/cropped-The-Wick-stacked-32x32.jpg Environment Archives - The Wick https://thisisthewick.com/category/environment/ 32 32 Planning Differently https://thisisthewick.com/environment/planning-differently/ Tue, 25 Feb 2025 12:58:30 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2253 How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

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Planning Differently

  • How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

In its recent history, Hackney Wick has been a testing ground for alternative methods of spatial occupancy. Informal adaption of living and working spaces through various means (not necessarily recognised by local authorities) has led to the area’s wider identity as a creative neighbourhood. Though the area is going through significant change and becoming more formalised in the process, there are still organisations testing new ways to enable and empower community and resident-led voices at an urban scale.

Community influence in neighbourhood decision-making usually has the least leverage in the planning system, often reducing nuanced arguments about development to a binary ‘for’ or ‘against’. This is largely due to the period in which comments are taken at a statutory level; after a planning application has been received and the majority of the design work and details are locked in. Real participation in the process comes from involvement and community input at the earliest stages, collaborative working and a degree of power sharing.

To genuinely play a role in an area going through such a fast pace of change, local people want to know that a new development is also going to have a mutual benefit for the existing community. They don’t only want to comment on the physical appearance of something, but to have a say in the direction of the ‘end-use’, occupancy and the less tangible ‘social value’ that schemes promise. So how has Hackney Wick been doing things differently?

Several new developments are emerging here that depart from the traditional residential model which has shaped the area’s growth in recent years. Different types of uses offer a greater diversity of experiences in a neighbourhood, but don’t always align with the view of its community. For local groups to be able to express themselves, strong representation and political recognition is needed. Hackney Wick is lucky to have a well-established, free to access creative network in its Cultural Interest Group (CIG), which has been meeting on monthly Friday mornings since 2010. It’s a non-profit organisation, both a business and a live social network that connects and promotes area-wide creative economy stakeholders.

For a developer reaching out to the community in a new location, it can be difficult to connect with local organisations and groups, so over time, the CIG has become an important tool to introduce external organisations into conversations particular to this area. It enables working relationships, finds potential tenants and, crucially, can help shape development briefs to be more locally aligned.

Both the Wick Hotel, a 101 bed, purpose-built hotel on Rothbury Road, and a new co-living scheme on Wallis Road by Halcyon Group, engaged with the CIG network as a platform to build meaningful links into the area.

“Community engagement can be stale, but this is a much deeper approach,” says Harry Manley, Head of Planning at Halcyon. “The CIG network is a great way for us to be connected into the community here.” Each development has chosen to engage at a community level far more openly compared with the more usual approach.

The Wick Hotel, brought forward by Frank Capital and Infinite Partners, closely worked with and listened to local voices when building the brief for the hotel. Away from the fixed elements – things like servicing and bedrooms – the developer decided to have open conversations around the programming and usage of the building’s less defined areas. Spaces which could cross into public use, such as the ground floor lobby, that could provide shared benefit for visitors and locals alike.

Engagement as part of the planning process can often be seen as lip service, and for many there is genuine doubt cast towards ‘what is promised’ versus ‘what is delivered’.

James Penfold, Director of Infinite Partners, says his vision for the development is to build networks at a neighbourhood level, so that the scheme can offer something for multitudes of people, plus show measurable positive impacts when in operation. When it comes to how projects are delivered, he says he wants to “rip up the rulebook” of how things are normally done – especially here, in an area he feels passionately about, and is keen the hotel helps retain and add to its unique character.

Introduced through the CIG, his development team made contact with local businesses, community groups and representatives. Through numerous events, workshops and meetings, the relationships built locally across the pre-planning stages have influenced the decision-making and direction behind The Wick Hotel. Through these conversations, a Community Investment Programme (CIP) has been launched and adapted specifically to local needs. Bobby Kasanga, founder of Hackney Wick Football Club (HWFC) was part of early engagement sessions and contributed to how the ground floor space will be run – a free open-access workspace, reception and what’s termed the ‘concept store’.

As the CIP has been submitted as part of the planning application, it creates a long-term partnership with HWFC as it is a commitment to work together when the hotel becomes operational. Bobby will also be involved in the delivery of the investment programme. He tells us that it will help enable youth employment in the area through his personal outreach work. HWFC will be able to have a greater presence and use of physical space with the hotel’s concept store – a flexible, rolling showcase space that is much more than a place to sell wares – supporting local makers and organisations to promote themselves and hold events. The access to space, overseen by the investment programme steering group of local organisations, will ensure that these promise can be upheld long into the future.

Hackney Wick & Fish Island Community Development Trust (CDT)’s mission is to enable community ownership of spaces within the area. This can ensure long-term retention of the buildings, set genuinely affordable commercial rates for businesses and provide physical work space for fledgling social enterprises. Over the last few years, the CDT has been working hard towards attaining spaces, including starting local economy incubator The Loop – their temporary circular economy hub currently based at 119 Wallis Road.

The site spanning 115 – 119 Wallis Road is also set to bring Halcyon’s co-living scheme to Hackney Wick. The developer has been working closely with the CDT, offering the warehouse on a meanwhile basis to enable The Loop to happen. Scaling up the circular economy work the CDT does beyond their original Textile Reuse Hub over at Fish Island (see p.13)

“We recognise the benefit of working together with third sector and community organisations,” says Manley. “Introduced through the CIG, we began reaching out to the community late in 2022 and began speaking with the CDT on how the ground floor could operate in the new buildings, wanting them to offer long-term community benefit to everyone even if they are not a resident of the development.”

Those conversations have slowly moved towards the CDT creating a long-term partnership with Halcyon, as they seek to secure a 99-year lease at a peppercorn rate to manage and operate some of the ground floor units of the eventual new development. The CDT is passionate about activating commercial spaces, that can often sit empty for years as part of new developments waiting on high-paying tenants. 

They are well positioned as an organisation to manage and occupy spaces, as Alex Russell, Executive Director of the CDT states, “We understand where the gaps are, where there is growth. We know what local authorities need and can bring together the three sectors of political, commercial and community.” This can support local business growth and creation, providing certainty and stability for start-up enterprises, makers and creatives. “Our vision for the space is to be connected to the creative and circular economy,” says Alex, “engaging with the public, to host events and be authentically ‘of the area’.” The ability to be a leaseholder will also be a major milestone for the CDT on its way to becoming financially self-sufficient and its long-term success.

Manley explains it has changed their thinking of how they structure the development – trying a new opportunity and changing the appraisal – wanting to give the flexibility to the CDT to achieve their vision. It also shows a level of commitment to the area to allow local knowledge to drive the selection and enterprise of new spaces.

As emphasised by these two new developments, the success of what eventually happens within them really can be shaped and tailored more closely to a community perspective. In Hackney Wick and beyond, communities must become more than just passive participants within the planning process and can take on a formalised active role. Opportunities like the ones highlighted here give local creatives and entrepreneurs the chance to show that they are trustworthy, and often better for a project and its developer than simply seeking the highest bidder for space.

Managing buildings in the short-term offers a valuable chance to showcase that a fledgling locally-founded business or organisation can be both commercial and socially successful, and therefore is more likely to one day be the end user.

As the post-Olympics planning powers are to be transferred back to Tower Hamlets and Hackney from the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) at the end of 2024, these projects could be small steps towards genuine community building, and their methods a better benchmark on how developers and communities can work together everywhere.

More Features
Environment

Planning Differently

How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

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Ryan Kelso-Lewis February 25, 2025

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]]> Discover The Lighthouse & Gardens https://thisisthewick.com/environment/discover-the-lighthouse-gardens/ Mon, 17 Jun 2024 10:13:15 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2194 an ambitious 'meanwhile' project that mixes wellness and community activities in a striking urban setting

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Discover The Lighthouse & Gardens

  • an ambitious 'meanwhile' project that mixes wellness and community activities in a striking urban setting

Approaching the little building flanked on either side by grassy verges and trees, I see through floor-to-ceiling windows the welcoming space known as The LightHouse.

What was a property marketing suite for 10 years has been reimagined as a community empowerment and wellness space; an incubator for ideas, and a place for people to connect. It includes a community garden on Celebration Avenue in Stratford, a ‘meanwhile’ project which seeks to provide support, collaboration and opportunities to the community.

