Hackney MP tells large crowd ‘this is not about me, this is about the level of racism in Britain’
Diane Abbott greeted large crowds of people who gathered at a rally in support of her on Friday night, telling the crowd they had to “stand firm” against racism.
The rally was organised by local black women in Hackney after remarks emerged about the longstanding MP by Frank Hester, the Tories’ biggest donor, that were widely condemned as racist and misogynistic.
Continue reading...Residents ‘absolutely fuming’ about council’s decision to shut Colvestone primary and transfer its pupils
Helen Davis could not believe her children’s luck when Hackney council announced the borough’s first “21st-century street” was going to be built on the doorstep of their local school.
“It still makes me tingle just to think about it,” she said. “Colvestone primary school was going to be at the heart of this new, pedestrianised, green space. Pupils were going to be able to grow their own vegetables, run conservation projects and have outside play activities. They were even planning an outdoor classroom.”
Continue reading...Friends of the Joiners Arms intend to create the UK’s first community-run LGBTQ+ venue to replace pub on Hackney Road
A fundraiser to replace a famed east London gay bar that was shut down by developers has hit its target of £100,000 and secured its future with more than 24 hours to go before its deadline.
The Friends of the Joiners Arms (Fotja) campaign group confirmed that it had pulled off the feat – raising more than £30,000 since the weekend for what would be the UK’s first community-run LGBTQ+ venue.
Continue reading...Veronica Ryan creates UK’s first permanent artwork dedicated to people affected by the scandal
The first permanent artwork to honour the Windrush generation in the UK has been unveiled in the east London borough of Hackney, as councils across the country kick off the first day of Black History Month.
The work, created by the artist Veronica Ryan, is one of two permanent sculptures that symbolise the council’s respect and commitment to the Windrush generation and their legacy and contribution to the area. The second, by Thomas J Price, will be unveiled next spring.
Continue reading...In our new column, in which we make nice things happen for nice people, we meet Marvin Birch, who turned his life around – and now spreads the community love
Marvin Birch has lived on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney his entire life. It’s never had a good reputation. There was a terrible murder of a young boy there in 1985; in 1994 a newspaper article wrote the place off as “one of the most notorious estates in east London”. But Birch has always found it a place of community. “It’s a family,” he says. “When people who don’t live on an estate come to visit they always comment on how everyone is together: ‘You can go out of your house and kids are playing.’” That’s what inspired him, as an adult, to make a difference for children growing up there today.
As a teenager, Birch, now 26, was a prisoner of geography, subject to restrictions that made the simple act of visiting a supermarket a few roads away a life-threatening gauntlet. “There were a lot of postcode wars,” he says. He couldn’t walk a mile in either direction without being targeted. At the time, a member of his family was a gang member, which put entire swathes of Hackney off limits.
Continue reading...Frank Laws’s Hopperesque watercolours depict the individual character of east London’s most impressive – and everyday – buildings, as gentrification threatens their very existence
From Mike Leigh’s film Meantime to the TV show Top Boy, the social housing estates of east London have provided rich subject matter for writers and artists exploring the human stories intertwining in their communities. In the paintings of east Londoner Frank Laws, however, there isn’t a person in sight. The only signs of life are curtains flapping at open windows and the luminescent glow emanating from inside a home. Blocks of flats that teem with life in, say, Plan B’s film and album Ill Manors, stand eerily quiet and vacant in Laws’s images.
Laws was born in a village in Norfolk but hated the rural quiet. “I was always scared of the dark in the countryside,” says the 37-year-old. “I’m still scared of it.” It’s this fear, and Laws’ love of film noir, that informs the dramatic, Edward Hopperesque lighting in Laws’ meticulously detailed watercolour and acrylic paintings.
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