Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Meeting tomorrow: Planning, the law and your right to have a say about your environment

Planning, the law and your right to have a say about your environment

Wednesday, June 01, 2011 from 7:15 PM - 8:45 PM

Friends of the Earth runs training on planning, the law and campaigning to support community groups working to have their voice heard on decisions made about developments - from housing to supermarkets, from airports to food growing spaces. Everyone has the right to live in a fair, clean and healthy place. We believe the ‘Environment’ isn’t separate from us, but it is where we live, where we work, where our children play.
In Hackney planning policy, regulation and enforcement has at times been a divisive issue. This session is focussed on empowering residents so that they can have their voice heard.
This event, run by Friends of the Earth and Hackney unites, will be a small taster of the training and resources offered by Friends of the Earth’s Rights and Justice team. It is also part of Hackney Unites on-going strategy of bringing experts and residents together to providing training that allows our communities to get their voices heard. Whether it is the controversial proposals for areas of exception, or the wholesale redevelopment of estates, residents’ views and needs have often been ignored and marginalised.
Come and:
 Share your experiences getting involved in decision making in the borough
 Get an introduction to what your rights are in this area and why they matter
Here about changes proposed to the way planning decisions are made in the Localism bill and how to get involved in campaigning for better rights to participate
Find out about resources available to help you work on environmental issues you care about
The session is a ‘taster’ or introduction to the forthcoming training provided by Friends of the Earth’s residential weekend Power Up, in Mile End, London on 1st - 3rd July

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Hackney Rugby Club will be holding their first charity run...


Hackney Rugby Club will be holding their first  charity run, Hackney 1000 in Well Street Common on June 4th. Starting at 10.30am, participants can get around the course in any way they want, what matters is that together Hackney will travel 1000km to raise for this brilliant local children's charity. Hackney Quest, Hackney RFC and the London Fields Triathlon Club have already begun pledging. Anyone who wants to help support this cause can do the same, simply visit www.hackney1000.com

The Visionary Trading Project - a series of public actions, events and an exhibitions, dedicated to Broadway Market, Hackney.

 


 

 

 

Please find below information about The Visionary Trading Project -

a series of public actions, events and an exhibitions, dedicated to
Broadway Market, Hackney.
 
For this project we have commissioned 7 new art works, inspired by the
market and they are all presented in the show at Guest Projects.
 
We hope you and your members will be interested in the project. The show is on
till 26th of June.
 
With kind regards,
 
Margarita Dorovska
curator

The Visionary Trading Project

28 May – 26 June

Opening: 27th May 2011 | 6pm-9pm
Open on Friday-Sunday from 12pm to 6pm, free admission
Tel: 07885766556


The Visionary Trading Project brings together seven new commissions, events and interventions, addressing the socio-economic changes that the Broadway Market area of East London has experienced in the last decade. Proposing imaginative narratives and alternative models of trade and exchange, the projects ascribe fictional elements to the real stories and structures of the area. Borrowing content and imagery from myths, fables and popular culture and inscribing it into the existing ‘idylls’ of the Saturday Market, the artists breach common cultural conventions and offer uncanny visions of social transaction.

On 14th of May artist Greta Alfaro’s edible and perfectly shaped black apples were sold to the market crowd. Her deceptive offering was conceived as an exploration of the ambiguous nature of commercial goods, bringing back the old myth of the apple as a false promise.

Around the same time, posters reading 'Your dust is cash. Each Oz. is money' appeared around Broadway Market. Behind this idea were Mexican artists Alfadir Luna and Antonio Vega Macotela, who had developed an exchange scheme for the Visionary Trading Project in line with their long lasting interest in currency as a mediation device through which social relations are established. They buy dust from homes of residents of the area and pay them in sterling pounds. To consolidate the process the acquired “valuables” will be stored in a bank safe, and documents of the exchange exhibited in the Guest Projects space.


On 21st May Petko Dourmana sold Bulgarian rose oil at the market. His customers had to pay him with a highly personal possession; their body odour. The lucrative offer, accepted at first as a joke, made them feel uncomfortable upon realising that the technique employed and his specially prepared chair were part of East Germany's Stasi methodology for odourologic collection and analysis, still used in countries like Russia, Cuba and Bulgaria.

Heman Chong and Anthony Marcellini's radio drama Public Allergies, broadcasted on Resonance FM, tells the story of  fictional artist Simon Tam, who has been invited to create a public art project in Broadway Market. For this commission Tam proposes a performance that consists of situating one hundred riot policemen along Broadway Market. However, the piece triggers a reaction from the public that results in a full-scale riot.

Harry Meadows has been commissioned to make new designs for manhole covers around Broadway Market. Embedded in the texture of the street, these unnoticed relics of municipal design and heavy industry become, for once, a canvas for the artist's commentary on the schisms and unlikely combinations sitting uneasily together in the market.

Laura Oldfield has developed for the project a series of guerilla style posters looking into the history and context of the area. Her psychogeographic investigations capture the city in its intensive state of movement and flux deliberately seek the point of transition from an aesthetic practice to a radical analysis.

The fragile balance between aesthetic documentation and critique also inhabits the film by Ilona Sagar, which looks into development sites representative of an aspirational desire to improve, style and play-out an ideal way of living. On her work for the VTP, Sagar has worked in collaboration with Adam Nathaniel Furman, a designer, writer and lecturer at the Architectural Association and with sound designer  Doug Haywood.

Artist and hacker Paolo Cirio will exhibit for the first time in London his visionary credit cards, introducing the peer-to-peer gift finance system. Visitors will be able to get a counterfeit credit card during his public actions in the area or directly at the gallery.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

The new CLR James Library

What a beautiful image this is. The new - yet to open CLR James Library in Dalston - with his name up there where it belongs. Well done to Hackney Unites and all who took part in the campaign to save the name of the library.