Its joint managers and co-curators Gabby Briscoe and Su Winsbury joined forces many years ago to form The Heart to Heart Collective, a corporate wellbeing provider with a mission of bringing a new body of wisdom and health to the wider population. Both Gabby and Su started out as reflexology practitioners before teaming up over a broader definition of wellness that includes fun, laughter and creativity as much as physical and emotional health. And they are a formidable team, bringing almost 40 years of experience combined through their modalities as EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Practitioners and EAM (Energy Alignment Method) Mentors.

Over the last few years, we have suffered a collective trauma that has impacted every single one of us to a greater or lesser extent. “Even if people hadn’t identified big emotions prior to the pandemic, like fear, anxiety, loneliness, worry”, Gabby explains, “we’ve all collectively been there over the last few years.” The pandemic isolated and disconnected us, depriving many of us of valuable human connection. After a difficult few years, their hope is to bring people back together, to offer a sense of community. The LightHouse and Gardens is inclusive, open to all, and perhaps most importantly, a place that people can just ‘be’.

Together, Gabby and Su understand that wellness is about more than just nutrition and yoga. They don’t want to be prescriptive in their approach to wellness, “it’s not a one-size fits all approach,” explains Su. Instead, The LightHouse offers a wide range of activities, workshops and groups. On the schedule are QiGong, yoga classes, a men’s meditation group, drumming classes and Zumba.

Gabby explains that the vision is to continually ask questions and refine what is on offer to reflect the specific needs and wants in the area. This information is also fed back to site owners The Hadley Property Group to shape what will be there in the final build, for which planning meetings are underway.

The Gardens are open and free to access. They offer people an opportunity to learn things that they may not have had the confidence to do before, led by Jimmy Wheale of Nomadic Gardens, who loves to help people of all ages and abilities come together and learn skills like gardening and using tools. ‘Growing’ is a great metaphor, and Jimmy helps people to focus on and nurture something outside of themselves. In the first month alone, all the planters were occupied by local residents keen to grown their own vegetables. With plants and materials donated from The Chelsea Flower Show and Tate Modern, the garden continues to take shape and welcome new visitors. There is a public access pathway that runs through the middle of it all and is an important thoroughfare for local residents. A practitioners networking group, LightHouse Luminaries, is hosted once a month. Being a wellness practitioner can be quite a lonely existence, often lacking opportunities to work alongside others. The LightHouse wanted to create something nurturing and connecting that gives practitioners the chance to come together and organise events. They also want to provide support in the form of offering business skills and a platform to develop ideas. Many practitioners have been working over Zoom since lockdown, and Gabby is keen to encourage people to start working face to face again.
“Empowerment is an important theme at The LightHouse,” Su explains. They work with young people and local schools, providing tools and techniques to improve employability skills. Su thinks that people aged 16-25 have probably had the hardest time over the last few years. Many graduates have struggled to find work, and being stuck at home with your family can present all kinds of challenges. There is a focus on providing opportunities for the younger population of Newham, and plans to expand to include a maker’s yard with workshops and courses for all levels of experience.
As humans, it can be hard to embrace change easily. Su and Gabby’s purpose with The LightHouse is to steer people through change in a positive way. “We’re here to send light out – we’re not sending out rescue boats!” Gabby says. They want to plant the seeds for those who are ready to make lifestyle changes to support their wellness. This process takes time, so it’s great news that they’ve been given the space for at least two years. Hadley is in the early stages of working up proposals for a mixed-use development on this site, to be delivered over the coming years and informed by feedback on its current iteration. “Having the LightHouse and Gardens welcoming people to our IQL North site has given us the opportunity to show exactly what kind of development we’re aiming to deliver here – and also, hopefully, to illustrate our own values too,” says Hadley Property Group’s Matt Griffiths-Rimmer. “Meanwhile and pop-up uses have been an integral component of our development strategies for a number of years. Done properly, they can take you way out of the traditional cycles of public consultation and enable much more genuine, meaningful conversations to take place. You can’t hope to curate new neighbourhoods without understanding what makes a place tick – and the only voices that can really give you that detail are the ones who already live there.”
With the constant regeneration that characterises Stratford, Gabby and Su agree that it’s particularly important to keep a sense of history and continuity through the development. They are looking at gathering some of the stories that have come out of this project for a book. One lady tells of how she’d always grown things from seed, and when she was nursing her mum through dementia, she planted a lot of plants as a way of managing her stress. When her mother passed away, she donated all the plants to the garden for others to enjoy.

 

Find our more about The Lighthouse & Gardens here

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Environment

Planning Differently

How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

Read More »
Ryan Kelso-Lewis February 25, 2025

The post Discover The Lighthouse & Gardens appeared first on The Wick.

]]> Eton Mission Rowing Club…a proper Eton Mess https://thisisthewick.com/wellbeing/eton-mission-rowing-club/ Sat, 19 Nov 2022 11:18:51 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2106 The once historic rowing club has sat mothballed for a decade in a standoff over redevelopment and the changing use of local waterways

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Eton Mission Rowing Club…a proper Eton Mess

  • The once historic rowing club has sat mothballed for a decade in a standoff over redevelopment and the changing use of local waterways

At the recent two-day ‘State of the Legacy’ conference hosted by UCL Urban Laboratory at Here East, delegates were asked to share their perspectives on the legacy of the London 2012 Olympics Games. ‘Ain’t no legacy’, one response read.

Straight to the point, it’s a view that resonates with community groups and residents alike, including those conference delegates and the people behind the Focus E15 campaign who have been working to secure affordable, safe, and secure housing for Newham residents over the past decade. It’s also familiar to Joy White, a sociologist whose recent book Terraformed charts the struggles of Black young people growing up amid the unequal ‘regeneration’ of a fast-changing neighbourhood in one of London’s five Olympic boroughs.

Just a short walk from the conference venue across the Hackney Cut – an artificial channel built in the 1700s to improve navigation along the River Lea – an unsuspecting two-storey, pitched-roof building on Wallis Road, tucked away between Bar 90 and Rahims, further evidences this refrain.

Looking out of place amongst the ‘biscuit tin’ vernacular rising up around Main Yard, the spray paint-daubed Gilbert Johnstone Boathouse belongs to the Eton Mission Rowing Club (EMRC). Opened in 1934, it is part of a long history of philanthropy and humanitarianism in the East End of London that stretches back to the 1800s. The club, originally founded in 1885, was part of the Eton Mission, a paternalistic organisation associated with the public school of the same name. According to urbanist Juliet Davis, although the mission offered a range of services to working class boys, the club was part of a broader project to control the physicality and morality of East London’s poor communities, and to steer them away from vices such as drinking and gambling.

Rowing continued from the club until 2012 when the activity was, ironically, banned along the park’s waterways for the duration of the Games. 

Since then, rowing activities have been hampered by the development of the H10 pedestrian bridge connecting Hackney Wick and East Wick (part of a £10million project to improve walkability into and out of Hackney Wick Station that involved a section of the club’s land being compulsorily purchased and restricting access to the water from the boathouse) and an increase in recent years of liveaboard vessels that have rendered canal channels too narrow for safe rowing.

Club committee member Robert Hall hasn’t rowed from the club since his last outing in 2018 during which he had three collisions “not serious [enough] to cause damage or injury, but enough to then consider the canal as unsafe for rowing,” he explains.

While some gym-based training activities do take place at the club, its twenty-five or so unused boats – called ‘sculls’ – lie in storage, gathering dust. Bar the chirping of the effervescent sparrows for whom the boathouse eves provide a home, a lack of activity at the site means many assume the boathouse is abandoned. Break-ins have been attempted, Hall notes, who sometimes encounters “the leftovers’ of a late-night party” as he arrives at the boathouse in the early mornings. “Any interaction or conversation is no doubt soon forgotten due to their alcohol or other substance intoxication”, Hall muses.

With its long history of providing sport and recreational activities to local communities and a site that borders the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (QEOP) (not to mention the twenty-five rowing boats gathering dust during a cost of living crisis when sport and recreation are likely to be some of the things families cut spending on as they look to save), ten years on from London 2012, one might be forgiven for expecting that the club would have benefitted in some way from the sporting mega-event that took place right next door.

