Issue 9. Up Your Street

 

Mon 23rd Feb free 2.30pm Stratford Heritage Walk with Abby from Eastside Community Heritage. No need to book  Meet at Stratford Station (one of three walking tours).

Tues 24th Feb £60 negotiable 10.00-1pm Hackney City Farm. Learning to set up an healthy eating and cooking workshop for pre-toddlers with Kids Kitchen. Go to website or see at Eventbrite

Wed 25th Feb £3 noon-3pm POSH Club cabaret at St Paul’s Church Stoke Newington. Book in advance as it’s popular.

£5    1.30pm-4pm Tea dance. Chingford Assembly Hall, Station Road, Chingford, E4

Thurs 26th Feb free 10am An heritage walk around The Queen Elizabeth Park. Meet at the Moke Café East. Book with Katherine of Eastside Community Heritage at Katherine@ech.org.uk (one of three walking tours)

free 10am-6pm Exhibition of community driven events since 2011 at The Mill, 7-11 Coppermill Lane, Walthamstow E17 7HA Contact.Carolyn Abbott info@themill-coppermill.org

                               free 2-4pm Telling Tales Lounge with Mo our art director at The Mill . Informal reminiscence group on a script project.

                                   £5 FABRICATIONS CRAFT CLUB: 6-9pmBroadway Market Hackney The club is a friendly, supportive and creative evening.

Bring along your own projects (whether it be knitting, crochet, sewing, patchwork etc)

It’s an ideal follow on to our classes for continuity or extra guidance.

Come with friends or make new friends

Fri 27th Feb free The Rabbit Hole, Maryland E15. Done gone. Bye Nicci. It was a blast.

                        £5  7pm-10pm The Mill 7-11 Coppermill Lane, E17 7HA. Contact Adele Tinman 020 85213211

 

Sat 28th Feb free “Women in Bloomsbury” walk with Goodenough. Book at Eventbrite

 

Sun 1st Mar free 3-5pm Creative writing workshop at Blend, 587 Green Lanes Harringay N8 ORG. Book at Eventbrite

Mon 2nd Mar free Book with Stuart Low Trust for 18th March trip to the Wellcome Centre

Tues 3rd Mar £10 Rose ‘n’ Crown Theatre Pub E17 preview “Norma Jean The Musical” Tickets at the website for the musical.

free 8/8 Last session at Oxford House E1 Journalism Course for locals

Wed 4th Mar£3 11 am Empire Seniors Walthamstow E17  screening “A Most Wanted Man ” with tea and biscuits.

£3 noon -3pm POSH Club (see last week)

 

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“Ships In The Night”

Eastside   (after a field trip with Rosetta Art Centre to The Royal Docks. Autumn 2014)

Just still you were

And we found you

We smelt you

And sat down by your concrete bank

Overlooked by new-builds of towers

Perched on subterranean car parks

And noticed ships in bottles,

Trophies of the sea in front windows

Under nets.

 

A walk away through brown bushes

And scraggy pigeons

Not the sea gulls we expected

We held our noses by a lock

With its green wood and Keep Out signs

And open-mouthed

Wondered at its ancientness

What it meant to its new neighbours

Who pushed by with pushchairs

And Valium eyes

With sights on different horizons.

 

We reached the red brick bridge

By roads named after fishing ports

And placed the site

Of Harland and Wolff

Of a bygone monster

Of industry

And somehow saw workers in kerchiefs

With Woodbines balanced in toothless mouths.

 

A droning ship in the sky

Coursed into City Airport

A Scandinavian container lorry

Vibrated the metal under our feet

We looked again into the water

Saw no movement

No men, no boats, no shouts, no funnels

No cranes or moving parts

We touched the red brick as though kissing Madonna’s feet

And quietly slipped away.

 

 

*****************************************************************by Gillian Lawrence

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mixed race and highlights

Bussed out yesterday having done a session at Eastside Community Heritage all about interviewing for oral history archives. Any course by Eastside is organised and worth it.

On then towards Upminster for Valence House Museum. Hmm. Cheap hot chocolate £1.Ticked that off our lists. The people of Becontree (so that’s how you spell it!) are as friendly as pie. Proper chatty east enders.

Back then to the best museum for miles, Hackney Museum, where young Patrick Vernon was ruminating about Slave Routes and his adventures in Kenya to follow the route of the slaves from east Africa. The time slot was too thin. It was a rushed affair. We sat enveloped by beautiful NHS nurses smiling in their photographs. The Hackney Museum always has great temporary exhibitions and of course magnificent permanent ones. The welcome is warm for one and all.

I knew Patrick from way back when as a participant in his Routes project at Pages in Clapton and at Hackney Museum. I love words of passion shared.

