Clubs at News From Nowhere

Sat Jan 12th free 7.30pm at Epicentre West St E11. bring a dish to share.

A talk

   “‘A Club Collection’ : The work of local artist Lucy Harrison

Lucy Harrison is a local artist whose work investigates how we describe and remember places. She works in specific places on projects with outcomes such as alternative guidebooks, audio walks, installations and newspapers, often involving local residents in the making of the work.

She is currently compiling a collection of east London clubs, past present and future, in a project called A Club Collection, commissioned by the London Legacy Development Corporation to anticipate the opening of a new North Park community hub in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in the summer of 2013. The collection of images, ephemera, information and personal descriptions, will be assembled online atwww.aclubcollection.tumblr.comand aspects will be displayed at the North Park community hub, which will be one of the first public spaces to open in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Other recent projects include Mapping Your Manor (2011), which involved recording a soundtrack with people who live or work near to the edge of the Olympic Park; the tracks are available for download fromwww.mappingyourmanor.comand there is an accompanying book. The recordings include songs, poetry and recollections as well as quirky guided tours and interviews.

In 2007 she worked with residents of Canvey Island to make an ‘alternative’ guidebook, and started the Rendezvous Walking Club. In 2008, she worked on a commission for Art on the Underground at Stratford station, and produced a newspaper called The Stratford Grapevine, written by people who live or work in Stratford and given away in the station to passers-by.  www.lucy-harrison.co.uk “

A Taste Of Hackney

Yep! Tasted a bit of Hackney today. To be honest, I’m a bit saturated with Hackney as yesterday “Hackney Life ” a film project by Mosaic Films, Shacklewell Lane, Dalston, showcasing Hackney ..  again.. exposed their ways and means of getting it together via our uploaded shots on YouTube. Well, from the people I knew and loved at the introductory meeting about one eighth were computer-literate so YouTube may be a challenge. Still we remain optmistic. Then at Hackney Museum for two weeks and more,  there’s even more Love ‘Ackney (especially as it’s 2012!)  through “Homerton Voices” and artist Lucy Harrison’s “Mapping Your Manor” project.

Today, A Different Drum Productions  via “A Taste Of Hackney” treated us and the Colvestone pupils to an experience at The new Hackney Archives opposite the Peace Mural, Dalston Junction, opposite The Eastern Curve Garden where my gargoyle weathers the snow . I was quietly stunned as all the non-security staff on duty upstairs were white. Not seen that for ages.  (Seen the Mcdonald’s advert where the ante-natal nurse is black?  Well, hello strereotypes!  McDonalds could’ve paved the way and had a male nurse. Coulda,  shoulda.)

The Hackney Archives is great, state of the art and full of good stuff:- Lots of films and pictures to which the children  could relate.  Don’t know what the adults got from it as  for people who used Ridley Road Market in the past  they were pretty disorientated.

The reception/security staff are great and welcoming.

Went to Can Supermarket. Lea Bridge Road to buy my yam and spinach and home in the freezing cold on a friendly bus.  Life good.

up your street issue 36

  Up Your
Street                                                        

issue 36  07762178941 All in all in! Captain Calling.

Thurs Sept 8^th
free   5-7pm Celebratory party to
meet artists, clients of Crisis, displaying works at Artworks exhibition at
Bromley-By-Bow Centre, St Leonards St E3.

Fri Sept 9th   £8  7pm @The Kitchen Table Anne on
02085867979  292 Barking Rd e63BA“come
along to celebrate the 60’s with music from ‘the barn jammers’, memories &
stories from the time & a themed menu! £8 including supper book now!”

Last few days of “Unearthed” art exhibition at
old Yardley building Stratford High Street. (no disabled access)

Sat Sept 10^th     free
noon The View Tube by Pudding Mill Lane station. Open Access workshop
with Jessie of Textile Tale Archives project. If you find the website, Senior Sue’s
up there with her crochet bag. She’s also on The Mill website patchworking.  Credit where it’s due, folks!

Sun Sept 11^th
free 2-6pm E17 designers at Asian
centre Walthamstow Village E17 (part of E17 Arts Trail) 

Tues Sept 13^th  free
1.30pm  Seniors get together at The Mill
Coppermill Lane e17 Just join in.

                            free   7pm The Mill E17 reading Club  “To Kill A Mocking Bird”.

                             free  6.15pm Walthamstow Library front entrance . High Street
Seniors gently stroll down the market
to The Mill for the reading group. Jolly good company! Rain on, walk off but
the Mill is still there!