Such a notion, after all, chimes with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s promise that the Olympics would “rejuvenate East London’s waterways” by providing opportunities for recreation and transport, and inspire a “new generation of young people” to engage in more physical activities. As Hall recounts however, despite engaging with the various planning and development bodies overseeing the Games to find an alternative venue for them, the club was perceived as a “problem” rather than an asset.

Robert Hall

Over on the other side of the QEOP, at a purpose-built watercraft pontoon on another artificially channelled waterway – East London’s Waterworks River – banked by the London Aquatics Centre on one side and the Olympic Stadium on the other, a very different story emerges. A permanent outpost of London Youth Rowing (LYR) – a rowing and paddle sports charity founded in 2005 and active in the QEOP since 2013 – the twelve-month old pontoon is the result of decade-long support for LYR from the London Legacy Development Corporation.

Catching up with Owen Shephard Wyatt, the on-water manager for LYR in the QEOP, he tells me that LYR’s first project, located in the North section of the park underneath Knights Bridge and adjacent to the Velo Park, was hugely successful. So much so, that a new site was sought to develop a “much wider water sports offer that would include multi-generational, multi-offer options” for young people and adults to “engage the local community in rowing, canoeing, kayaking and Stand Up Paddleboarding”. 

Part of LYR’s ‘Active Row’ programme that serves two thousand young people per year in London alone – including children with special educational needs – LYR’s site in the QEOP is the subject of a broader collaboration with British Canoeing and Sports England that will see the provision of recognised paddle sport qualifications, and “deliver life skills and opportunities to a wide range of young people, who might not have had these opportunities otherwise,” Shephard-Wyatt notes.

Back in Hackney Wick, although clearly frustrated by the situation at EMRC, like Shephard-Wyatt, Robert Hall remains optimistic about his club’s future. Prepared to forget its recent troubles, he hopes an ongoing project to resurrect the club’s legacy at nearby Royal Docks might come to fruition soon.

Though a collaboration between LYR and EMRC looks unlikely, there is certainly no animosity between the two organisations: Shephard-Wyatt indicates that LYR would be very happy “to signpost new members to Eton Mission in the future if they wanted that”. While LYR’s work is certainly to be commended, reading the post-Olympics decline of EMRC – one of Hackney Wick and Fish Island’s historically significant institutions – in the context of LYR’s success nonetheless raises difficult questions about which local institutions have and have not benefitted from the legacies of the London 2012 Olympic games ten years on.

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Environment

Planning Differently

How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

Read More »
Ryan Kelso-Lewis February 25, 2025

The post Eton Mission Rowing Club…a proper Eton Mess appeared first on The Wick.

]]> Co-creating a new Hackney Wick https://thisisthewick.com/environment/cocreating-new-hackney-wick/ Tue, 26 Jul 2022 10:20:10 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2053 Greater involvement from the local community can shape future development projects and avoid the mistakes of the past

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Co-creating a new Hackney Wick

  • Greater involvement from the local community can shape future development projects and avoid the mistakes of the past

With the focus on development within the boundary for the 2012 Olympic Park, the neighbourhoods surrounding were also always part of the legacy vision to ‘grow and improve in parallel with those in the Park.’

When areas or sites are undergoing change on a large scale, it is a requirement to consult with the local community. For many, noticing what is happening in the planning world can be hard. It is often just a laminated sign on a lamppost indicating that an application has been submitted, or a pamphlet through the door, which can often feel too late make a difference.

Better yet is being alerted early that there is an opportunity to voice your opinion, to see drawings and plans in a physical space nearby before final design decisions are made. Better than that is being part of the design process itself.

Communities can have an active voice in the process of change within their neighbourhoods when different models of participation and engagement are offered. Co-design methods allow the space and time for a community to be a part of the design process. Using this model, community members are placed as equal parties in the decision making. The wider public are given opportunities to be consulted and review the design at multiple points in time throughout the process.

When offered as part of the consultation process, co-design practices can influence the design of a range of subjects from layouts and the design of homes, public spaces, and streets to what types of spaces are best for workspace or creative uses. They can even reach into the micro-detail, on affordability, rent rates and tenancy structures.
By redistributing the balance of power, placing the community as an equal ‘client’ to the financial models that often drive development, we can start to build places and neighbourhoods that are culturally and socially connected to their people.

While change is taking place, local people are often frustrated that ground-floor retail or workspace units can lay empty for long periods of time after the residential components of the development are complete. But what if there was a community-backed plan to allow those spaces to be used on short-term tenancies or at low cost as an intermediate step? And what if the types of uses of those ground-floor spaces could be determined by a mix of community proposals and research so when they are complete, they address genuine local demand?

The answer is choice. If the design process is a closed-door to the community, then there is no basis for how it will be received, often limiting the choice to: yes or no. When there is a collaborative process, then the smaller details can be interrogated and adapted before being set in stone.

When developments come forward, we should be pressuring our planning authorities to instruct developers to follow an open dialogue and a participatory model. There is greater ability to influence and shape proposals by an inclusive, early process, when there is fluidity to inform and guide design and options are still available.

As Hackney Wick is still undergoing rapid change, with many development sites not yet built, we should ensure developers adopt co-design practices here. Where sites are built out but unoccupied, we should call for retrospective meanwhile commercial strategies with the inclusion of local businesses and residents to shape it. Where community groups are looking to support and take ownership of spaces, we should call for inclusive practices and be part of the process.

We must call for our Creative Enterprise Zone Manager and appropriate officers in Hackney, LLDC and Tower Hamlets to push co-design onto their agendas for land and developments they control. Hyper locally, the Hackney Wick & Fish Island Community Development Trust (CDT) is one organisation in the position to advocate and be an influence on development.

“There are so many benefits to involving communities and local enterprises in the design and delivery phases of development,” says Alex Russell, CEO of the CDT, which is now committing to co-design and participatory principles in the work they produce or commission.

“Local communities know what aspects of the market fair well in the area and what struggles,” she continues. “They know the types of spaces and uses needed locally, and are also a source of enterprise themselves, as well as the main drivers of footfall. We believe communities having an active role in curating and managing spaces is fundamental to a healthy, thriving, inclusive neighbourhood. So, we agree to co-design and opportunities for community ownership.”

Ten years on, Hackney Wick still has the people, minds and opportunity to be radical. They are still building the vision together.

More Features
Environment

Planning Differently

How developers proposing Hackney Wick’s first hotel, and a bold new co-living scheme, both reached out to the community, ensuring better results for everyone

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Ryan Kelso-Lewis February 25, 2025

The post Co-creating a new Hackney Wick appeared first on The Wick.

]]> Hackney Wick’s Warehouse Living https://thisisthewick.com/environment/hackney-wicks-warehouse-living/ Mon, 25 Jul 2022 09:40:58 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2044 What might our informal and threatened co-living spaces reveal about how other homes and neighbourhoods could be built?

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Hackney Wick’s Warehouse Living

What might our informal and threatened co-living spaces reveal about how other homes and neighbourhoods could be built?

It’s simple to get mail delivered to Vittoria Wharf, although it’s often one of the first things people are surprised by.  The industrial architecture and layout of ‘Blackgates’, or just “the yard” as it is colloquially known, is more akin to a maze than a block of flats.

Indeed, a conversation that always comes up between residents of warehouses is of trying to piece together the DIY patchwork of divisions, walls, and doors that carve up these massive 19th century brick buildings, naming each with a quixotic set of numbers.

As an urban planner, I’ve long been interested in space; how neighbourhoods and the built form can facilitate and shape social interactions. Living in a warehouse not only teaches you about urban community, but also makes you think about space, movement, people, and the opportunities which the three facilitate.

Most warehouses consist of 5-15 rooms clustered around central large common spaces, which are arranged around shared yards, like Blackgates. Many people in London rarely get to know their neighbours; but I know who lived in my room before me from the stories, furniture, and painted walls; they’ve left their mark on the space.

Before my tenure, Dalston’s Cola (now Dalston’s) started up in the industrial kitchen next to my unit. For Duncan O’Brien, one of the founders, the main draw was affordability. “Because space is obviously so expensive in London, we had to find a place to get started,” he says.

