This summer we curated our learning and community engagement activity around the theme Making Space / Space for Making to mark the ten-year anniversary of the 2012 Olympic Games. A decade on, east London is changing rapidly. Regeneration, place making, gentrification—however we choose to describe what is happening in and around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park we are part of a shift that will bring both benefits and repercussions. How do we create and preserve spaces for opportunity and creativity amidst rapid urban change? Spaces to be, spaces for collectivity, spaces of possibility, spaces to dream and spaces to act. This summer I have collaborated with some remarkable east London creatives, studios, maker spaces and community groups to create and hold spaces reflecting on our current reality and possible futures through collective practices of making.
The Great Get Together
On 23rd July we kicked off the summer holiday with a series of pop-up workshops that respond to this theme at the Great Get Together on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This year’s event felt particularly poignant as we emerge from the pandemic and rebuild our confidence coming together in person, as a community. We worked with Sew Social Newham, Sahra Hersi with the Big Family Press, Build Up, and Young V&A to bring creativity and making activities to the park.
Sew Social Newham
Formed in September 2020, Sew Social Newham was created following the wrap up of the Covid-19 response by ScrubHub East London. Many members who volunteered to create scrubs for NHS workers loved the grassroots community created through ScrubHub and wanted to continue to sew in a social setting as well as use their skills to support charity and community projects. For the Great Get Together, Sew Social’s amazing volunteer team took up temporary residence on the park stitching together a large collaborative quilt celebrating east London. Workshop participants were invited to get creative with fabric paint, embroidery and embellishment to create a fabric square celebrating their east London.
Risograph poster making with Sahra Hersi and the Big Family Press
Sahra Hersi is a designer, practitioner and long-term V&A East collaborator and friend. Her practice explores shared spaces, the public realm, community engagement, and collaboration. The Big Family Press is a printing press co-developed by a group of children aged 4-11 in after-school care at Oliver Goldsmith Primary School, Camberwell, and One of My Kind (OOMK), a collaborative publishing practice led by Rose Nordin, Sofia Niazi and Heiba Lamara. For this workshop, we drove a great big lorry on to the park and set up a Risograph pop-up print studio! Participants were invited to create brightly coloured posters and artworks exploring hopes and values for the future of east London. We asked, “How have we lived in the past and how could we live in the future?”
Build Up
East London charity Build Up put young people in control of construction projects that make a lasting contribution to their local community. They give young people the opportunity to make decisions, influence their local area and see the real-life impact they can have. Passers-by were invited to join the Build Up work placement team and have a go at constructing timber benches for adventure playgrounds.
Create and Play with Young V&A
Create and Play draws on themes from the developing museum galleries at Young V&A (formerly Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green which opens in summer 2023 after a major redevelopment) inviting children and their families to be creative through play. Large scale construction kits and bespoke materials curated with artists and designers were set up for open-ended play and creation. Artist, Emilie Queney, also joined with Happy Squares, inviting families to design and construct their own structures.
East Bank Summer School
The week following The Great Get Together, we launched straight into two weeks of EAST Summer School. This is the fifth time we have worked with our East Bank partners to deliver a large-scale programme of free creative skills courses for young people living or going to school in Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest. This face-to-face programme for young people aged 12 – 17 takes place on the park and is tailored to create pathways into the creative sector; from fashion,textiles, dance and digital architecture to skateboarding, inventing and climate change activism.
The Subversive Stitch with Nicole Chui
During week one, we worked with Hackney-based artist Nicole Chui to host a week-long course, The Subversive Stitch: Creative Embroidery Art at the Good Growth Hub. Nicole’s work is messy, brash and disruptive! She has collaborated with the likes of Adidas and Bimba Y Lola and her mission is to disrupt perfection, break boundaries and inspire others to embrace their raw emotions!
Students explored how to customise clothing using embroidery and textile techniques, hacking V&A postcards and tote bags with their newfound stitching skills. The atmosphere in the studio was really special. As the group stitched, they chatted about life, the future, their neighborhoods, Netflix and everything in between. Making and creativity provided a purpose for the group to come together each day, but the human connections and collectivity forged through collective practices of making proved equally valuable to everyone in the room.
GoodWaste: Design, Making and Sustainability
Week two had a totally different vibe but the work created was equally impressive. Responding to the defining issues of our time through practices of making is a driving principle of our creative programming at V&A East. We worked with designer Rafael El Baz of GoodWaste, a design studio who transform so-called waste materials into interiors and functional objects through design and making.
The group worked in a studio at Hackney Bridge, exploring how designers can be part of the solution to waste and sustainability through hands-on making, transforming waste materials into high-end designs. The week was spent taking inspiration from a range of industrial waste material—wood, marble, stone, perspex and metals. The final session was spent at D-Lab using the laser cutter to brand and engrave work. Outcomes spanned product, jewellery, and furniture design, representing the awe-inspiring potential of industrial waste as a material for design and making.
As summer draws to a close and we begin the autumn term there is no time to pause! The community engagement team continues to plan and deliver our creative, people centered projects and initiatives with our east London based critical friends networks, community and youth sector organisations and creatives. On 13 October we welcomed our third cohort of V&A East Youth Collective, an inspiring group of 14 young people from the four Olympic boroughs (Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest) chosen from over 100 applicants to work with our team and JA Projects on the design of our galleries design for V&A East Museum. We are taking objects from the V&A’s collection into schools and delivering workshops for the Your Collection: V&A East in Schools project, expanding our MAKE Space programme; a creative open studio and making programme for young people, as well as building relationships and projects with community partners to co-produce creative display and progragmatic outcomes for the V&A East Storehouse. More soon!