Wed Sept 14^th
free  6.30pm. Action Community Trust volunteers
meet Vicarage Community Centre Vicarage Rd E15. Join if you love Stratford.

Thurs Sept 15^th
free Agewell Singers resume after summer break. Stratford Circus
11.30-1.15pm

 free  11-noon Sutton House in Homerton High Street.
No house entry charge  Book
Brunchers  discussing Calvino’s “Invisible
Cities”  followed by the first
“Scribblers” session if you like, a writing group. Concession charge.

 Sat 17^th and Sun 18^th
Sept The Thames Festival, South Bank.( credit and thanks to Stephen
M@ACC  for extra info for Up your Street).

Sat  Sept 17^th     free
2.30pm Newham residents only, first time to the  theatre. Theatre Royal Stratford east. Book
in advance for “A Clockwork Orange” musical. TRSE

                            free 11-4pmThe Pump House is open and
ready for visitors in South Access Rd

Sun Sept 18^th    free
11-3.30pm  guided tour of 300 year
old Grade 11 listed building. Valentine’s Mansion and House, Ilford . Just turn
up.

                            free  TRSE/Open Stage noon -2pm Meet actor and
archivist Murray Melvin.This changed to 3pm

 free   Lucy Hamilton of Mapping Your Manor  (a sound installation art work at the Games
Park) invites you to Hackney Wick for her project event

Up Your Street Issue 32

                                          

 

 

Mon Aug 15th     Phone  0300  2012550 at 9am to grab a tour of The Olympic and Paralympic

                          Games site, E.20 during Open Weekend 10 and 11th September 2011.

 

                          free 2-4pm Bruce Castle Museum , Tottenham.”Nitter Natter” chat,

                                       knit and remember 1951.

 

                           from St John at Hackney, Mare Street.

  Dear FriendsJoin us for an afternoon tea on Clarence Road this Monday 15th August at 5pm. We
will be meeting at 4.30 pm at St John at Hackney to move tables, please come and
help if you are free.The tea is happening on Monday to coincide with the moment the riots started
last week, this is a community event to reclaim the streets.

 

Tues Aug 16th     free   6.30pm Bryant Community Centre E15 Final ACT planning meeting

                           before the Stratford Summer Festival. Feel welcome at a lovely

                                     community centre and meet friendly as ever Stratford residents.

 

Wed Aug  17th    free  1.10-1.40pm St John’s Church Stratford, E15, Saxophone session.

 

Thurs Aug 18th   free   noon. Meet Jacky Hyams at Sutton House, Homerton High Road, 

                          author of “Bombsites and Lollipops”. Buy your 99p Ebook by Jacky

                          at Amazon Kindle offers.

 

Fri Aug 19th        free   (for residents of Bow primarily) Walking and photography

                           course for 5 weeks. Email Graham for details at graham@walkeast.org 

                          It’s possible the places are filled as it is a very popular Friday afternoon course.

 

Sat Aug 20th       free  noon-4pm The Stratford Summer Festival, Stratford Park. Meet

                                                     Up Your Street. 

                                                     Open Stage TRSE 2012

                                                     Mapping Your Manor

                                                     Action Community and Stratford residents.

Sun Aug 21st     11.30pm -0700h. free to watch The largest crane in Europe arrives in Stratford to erect a bridge

                                    over Stratford High Street …. all part of The Games.

 

Wed  Aug 24th   free  7.15-9.30pm Poetry in The Park, Coronation Gardens E10

***********************************************************************

               That Old Black Magic… tea dances on the horizon

 Stratford Old Town Hall £2 tea dances 1.30-4pm on  12th Sept, 17th october.

 Leyton Community Action £2.50 tea dances happen monthly at The Plum Tree Centre, Leyton Green, E10 

 

Go to London Transport photographs (IanVisits alerted me to this) to see  wonderful photographs of Wapping Station as it was.

******************************************************************************** 

Book at Floating Cinema for the free boat trip with eco-green films  and Harvest Festival at Abbey Gardens, Newham.

                    (no wheelchair access.) There is so much more to enjoy at Floating Cinema. www.floatingcinema.info

Check issue 33 for

activities resuming soon after the Summer Break “Still Alive and Kicking” (Songololo-Feet)

                                                                            Hackney Harmony Singers 

                                                                            Agewell Singers

Stocking up for Eid, BBQs, parties, larder? Go to Tesco. Bargains on savouries and 241 offers on those expensive Patak pickles.