The company was housed in the unit for three years, during which O’Brien had the opportunity to get to know the community living in the broader Hackney Wick area. “You’d see some fantastic performances, great music and a good social scene,” he continues, adding that an advantage of being in a communal space was connection to a casual labour pool. “There’s a guy who just did a stop motion animation for us who we met through a contact of our neighbours at the print studio.”

Nonetheless, O’Brien emphasizes that the building was “well past its life”, and the conditions in the space at the time were certainly not up to code. Dalston’s has since moved on to a larger office in Farringdon.

Red Gates by Amber Joy

Across the hallway from the kitchen they once occupied, my housemate Tommy Wallwork has run a nondescript music studio since 2014. You wouldn’t know from the industrial blue carpeting and plain white walls that Wallwork produces some of the hottest up-and coming artists in London.

In many ways, the quality of talent in the studio is what colours the space. He works with labels such as XL Recordings and Young, and runs his own electronic music imprint, Nervous Horizon. Tommy’s artists are a motley crew of drill rappers, R&B singers, techno producers, and countless other characters.

Among the many interesting people that appear in our kitchen and deck at various hours of the night, the South London skate-punk musicians have blended in the best. It’s also clear that Marley Rutherford, who performs under the name Mrley is their de-facto leader. His general affability and effortless cool composure explains a lot of his charisma – and why he’s becoming so successful. The first time I met Mrley he pulled me out of the River Lea, laughing at the fact that I’d arrived at what would be my future home on a rubber dingy.

Last week, when the fire alarm went off (a recurring false alarm) and we evacuated the unit, I finally managed to sit down with him. In many ways, these effortless interactions are what make work life in the warehouses unique. “I realised if I’m catching breath outside the studio, I’m in someone else’s kitchen. You’re not gonna stand in someone’s kitchen and not say hello,” says Mrley, who has now moved to Hackney Wick and picked up shifts at Doh bakery.

Signed to XL records and having released his EP Love You London last year, his shows bring large mosh pits, stage dives, and electric energy. Following in the punk tradition of political music and rebellion, he often talks about “this shit government.”

Nonetheless, London as a concept features prominently. “There’s a reason why so many people want to come here to start a life,” he says. “You can actually create something. It’s like real humanity.” That’s what attracts him to the Wick as well. “Here, no one’s gonna bother you. It’s very free, and that definitely plays out in the way we make music.”

A few years before Wallwork opened his studio, Nuha Ruby Ra had recently moved in next door. Ra, who has been living in Unit 18 for almost 10 years, has seen the area change again and again. For her, living in the Wick showed her a more human side of London. “You could just walk into someone’s unit down the road and ask them to borrow a drill and it’s fine. We all share our resources in some ways, and that’s a really rare thing to come by living in London.”

More generally, Ra reflects that The Wick is “a place that nurtures people.” An experimental pop artist, Ra has played with international bands like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizards, and at this year’s Glastonbury.

Her housemate Andrew serves as her tour manager, and she has played shows with residents of her unit and its diaspora. She’s weary, however, of the emerging trend of seeing Hackney Wick as a “place for business” rather than as a space for organic community; something which she expects to only get worse. “I want to give people the opportunities that this place gave me,” Ra explains.

Nuha Ruby Ra by Wanda Martin

Among those residents of the warehouses which have made a name for themselves in the arts, Ra’s former housemate Daisy Tortuga credits living in Vittoria Wharf as being responsible for starting her career as a rugmaker. She has since moved elsewhere in Hackney Wick, but reflects that “warehouse living definitely influenced me a lot. I think it gave me a lot of ambition, and it was really nice to be around a lot of people that wanted to see others doing creative stuff, too.”

Tortuga, who has made bulk orders for brands such as Nando’s and Adidas, and has done solo shows in London and Malmo, shows the spatial and social benefits of community living.

Architect Matthew Beck, who lives on the other side of the neighbourhood, agrees. “I moved to Oslo House, and I knew every single neighbour in two months.” Both the space and the network that he found in the Wick were responsible for his biggest professional achievement: building and designing his own space. “I can’t really put into words how impactful that was as a creative, a designer and as an architect. It’s something that I don’t think would be possible almost in any other place in the world.”

Beck especially emphasises that his neighbours helped him to build the unit and lent him tools, as well as giving him secondhand materials to use. His experience has allowed him to reconceptualise his practice. “The biggest change is that I’ve developed a knowledge of construction,” he says, “so I can now design and build spaces myself, which for some reason is completely unheard of.”

In contrast to new builds, which Beck claims are not built to last and a lot of materials are wasted in the process, warehouses are “largely built by the people who live in them. They’re sustainable because they use upcycled materials.”

Beck would like to see principles of sustainable design incorporated into 21st century London architecture. By empowering people to build and design their own spaces “you really enable a much greater appreciation of designing and building on potentially a mass scale.”

Of course, there are countless environmental drawbacks to warehouse living; the old buildings are hard to heat and organising services like recycling can be difficult. But beyond Beck’s professional experience, many aspects of the model can serve as an inspiration for a more sustainable built-environment.

The experiences of these five young folks only scratch the surface of the economic, social, and environmental benefits of community-led housing. For young businesses like Matthew Beck Design and Dalston’s, access to cheap space allows them to spend more on developing other aspects of their practice. For Nuha Ruby Ra and Daisy Tortuga, living in an intentional community pushed them to be more creative and gave them the opportunity to develop their skills, trades, and practices.

Access to large amounts of space has allowed many young bands and creators like Mrley, to experiment without the constraints of London’s small spaces. And finally, the ability to rely on neighbours for tools and upcycled materials leads to less waste and maximizes resources; something which raises the bar of sustainability.

There’s a lot to learn from Hackney Wick’s warehouses, both as a borough, a city, and a wider culture. We could start to experiment with new forms of housing which encourage socializing; we could build more common areas in buildings where residents, whether families, young people, or the elderly, can get to know, help, and rely on each other.

We could look to remodel older existing structures instead of tearing them down to build new flats. But most urgently, we could stop dismissing the warehouses and the organic neighbourhood community life that forms there as secondary.

We could start focusing on the spillover benefits which they bring residents as an inspiration; as models for how to create healthier cities, people, and communities.

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]]> The Wicked One: Rawden Pettitt https://thisisthewick.com/environment/wicked-one-rawden-petitt/ Wed, 13 Jul 2022 16:56:00 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=2063 A local resident with a unique insight into an area, as Director of Architecture studio Stanton Williams

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The Wicked One: Rawden Pettitt

  • A local resident with a unique insight into an area, as Director of Architecture studio Stanton Williams

How did you come to be in Hackney Wick?

It was one of those discoveries. Coming to London from Australia, I didn’t really understand Hackney Wick’s existence until I started work on designing the Olympics in 2008. I was developing Eton Manor, where the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre now is, and had just moved to Victoria Park, so my commute to the site was through the Wick. There was this kind of moment of “oh my god, what’s going on here and why aren’t I more aware of this?” There was then a little bit of serendipity, The Eton Manor site was to be the world’s first dedicated Paralympic venue, so I spent a few years meeting lots of amazing people to understand what this means and what a fully inclusive space is so that it could have a wider benefit in Legacy. In 2014, we had a child born with Cerebral Palsy. This Games experience removed a lot of the initial fear of what’s around the corner and gave me a really good insight into what type of environment would not only help her, but also us as parents. Living in central London is sometimes not that easy with physical disabilities, especially in a typical London terraced house. I knew though about the Trowbridge Estate and its bungalows, and we were lucky enough to find one and adapted it to suit all of our needs.

What do you love most here?

The diversity of people and ideas and the sense of identity that has been created. I like the fact there are a lot of energized people here and ideas going on everywhere bearing fruit. HWFI epitomises the vision of the sought after 15-minute city; from your home you should be able to walk within 15 minutes and get all the amenities you need – education, health, entertainment, sustenance, nature and public transport. We have this! Having the canals, Greenway Victoria Park, the Olympic Park, Mabley Green and Hackney Marshes on our doorstep makes me feel spoilt, especially during Lockdown. For a young family or any other resident, that is just so valuable.