Canning Town has been in my head since joining the Eastside Community Heritage and researching about shipbuilding in east London back in the day. I was always curious about the Mixed Race population of Canning Town in 1933 as an acquaintance of mine was born there in 1933. We had her all lined up to be interviewed a couple of years ago but the funding for another reminiscence project never came through. Now there’s NDP in Newham up and running doing its mixed race exhibition from research in the area. Iroko Theatre Company in Stratford had already done and recorded a tribute to the African genes in Canning Town in the thirties. (See what I mean about ‘another reminiscence project’?)

All links in nicely with Up Your Streeters having participated in Dr Massey’s “Tangled Roots” which raises and records the force of the increasing mixed race population in the UK.

Done.

Constable in the leaves.

A whole crowd from Up Your Street was out in scarves and sporting haversacks on a very cold November morning to see “Constable: The Making Of A Master ” at the V&A. It was exactly that. There were many paintings and etchings done by Constable in his studio as he copied masters of the time and emerging others on his own path to fame and recognition. I liked to see the massive sketches of ye olde country scenes next to the finished articles. Constable was a perfectionist. He was meticulous about detail as evidenced in his studies for farm machinery and dock leaves.

That was a major exhibition and we paid not a penny being the Up Your Street community group. I remember five rooms and beautiful deep blue walls what with Dulux getting a credit too. It was all just nice indeed.

In a corner of a restaurant we dined on pasta and sandwiches, cakes and crisps for we are wont to bring our own picnics. No-one bothered us and vice versa. Evidently according to one Up Your Streeter who studied art history recently at Birkbeck this particular V&A eaterie must allow the poor tourist a seat. Suits us.

One window display was a towering stack of the thirty quid reduced to twenty-five pounds Constable book which we’d flicked  through in the gallery rooms. Obviously those copies were tethered to bolts. Great book and price I thought. On SkyArts they had the linked programme about Constable. Now that I recorded twice and switched off twice because it was that boring.

We came out of a packed Leyton station to the smell of local bonfires on a 5th November evening. I caught up with ” Missing” with ole Nesbitt on BBCiplayer. That is one well-crafted drama.

Next V&A is a look about the Nehru Gallery with a senior amongst us with her raised confidence and geared-up passion who will guide us through the dates and the art.Hmm.

And there’s Soapbox at Tate Britain next week ‘all from a man’s perspective’. Actually the topic is not publicized. I just heard something about a man yesterday. The regular Up Your Street attendees are going to be absent as they finish off training in oral history interviews run by Eastside Community Heritage and Rosetta Art Centre way over, far from Pimlico, in old West Ham, east London.

In the blog Canning Town Life Up Your Streeters were described as would-be historians. Ha ha . The majority of the participants at “Ships In The Night” are seniors from Up Your Street. They are experienced in reminiscence projects (before the word “reminiscence” came into community engagement parlance) having been the main characters in “A Taste Of Hackney” ( where they developed an App before Apps were on the market and Apple stores) and Openstage 2012 and many other projects around Hoxton and Newham. We must salute them, one and all. Here I am.

Yesterday’s last achievement was the twisting of Stephen’s arm and he’s on crutches, mind, to take us to Wapping to seek out dockers’ sons to get the low-down on dock-life. Homework done!

Take Me to The River

 

Photos from Lyle Park E16 30th October 2014. We loved this hidden gem. Not a child or parent in sight with a swing park on the doorstep and it being Half term.

We’ll return with a picnic and better cameras toview the barges and cranes and London on the river…still.

     

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Photos on the way to Harland and Wolff’s site. 30th October 2014.

Some people were too scared to walk on the old lock walkway and the smell could knock you out.

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Approaching King George Vth Dock on Fishguard Way  with its  red brick bridge.

30th Oct 2014

Some people couldn’t stand on it because of the vibrations from the heavy container lorries.

 

 

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From The Woolwich Ferry 30th Oct 2014 . We thought we’d ended up in Canning Town but actually we’d gone from North Woolwich to South Woolwich. And one of us was petrified to get on the ferry. We pretended we were on the ferry to Calais. 5 minutes later and we were lost on land. Ha ha ha!

 

 

 

In Woolwich Hare Street. Around the corner was a buzzing place, great cheap shops, and tired legs. We will return to pay homage to the memorial to service personnel at the Barracks (aka Rigby’s memorial).

Digitalising Archives at Eastside

As predicted an inspiring course on training up to be digital cultural archive guardians at Rosetta Art Centre combined with Eastside Community Heritage. Today was in Ilford.

Saw a massive queue outside an Indian sweet shop on the way back. Grr Stuck on the bus.

Homework to be done all about Harland and Wolff shipbuilders. The course is called admirably “Ships In the Night”. Well-hosted and delivered workshops.