 

Streetlife Radio is live on internet. Our very own Mary Katherine Presents plays marvellous music from golden times and chats , reads poetry and generally lifts us up for daily life. Other shows keep you on the music pulse as does Tony Regan at The Olde Rose and Crowne theatre pub in Hoe Street E17. 

Vintage TV on Sky is excellent for music and archive film from 1950 to 1980.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                  

Up Your Street   an information-sharing service for seniors listing free events and activities in the 6 London 2012 boroughs.

 

                                             

ImagineUREvery1 Hackney Wick

Mapping Your Manor, Lucy Harrison’s project making podcasts for the Olympic and Paralympic Games site perimeter was at The Yard Theatre in Queen’s Yard, Hackney Wick yesterday evening to record performed tweets and to interview actors, most of whom are volunteers who responded to writer Stewart Melton’s call to join in. The performance is enjoying very good attention and reviews.  The London Riots only prevented the opening night and that was a safety measure as everything else in the area was shut down.

Mapping Your Manor will be promoting its work at the Stratford Summer Festival on August 2oth. Here you have the chance to share and record memories of Stratford and if you’re new in the area you’ll have an interactive chance to shape its future too.

Last night I watched on Sky Vintage TV  “Donovan in Conversation” with Mike Read. This is a well-put together and edited (editor, Zeb Achonu) refreshing  story of Donovan as told by him as he is now and with some good archive material. Donovan certainly creates great images of exactly how it was in the old hippy days. He was greatly influenced by Scottish ballad poets and folk songs in the parlour, which was a nice touch as we remember pre-non-stop radio called ‘wireless’ and way before multi-channel telly.

Finished reading “Bombsites and Lollipops” which I downloaded from Amazon Kindle books to my PC for 99p! Not that interested in another memory of post war London but persevered with respect to Jacky Hyams whom I’ll meet on August 18th at Sutton House, Homerton, Hackney “Book Brunchers”.

Coincidentally Hyams the name  turned up in the programme on BBC1  “Who Do You Think You Are? featuring June off East Enders. That format  has had its day. It was interesting but edited to the degree that we see the same ole pictures all through out. Fillers.

Wasn’t High Street Seniors right to feel it is time to reclaim the streets from youth? Increasingly seniors are not visible on our streets after dusk. It’ll take a massive group effort to get High Street Seniors running post Riots. People do not believe the Riots are over.

 High Street Seniors are walking groups for seniors. The seniors walk together, some with sticks, in a group at dusk . They end up at a cafe or a pub for a cuppa. More often than not the tea is given freely with a lovely welcome. When they walked in Wapping they attended the launch of Madge Darby’s new book about the history of  Wapping and a fine evening they had. They now await an invitation from the Hermitage Community Moorings (many of the High Street Seniors belong to the volunteer group) to enjoy a river trip on the ‘Cabby’.

5 of many projects for everyone which are free and linking to the Olympic and Paralympic Games a-coming.

5 free major projects we need to know about. There are more to highlight. Meanwhile…No formal qualifications required. Contact details following but of course by that time you may have used a search engine to find out more!

 

Mapping The Change, starting September. A journalism course highlighting the changes in Waltham Forest in the lead up to the Games. Based in The Vestry House Museum E17.

 

Film -making at The Cyberlink, E10 . Recording changing Leyton. Introduction  3pm 25th July.

 

Mapping Your Manor, an arts project recording memories etc around the Olympic and Paralympic Games site perimeter.

 

Taste Of Hackney, starting September. an intergenerational Caribbean project involving film-making, recording of events, culinary memories in the Ridley Road market.

 

Imagine You Are Everyone, a performance with 139 citizens as the cast at The Yard, Hackney Wick beginning with an introduction on August 3rd.

 

 

                  

Three hour walk around the Olympic and Paralympic Games site

                            Three hours in the humid heat joining in Mapping Your Manor with the Newham Striders and picking up others on the way. What a lovely bunch of people to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon with. Lucy greeted us well as did John and Chris and Ross was recording sounds while Jane was our camera one.

Well, let’s face it!  The backstreets and the high roads of Leyton and Stratford aint all that and the trek on the tow path down to Bow is not scenic. The Greenway is nothing but a white concrete path although homage today to the many colours of wild weeds showing off amongst the litter. Fish Island is a waste of space. There are no buses down that Dickensian way and the newest cafe is £2 a cuppa. Not up any of our streets. We did inspect the temporary Folly for a Flyover. Whoever knew that was just there on the side of the River Lea under a bridge?