Do you think the area has changed much since 2008?

Yes and no. For me, Hackney Wick is more about spirit than actual physical contexts. I was attracted by the creative community and the way they expressed themselves, but I was also aware of the people who were here before the artists. People with memories of factories and demolished tower blocks. The creative industry over the last several years has really had to band together, in an act of self-preservation, and that has been really inspirational to witness. I do fear that for the older generations and other members of the community, there’s a greater sense of isolation as development marches on. The extent of change happening here isn’t just because of the Olympics, it has been in the pipeline for decades. It’s the rate of change that is the issue and a sense of hyper regeneration that makes some people feel like it is happening overnight. For me though, one of the beauties of here is the sense or expectation of continual change. It’s what street art is about, a sense of impermanence and the potential for ‘meanwhile’ uses for developments are great. I’d like to seeinterventions that facilitate evolving change and enable identities to come and go in a sustainable way.

Where is your favourite Hackney Wick hangout?

Besides the Trowbridge Estate I would have to say it’s between the Hackney Pearl and Grow. When I first started working on the Olympic Park, the Pearl really drew me in. They offered their amazing food to the building sites within the Park and when they occupied the street space I thought that was such a great thing. I’d find myself working there almost a day a week. I also love spending time at Grow, for both work and pleasure. What they’ve done there, in terms of the canal setting, the food, music and community engagement, is really inspirational.

What changes do you think should be made here?

Development will, of course, need to happen and London needs affordable housing. But to do this takes more than just homes. It needs a diversity of activities, scale and character. A balance where community consultation with developers is not just a box ticking exercise (see p.9). Where organisations or individuals are not a thorn in the side of developers but are appreciated because they can demonstrate the value they bring.

What’s your greatest achievement?

In the work that I do, you spend a lot of time developing and delivering an idea, and it’s a pretty rewarding experience. I’ve been really lucky to be involved in some amazing projects, like the Olympics, the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, the new Museum of London at Smithfield Market and many others. Beyond my family I think that the main thing I’m proud of is the fact I had the courage to leave my childhood home on the beach to seek out new ideas and people that really inspired me. Moving to Hackney Wick is a part of that journey.

What would you like the future of HWFI to look like?

A place that continues to inspire people to get involved in their community to make a positive difference. A place that sustainably supports the creative communities. I hope that a balance can be found between new developments and being able to maintain moments of absurdity or rapid change, and that it’s not too manufactured. Hackney Wick needs to have a little bit of freedom to express itself. With the major developments due along the canal, I hope that this doesn’t get too absorbed into the current language of development. I like it feeling different when I cross the bridge from the Olympic Park.
I hope that there can also be more bridges – not physical ones, we’ve got enough of those – but social ones, that better connect the creative and entrepreneurial community with other residents and social organisations. For people like my neighbour, Pat, who’s maybe been here for 50 years, I’m not sure how included she feels in the wider discussions. Wouldn’t it be great for people like her to actually feel included in this.

Describe HWFI as a sound or smell

It’s almost like a sound of restlessness. There’s definitely a beat and rhythm to it, that’s for sure. But maybe it’s a subconscious sound. There’s enough real, colourful sounds in your face here, so perhaps it’s one that you are not fully aware of but makes you keep tapping your foot and giving you the energy to join into this amazing place.

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]]> Meanwhile in East London… https://thisisthewick.com/environment/meanwhile-spaces-interim/ Tue, 31 May 2022 13:03:26 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=1035 Over the years, Hackney Wick and Fish Island’s glut of ex-industrial units and vacant lots have afforded numerous actors – from community organisations and artists, to business owners and creative practitioners – access to and free-reign over low-cost land, studio space, and warehouses. From skateparks to food-halls, festivals to theatres, artist studios and night-time venues, […]

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Meanwhile in East London…

  • After the closure of Hackney Wick Boulder Project – the much-loved climbing wall that outlasted its original lease by three years – Jacob Fairless Nicholson reflects on the history and future of ‘meanwhile’ and ‘interim’ use spaces, and asks what stands to be lost as well as gained if temporary projects exist only to be supplanted when the time is right
  • Jacob Fairless Nicholson
  • Hackney Wick Boulder Project / Helen Murray / Camilla Greenwell

Over the years, Hackney Wick and Fish Island’s glut of ex-industrial units and vacant lots have afforded numerous actors – from community organisations and artists, to business owners and creative practitioners – access to and free-reign over low-cost land, studio space, and warehouses. From skateparks to food-halls, festivals to theatres, artist studios and night-time venues, ‘meanwhile use’ spaces have enabled sustained the area’s rich self-build culture, and underpinned the emergence of much-loved institutions.

While such spaces undoubtedly offer provision for creative projects and affordances that might not be as easily secured elsewhere, as the number of new builds properties in the area increases, affordable meanwhile use spaces are harder to come by. Increasingly, they are co-opted by developers keen to turn a profit rather than establish sustainable and socially-just models of urban living. As one developer overseeing a new-build development in Hackney Wick put it, meanwhile use spaces are attractive to developers not for their social or cultural potential, but because they can render new-build developments ‘active’ and ‘used’, and are thus an effective tool for drawing in other tenants.

It’s a Sunday evening in January, and though its cold and wet outside, the ground floor unit of 117 Wallis Road – the warehouse space comprising Arbeit Studios perhaps best known for its Thierry Noir mural or past iteration as SHAPES nightclub – is as busy as it’s ever been. Clouds of chalk dust hang in the air, cut through by whoops, cheers and flailing limbs as climbers gather to tick off their last ever boulder problems in London’s smallest but most perfectly formed bouldering centre.

Built on a shoe-string budget, Hackney Wick Boulder Project (HWBP) gained somewhat of a cult following over its five-year existence after it opened in late 2016, pulling climbers from across London drawn by the centre’s focus on community-building, friendliness, and good quality route setting. As director Jack Griffiths explains, HWBP was only supposed to be a short-term project: the two year lease granted by the landlord represented a low-cost opportunity to build a climbing community in the area while Griffiths and his team searched for a larger, permanent venue. Griffiths hoped bouldering’s mix of physical and intellectual stimulation would be of interest to artists and creative types already embedded in the area, and offer somewhere for local residents to hang out without alcohol.

Reminiscing over coffee at Pearl, Hackney Wick local and HWBP regular Victor Bature – originally from South East London – explains that, although HWBP was “done quite cheaply, it worked – there wasn’t anywhere else like it”. Like many of its users, HWBP was the first climbing wall Bature set foot in. Regular exercise wasn’t on his radar, but he signed up for a membership immediately after his first taster session in early 2017, and soon found himself climbing there up to five times per week. Bature recalls a whole list of people he’s still in touch with that he met at HWBP over the past half decade, emphasising its significance as a space for social interaction and connection as well as physical exercise. 

For many of its users, the social aspect of HWBP was of equal importance to the climbing itself: people would come to HWBP from across London specifically for the sense of community fostered by the centre. Along with regular climbing competitions, HWBP featured weekly ‘boulder socialite’ sessions in which experienced members mentored and supported fledgling climbers. Such informal support mechanisms were mirrored by publicly-funded programmes such as the ‘climbing for wellbeing’ sessions, a collaboration with Inner World Arts and Core Arts Hackney organised by local artist Pete Bennett which provided free climbing to improve the mental health of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Newham, and Waltham Forest residents.

Just a few minutes’ walk from HWBP on the other side of the railway line in Queen’s Yard, The Yard Theatre perhaps epitomises the social and cultural value of meanwhile use in Hackney Wick and Fish Island today. Built with an informality that connects the theatre to the city and, according to creative director Jay Miller “enables an energy which is irreplaceable” – think the sound of sirens and engines from White Post Lane, or rain pattering off the corrugated roof during performances – The Yard Theatre emerged initially as a three-month project in 2011. Drawn to richness and diversity of the area, Miller described Hackney Wick back then as “like a sort of interim space in itself”.

Over the past decade, The Yard Theatre has experienced a stratospheric rise, expanding to two more meanwhile use sites in Hackney Wick and East Village, and offering space for community events, programmes for children, young people, and residents, as well as a theatre, bar, kitchen, and night-time venue. After being granted three years funding by the Legacy List in 2012, the theatre shifted from a project with a temporary outlook to one seeking permanence. As Miller reflects: “An audience is a long term relationship that requires a bedrock of trust built over time. It felt irresponsible to start these relationships without thinking through permanence.”

Another practitioner well versed in the benefits and challenges represented by meanwhile use projects is Tom Fletcher, the founder of Rejuce, a food waste business based in Fish Island. For Fletcher, meanwhile use spaces offer affordances to try new things and learn from mistakes without the worry of financial ruin. “You’ve got to be prepared” that things don’t work out, Fletcher muses, “but it doesn’t mean that something magical can’t happen in the interim.” Though a departure from the sustainability focus of Rejuce, Fletcher’s new multi-purpose offering Vittoria Wharf Studio, self-built in Fish Island on a two-year lease to host video and photo shoots, yoga classes, supper clubs, and private events strikes an intriguing balance between ‘magic’ and economic practicability. Recent clients at the studio include Sony and Converse, but Fletcher also hopes to use the space to rekindle Beggar’s Banquet, a charitable food waste supper club previously housed in the same building before the installation of a footbridge connecting Fish Island with the Olympic Park cut the unit in half several years ago.

Just a stone’s throw from 117 Wallis Road, the former site of the now-closed HWBP, colourful hoardings displaying the message ‘Behind these panels is the stuff of dreams … fantastic commercial spaces that’s only waiting for your magic to come to life’ conceal multiple empty ground floor units. As urbanist Mara Ferreri reminds us, the tantalising lure of meanwhile use spaces can obscure their function as a de facto cog in the neoliberal city-making machine, where socially and culturally important spaces are cast as no more than ‘filler’ for landlords or developers keen to attract prospective tenants to ‘fantastic commercial spaces’ in new-build developments.

Likewise, as the recent collapse of the mezzanine at Two More Years in Fish Island brought into sharp focus, when meanwhile use spaces go wrong the results can be disastrous. In many ways though, the examples introduced above stand as evidence of the deep and long-lasting social and cultural benefits that meanwhile use spaces afford. Not only do short-term use spaces provide prospective business owners and creative-minded practitioners the opportunity and platform they need to get off the ground on an often meagre budget, but they can also flourish into spaces of huge significance for local, regional, and national publics alike, muddying the relationship between temporariness and permanence in the process.

If Hackney Wick and Fish Island is to thrive as a socially-just, liveable neighbourhood in the years to come, it is of utmost importance that the artists, creative practitioners, and business owners who have woven the social and cultural fabric of this idiosyncratic east London neighbourhood over the past two decades are afforded the same low-cost opportunities by the new-build developments as those granted by the disused light and heavy industrial warehouse units that once defined the area.

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The post Meanwhile in East London… appeared first on The Wick.

]]> Losing the Plot https://thisisthewick.com/environment/olympic-park-environmental-legacy/ Mon, 30 May 2022 12:58:08 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=1013 In cities, we have less opportunity to stare aimlessly at the sky or find ourselves experiencing the particular pleasure we get from walking amidst blossoms, flowers, trees, and birds. Research shows that we’re kinder in parks, and London is known all over for its legendary proliferation of green spaces. It all started here, too. Queen […]

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Losing the Plot

  • Digging into the Olympic Park’s complicated environmental legacy a decade on from London 2012

In cities, we have less opportunity to stare aimlessly at the sky or find ourselves experiencing the particular pleasure we get from walking amidst blossoms, flowers, trees, and birds. Research shows that we’re kinder in parks, and London is known all over for its legendary proliferation of green spaces. It all started here, too. Queen Victoria, the epoch-defining monarch, lent her name to London’s very first public park, as a response – an act of kindness – bestowed upon East Londoners suffering from pollution caused by local industry. 

The more recent Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is another massive legacy project, designed with the next thousand years in mind, and as much about new homes, sporting venues and gleaming cultural institutions as it is about trees. Its ongoing development is orchestrated by London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), a remarkable quango set up to manage the transformation of an area which spans four London boroughs. When the councils finally take back control in a few years time, the hope is for a fitting legacy of the 2012 Olympics; a ‘living test bed for better urban futures’. A veritable field of dreams. That’s the vision. 

“We hope that what we have in planning will encourage developers to do the right thing,” says Ruth Holmes, Design Principle at LLDC, who is working to create a more sustainable future for our city’s public parks. “We want to encourage better practice.” From lengthy biodiversity action plans, to insect hotels, Ruth speaks on the Corporation’s many successful environmental legacies, such as their work with local volunteer group Tree Musketeers, and the disease-resistant elm trees planted by Gainsborough School. The local community is excited to see the legacy of the mobile gardens in front of Hackney Bridge, a wonderful opportunity to engage in one of Britain’s best kept secrets; allotments.

In the new Fish Island Village development, some rooftops have been designed as urban gardens with allotment boxes. Residents convene, sharing growing tips and the produce of their labours. Children growing up on this estate will put down their own roots on these rooftops, which will no doubt entangle with those of their neighbours, in London’s latest urban jungle. But according to Mark Harton, secretary of the legendary Manor Garden Society, allotments can tend to be a bit of a headache for local councils, which may explain how his fellow allotment holders find themselves hoping that they win a small battle in a war – a war which often sees community uprooted.

Dapper, dashing, debonaire, Mark led me round an allotment site, sandwiched between a railway line and a prospective development on the Eastern border of the Park, and told me a solid story. Are you sitting comfortably? It’s a cracker. 

Once upon a time, following in the fertile footsteps of Queen Victoria, the gentle Major Arthur Villiers bequeathed a massive wedge of his land to local people, and told them to grow vegetables. They did; the original Eton Manor allotment plots were the perfect East London contemporary narrative, where the children of industrial families grew plums. A little slice of paradise.

When London won the Olympic bid, allotment owners were given two new plots of land, but in 2014, they were evicted from their new Eton Manor plot (despite it only having been acquired in 2009, this piece of land had sentimental value to older allotment keepers, having retained Villier’s legacy by name alone). 

Mark walked me around the remaining rectangle of land offered to the Manor Garden Society, in Pudding Mill Lane. It is a strange site; I’ve cycled past it many times, oblivious to the industrious work of East London’s proud gardening community. It feels a bit desolate. Even this plot – the last remaining sign of Major Villier’s generous legacy to poorer East Londoners – is threatened. Studies show that recently submitted plans for a new high-rise development will obscure the gardens from all but two hours of sunlight per day.

Mark is incredibly proud of his gardening community, and it’s obviously a community asset like no other. He showed me quaint garden huts, lovingly built and decorated; blossoming cherries and almonds; strange South American plants brazenly mingled with shy and retiring English cucumbers. He showed me the beehives, which harvested over a hundred pounds of honey last season. 

When the plans were submitted, Mark and the Garden Society decided that enough was enough. They’d been chucked off their land, and wanted justice, so they organised themselves, and this bunch of common gardeners, pitchforks and all, took the LLDC to the European Supreme Court of Justice, where they won their case. The Court decreed that the LLDC’s planning department work with the Manor Gardening Society to create a working solution. 

Now, the gardeners are hopeful that the corporation’s planning department will work with them to create a solution where everybody could win; in a perfect world, the remaining allotments will not only survive, but thrive, as an example of best practice in building sustainable, future-proofed cities. Mark was hopeful; he loved using gardening analogies in his jovial, chipper banter. “I can feel a good wind coming this Spring,” he says.

It’s important not to paint LLDC as the big, bad, development wolf. The remit of this organisation is simply huge. All over Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park are testaments to the successful legacy LLDC hopes to create. There are many moving parts, and over time, there will be millions of beating hearts.

The Hothouse is a name given to a cute little mini-Kew Gardens temperate house installed in the International Quarter London’s shiny new build. In it are fruit which the architects suggest will grow outdoors in Britain in 2050 if the current climate change forecasts come to pass. There is an oak planted in a Great British Garden, in the shadow of the London stadium. The oak was seeded at Kew Gardens. Fingers crossed it grows big and mighty, like all oaks should. An Olympic oak, around which millions of people will be inspired, in a thriving landscape, filled with a vibrant community, helping to turn the wheels of a massive vision; East London 2.0 – a world class hub of education, arts, culture and innovation.