I dunno, she sighed deeply. But I say it like it is.

We fulfilled the point of Mapping Your Manor with travellers reading excerpts, sharing memories and poets doin’ their thing. Here’s my poem I was proud to read on a project which gives voice to ordinary folk.

                               The Coming.

Age old white clouds, surveyors of all beneath them

slid behind the unnatural and perfect

concrete wedges of new- built Olympian blocks

high as skies                 

and yawned.

Down on puddled  paths I was open-mouthed and amazed.

Only the unsettled wind and my camera shuttering

made noises

as I counted without counting

the storeys.

On the roads outside the Park

in earshot  of the  booming  Gala bingo- caller’s voice

under  perfect  Edwardian arches and invisible gargoyles

now womanly in their aspects, feared by no man

boys on bikes

together in a crowd

rode furiously

chasing the wind and their tails

indifferent to  rising shapes and Olympian realities.

Their street was  a century away

wrapped in guarded  terraces,  clung onto tested ways

yellow-bricked, Primark- clothed , home and known.

The Olympic Games site was their parents’  neighbour

not quite settled in,  watched through Bid Up TV curtains

and  rising steam from Basmati rice in curried kitchens.    

By 8pm the stadium was drenched in a slow drowning

in glorious sun down.

The youth shielded their caps and eyes from the sting

looked up to see who  shone the torch

realised the invader and planned a way to jump its wired fence.

Someone’s screech  of “house”  escaped and cadged a ride on the DLR.

Stratford Cars’ minicab- master emerged from the darkness of his firm

looked up the road towards Bow and lit a cigarette.

The smoke trailed upwards from his mouth blurring the sunset.

In  a second, his wife’s voice came crashing  from the sky:

“Where’s E20? Hamid! Where is it? Can’t see it.

He fingered the beads in his pocket.

“Tell them it’s not ready. It’s coming”.

                                    Excellent turn -out of seniors experienced in walking regularly.

                                   Carpenters Road has been transformed from the murky oily dirtsville it once was about 6 years ago, and no amount of romanticising can convince me of a different history.

                              Where’s the Radox?

Mapping Your Manor

High Street Seniors will be walking the walk around the perimeter of the Olympic and Paralympic Games site led by Lucy Harrison of Mapping Your Manor and Paula Peaty with Newham Striders.    Sunday 10th July

It’s a 3 hour leisurely walk taking in the sights and the site through Hackney Wick, Fish Island, Wick Woodland and stopping for events such as readings and memories. There are drop off points because it is a long stretch of time. End point is Stratford where we start.

Free and meet at 1pm at Theatre Royal Square i.e. in the Cultural Quarter in Stratford E15. (158,69, and many buses). Might be good just to let Lucy know numbers so call her on  07964878315 if you’re coming along. It’ll be good

All repeats next Sunday 17th July

Lucky me…got a place on the Floating Cinema Tours to check out more of the Games site, end of July.

free…. let’s go!

As part of the development of the Mapping Your Manor project, Lucy Harrison and the Newham Striders walking group have organised two walks this July, where we will remember and re-imagine the areas around the edge of the Olympic Park.

 Come along to just enjoy the walk or to contribute thoughts, ideas or memories. The walks will start from Stratford and go to Leyton, Wick Woodland, Hackney Wick, Fish Island, the Greenway, Carpenters Road and return to Stratford. We will stop at certain points and discuss things you remember or notice on the day.

 Sundays 10th & 17th July Both at 1pm Meet in Theatre Royal Square

 Walks will last around 3 hours, please contact Lucy if you would like to meet along the way. They are suitable for all abilities and will be mainly on footpaths and pavements. There are also drop-off points where walkers can leave if they decide not to complete the whole walk.

For more details or for any queries please contact Lucy: mappingyourmanor@btinternet.com 07964 878315 http://www.mappingyourmanor.com Twitter: @mappingyrmanor

Mapping Your Manor is a new project by artist Lucy Harrison, who is looking for people who live or work near the Olympic Park, to contribute to a new podcast and guidebook that will take listeners around and through the Park and its surroundings. Whether you’ve got a song to listen to in Hackney Wick, a story in Stratford, a recording of a football game on the Marshes or a secret tour of your favourite café in Leyton, Lucy wants you to get in touch.