So that’s how we all play a part in creating a sustainable future; our town planners do their bit, and we can do ours. Pop yourself on an allotment waiting list, and in the meantime, grow pea shoots on your windowsill. Wildflowers will attract those all-important bees. Buy local vegetables from East London’s many growing schemes and small farmers. Throw your seeds out on the street in a bit of guerrilla gardening. 

If you don’t have the privilege of a sunlight-facing seed box, then simply put on your flip flops and jog on to the marshes where free food is available from Mother Nature. Wood ear fungus, chickweed and hairy bitter cress, laced with blackcurrant sage and pretty violet flowers, that’s what John the Poacher might gather on a day’s foraging. His iconic name comes from his youth; he still ferrets for rabbits on farmland and will happily catch you one to order.

“My parents were proper religious. All creatures great and small; I say eat the lot of them all,” John told me over a cheeky liquid lunch at The Cock Tavern in Hackney. He is proud of his own legacy. His foraging has played a part in many an East London success story, from the elderflower he provided for Square Root’s popular cola, to the fennel seeds he harvested for Land Chocolate. “One man’s waste is another man’s gold,” he tells me. “When I drop seeds off at Land Chocolate, I pick up their waste of bean husks, which I take to beer makers.” 

The poorest parts of the world provide an important example of the circular economy; at the bottom of the human food chain are the litter pickers, who harvest what can be sold. Can John’s lesson in waste disposal teach us anything? Could our litter bins actually be goldmines? Our buildings actually generate energy? The answer is a very firm yes. A circular economy which may see less waste, less haste; that’s the dream. 

Cities are hard to future-proof, and the Olympic legacy is often a heavy weight for cities to carry. Pity the many cities littered with hollow shells of stadiums erected under light of the Olympic flame. They lay rusting like decaying coliseums, waiting for the dream to be declared failed. Our country’s leaders would have us believe that East London’s Spring is just beginning; each child, in each apartment, a blossoming domestic flower in a huge urban garden, designed to come into blossom sometime soon. Fruit from this garden will take time to emerge: the next Beatles, the next Darwin, the next Berners-Lee. Who knows? 

The LLDC are preparing this part of our city for a new Spring – one that will hopefully last hundreds of years. They are doing their bit, planting the seeds in preparation to bloom and the harvest to follow, when hopefully, all our plates will be filled with bounty. Let’s do our bit too; it’s time to get our fingers dirty. Let’s enjoy the balmy, frivolous joys of Spring; let’s help to create a better environment and plant our own seeds for the future. Better get your gardening gloves on.

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]]> Unstoppable Green Shoots https://thisisthewick.com/wellbeing/unstoppable-green-shoots-nat-mady-guest-editor/ Fri, 27 May 2022 12:38:12 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=996 At first glance it might not appear to be the greenest of places, but Hackney Wick is bursting with plant life. From the roof gardens of Oslo House to the jostling pots atop narrowboats on the River Lea, plants are thriving. As we transition into spring, nature is gently unfurling, sending our urban landscapes into […]

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Unstoppable Green Shoots

At first glance it might not appear to be the greenest of places, but Hackney Wick is bursting with plant life. From the roof gardens of Oslo House to the jostling pots atop narrowboats on the River Lea, plants are thriving. As we transition into spring, nature is gently unfurling, sending our urban landscapes into a magical transformation. 

Amidst the uncertainty of our world, my mind takes some solace in knowing that the cyclical rhythms of the natural world will always prevail. Plants that disappeared over the colder months will push up through damp earth, squeezing their fleshy stems through pavement cracks, defiant and ready for another season. Powered by the sun of the lengthening days, they are ready for what climate change will bring this year whether that be deluge, drought or both. Spring weeds like nettles, cleavers and dandelions are stretching out to us, offering their medicinal gifts to shake off the winter sluggishness and fortify our bodies for the new season. 

In 2015 I set up Hackney Herbal – a social enterprise promoting wellbeing by connecting people and plants. Having previously grown in a patchwork of shared and meanwhile spaces across Hackney, in 2019 we moved into Trowbridge Gardens. Our plants have moved with us along the way, previously constricted by their containers they, like us, are enjoying having secure and fertile ground to sink their roots into. From here we run a mix of community activities creating a space where people can come together to learn and share knowledge about gardening, herbalism and permaculture.

Part of this work is supporting people in discovering the abundance of edible and medicinal plants in local green spaces like Mabley Green and Hackney Marshes. The Olympic Park has its own contentious history like any other mass ‘regeneration’ scheme. Although some of the original 2012 planting has not been maintained, the park remains an important habitat for East London. 

I’m slightly biased because the park is home to a huge variety of herbs and is also a great place to see the magnificent cormorants who can be spotted regularly sitting on the colourful posts of the Waterworks River. The variety of planting and landscaping along with a mix of large open areas and more secluded wild patches makes it accessible for both people and wildlife, bringing our urban ecosystem together. This edition of The Wick, the first in a year that will mark a decade since London 2012, celebrates the environmental legacy of the games on the local area, both intentional and otherwise.

I’ve been working with people and plants for over 10 years now and can guarantee that, if you let them, plants will bring you joy. Our minds can get inundated with depressing news, a sensory overload accompanying the ever-changing world that we live in whether it be a pandemic, police violence, a changing climate or a raging war. 

I believe connecting with the natural world is vital for our wellbeing, whether that’s sowing seeds with your local community or getting lost in Wick Woodland. These moments of respite offer gentle restoration to our battered nervous systems and plants in turn teach us how to cope with stress so, just like those weeds in the pavements, we too can thrive. When we remove the divide in our mind that suggests we are separate from nature we can instead acknowledge that we are all part of this incredible ecosystem. 

If I’ve learnt anything over the years, it’s that when you take time to nurture nature you are in fact nurturing yourself. 

GUEST EDITOR: Nat Mady

Nat Mady is a Hackney-based permaculturist with a passion for connecting people with nature in the city. She runs Hackney Herbal, a social enterprise promoting wellbeing using herbs as a way to share knowledge about plants and their many creative uses. She is the author of ‘Enjoying Wild Herbs’ from a series of pamphlets created by Rough Trade Books in partnership with Garden Museum. 

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]]> Pent Up Anger https://thisisthewick.com/environment/pent-up-anger-gentrification/ Mon, 06 Dec 2021 10:54:43 +0000 https://thisisthewick.com/?p=1729 Artist Aida Wilde is angry. She asked for local legend Edwin’s iconic slogan, ‘SHITHOUSE TO PENTHOUSE’ – an artwork curated by her – to be removed from the newly refurbished Lord Napier pub. She didn’t want the incoming landlords to financially benefit from Edwin’s cheeky provocation. Aida rightly asks, “I caused Hackney Wick to become […]

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Pent Up Anger

  • Local poet, music producer and writer, Shane Solanki, asks the question, who profits from the Wick?

Artist Aida Wilde is angry. She asked for local legend Edwin’s iconic slogan, ‘SHITHOUSE TO PENTHOUSE’ – an artwork curated by her – to be removed from the newly refurbished Lord Napier pub. She didn’t want the incoming landlords to financially benefit from Edwin’s cheeky provocation. Aida rightly asks, “I caused Hackney Wick to become gentrified. Now, where is my 10%?”

The word gentrification is now a wince-inducing cliché. Decaying edges of the city are occupied by skint artists. Things get edgy. Parties happen. Culture explodes. Developers move in and sell the dream. Quickly, commercial interests sour the mood; what was grimy now becomes polished, and poor people are displaced, including the artists who made the area hip in the first place. Can this process be reversed? Is there such a thing as positive gentrification? How do poor people get a seat at the table, when planning decisions are made about them? London has been asking itself this question repeatedly over the last thirty years. Our Prime Minister and Mayor wax lyrical about the need to protect our creative capital. And here we all are, in Hackney Wick, hidden behind black gates and red gates; hundreds of artists, hungry for work and life. How do we provide pathways for artists and developers to meet, and possibly even collaborate? Where literally everybody wins, artists get paid, and the world is made better through arts and culture?

The likelihood of getting on the housing ladder is a distant dream for most British artists, and unlike in Germany, we don’t have rent control. One way for a gentrified area to keep its artists is to provide affordable studio space, so the skint ones don’t have to move back to their mum’s house. Juliet Can is the director of local workspace provider Stour Trust. She was thrilled when a company called Future Generation approached her with the offer of 125 years free rent; it meant she could really operate as an affordable space. But after the planning application was passed, Juliet noticed that the terms of the offer had been changed; rent would not be free, and neither would Stour Trust necessarily get the contract to be the workspace provider.

 

This is a simple hack for some developers; one of the ways to circumnavigate the requirements of planning is to renege on promises made to secure the support of the community. (After being approached to comment for this article, CEO of Future Generation, Tom Slingsby, said: “We’ve had several meetings with Stour Trust and LLDC* this week and we’re working hard to find a solution that’s acceptable to everyone concerned.”) Juliet Can had previously been frustrated after her attempts to become the workspace provider for the new build Carpenters Wharf were unsuccessful. That developer, Anderson Group, had apparently asked for tenders from local workspace providers, but decided to run a commercial gallery themselves.

 

Michaela YearwoodDan is the first consulting director for Anderson Contemporary Gallery. Initially offered a residency as a painter, with two years of free studio space, Yearwood-Dan says, “Anderson Group were meant to open a gallery, but it felt like the idea was dropping off their radar. They weren’t an arts organisation, so didn’t know the ins and outs.” So Michaela helped Anderson Group set up the gallery, and a job as gallery director will become available once she moves on. “I know the system because I’ve been part of it,” she tells me. “I’ve been kicked out of spaces too. I know how it benefits some and not others. I want to make the arts accessible to all.”

Yearwood-Dan is fond of Anderson Group’s CEO, Andrew Jay. “Andrew has this really lovely way about him,” she says. “His attitude is ‘I am clueless here, Michaela. Tell me what needs to be done.’” She waxes lyrical about the positive legacy of Anderson Contemporary Gallery. “There is a connection between artists and the builders who constructed the site, who – let’s face it – are craftsmen. Site managers come to openings; builders know residents by names, and now have artist mates. Everybody wants it to succeed.”

 

“What is acceptable support for the creative sector that has integrity and which developers do we remain cynical about? What is art-washing, and what is genuine?” asks William Chamberlain, of Creative Wick [co-founder of this newspaper], who sees a clear relationship between the business and creative sectors; “If the development sector uses the creative sector in its advertising to sell homes, then surely they must invest some of their profits back into the community they borrowed from.” William suggests the situation is complex. “If it’s genuine in intent, does it actually deliver value? And why is it that the good guys are persecuted, whilst the worst culprits go unnoticed?”

 

There are examples of great projects in Hackney Wick, which are creating tangible legacy. Aitch Group, developers of the Bagel Factory, proudly proclaim their corporate social responsibility; one of their successes is the Wickers, a well-known knife crime charity. Telford Homes commissioned artist Alex Fox to build gates on their new Wallace Road development, and sold their studios to Community Land Trust, who in turn appointed studio provider Cell to manage these studios at affordable rates; yet even good guys can get it wrong. Telford Homes also had to work hard to appease residents affected by industrial waste, inadvertently uncovered on their building site.

Watching their poor workers struggle with graffiti, essentially creating blank canvases week upon week by painting out the previous week’s indiscretions, was painfully comical in its pointlessness and waste of resources. As buildings rise and fall within this rapidly changing palimpsest, so do artworks, partnerships, and promises. Some ideas last longer than others. Some decay, and wither away, a fleeting memory, a moment in time, a moment of resistance to change. (Change! A force both creative and destructive by nature!) Hill built Fish Island Village with Peabody, one of the oldest housing associations in the country, celebrated for being publicfacing and community-minded, who will manage the estate. All sorts of investments have already been made by Hill and Peabody; quiet public art commissions by local artists.

 

Alongside the canal, opposite a “famous graffiti wall” and in sight of Edwin’s ‘Broken Homes’, an ornate iron drain cover by artist William Cobbing quietly and unassumingly lies in the ground. It houses an inspirational quote by Michaela Coel, about her hustle to sell tickets for the first ever Chewing Gum performance at local theatre, the Yard. The graffiti will come and go – even the famous graffiti wall’s days may be numbered, but for hundreds of years, children born on that estate will be inspired by that quotation. This is true legacy.

 

Peabody are obviously a company who put their money where their mouth is; so what about the ground floor spaces across their ten buildings? Surely they are affordable? Peabody created a landmark deal with the Trampery, a not-for-profit social enterprise who would occupy and manage ground-floor spaces for twenty five years. Whilst the Trampery’s vision to support the acceleration of sustainable British fashion is impressive, socially conscious and sustainable, space is offered at £30 per sq ft, with only one out of the ten buildings being offered to local businesses.

I asked the Trampery’s Patrick Scally if he considered this an affordable rate. “All our profit from rent goes back into administration, and programmes,” he replied. “We’ve had to close past schemes because we couldn’t pass down rent increases to our members. We have a similar project a couple of miles away in Aberfeldy Village, partnering with Poplar Harca and UAL (University of the Arts London), where tenants pay £16 per sq ft. We try to only work with local providers. The larger we get, the harder it is, but we try to hold ourselves to account.” The ‘Broken Homes’ building is on a piece of land earmarked for one of the most ambitious developments in Hackney Wick.

 

The website of Ash Sakula, architect for the huge Wickside development (built by Galliard Homes), reads, “Although these buildings were not important heritage assets, being neither nationally nor locally listed, their retention provides continuity and an abode for shared memories of the former uses of the site. One shed is turned into a restaurant, another becomes a gallery. Other existing buildings house mixed uses including apartments, creative workplaces, a public roof terrace and an artists’ foundry. A famous graffiti wall is preserved and becomes part of a café.” Will Edwin finally get his 10%? Galliard Homes probably made sure the wording is perfect; “Although these buildings were not important heritage assets, being neither nationally nor locally listed” kind of gives them the option to knock them down if they don’t fit into money-making plans; alternately, if they are a benevolent and intelligent developer, they could talk to one of the many internationally renowned artists who will be financially forced to relocate, and offer them a permanent home in the community, becoming celebrated for doing so, and thus selling more homes in the process. It’s a no-brainer.

 

Alex Russell is executive chair of the Community Development Trust, an initiative set up by local social enterprises concerned about the impact of property development on the heritage and culture of the area. Their mission is to preserve spaces for community ownership in perpetuity. “There are so many stakeholders, and a complex policy landscape, she tells me. “This means there’s a lot of frustration between different parties, but the only way to move further is through dialogue. It requires more people who are working in this sector – whether they be developers, planners, landlords, or civic organisations – to come together to address issues and challenges. We’ve mapped the area and we know what is still left to pass through planning; this is our opportunity to get things right, and to create a legacy for arts and culture in Hackney Wick & Fish Island.”

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will East London be. In the statement which declared Hackney Wick & Fish Island as one of London’s first Creative Enterprise Zones, Mayor Sadiq Khan said, “London’s cultural and creative sector is a major contributor to the economy, it can help jumpstart the recovery and bring much-needed tourism to our city. However, support must start at grassroots level, with studio spaces”. Perhaps it is still not too late and together we can create a model of best practice, where developers change their habits and serve their communities, and artists – burned so many times by the subtle intricacies in the small print of planning – are actually given the means by which to survive.

 

Hackney Wick’s creative community tell me they are exhausted of turning up at endless consultations, only to see their ideas borrowed without credit, concession or remuneration. Yet, on the few plots which still have to pass LLDC’s planning legislation, there remains a window of opportunity to create a legacy for Hackney Wick’s abundant supply of artists before development forces them to find new homes. Maybe we can all work together to find ways in which the business and development sectors can support community and creativity in a manner which feels sustainable and ethical, rather than souring the mood. Let’s see what the shithouse looks like in a decade or two; let’s see whether local artists have flourished, in what our current Mayor has labelled a Creative Enterprise Zone. Perhaps artists can remain, justly paid to question change, at the heart of the party they started.

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