The Thicket

An art gallery opened on Saturday at ‘The Thicket’, to raise funds for the Norwood Library, Crystal Palace.

Lightbox, a local developer, in conjunction with Bigger Picture Gallery organised the art exhibition to re-develop a former local pub, ‘The Thicket’ and raise funds for the greatly underfunded Upper Norwood Joint Library.
Neville De Souza, Director of Lightbox and a resident of Gipsy Hill said: “Lightbox is donating the exhibition space free to the local artists and twenty-five percent from the artwork sold goes to the Upper Norwood Joint Library, Westow Hill, Crystal Palace”.

“We raised funds to acquire the old pub – ‘Thicket Tavern’  which was in a dilapidated state and keep it as one of the edifices in our community. We have applied for it to be listed as a national structure. This present effort is a show of our commitment to community development and creating an avenue for local artists to make good money for their quality works’’ he noted.

De Souza added: “This is an opportunity to showcase some of the best talents we got from the thriving artistic community in Crystal Palace and the surrounding areas. Members of the public would  have the opportunity to meet the artists”.

Edward Robert
Art Gallery Visitor

Edward Robert, 81, a resident of Crystal Palace and a visitor at the exhibition said: “ I am entirely supportive and grateful for the development here. I just hope it would last, because it would be most disappointing to find a pub taking over The Thicket again”.

The artists exhibiting include; Angelique Hartigan, Michael Burles, Roy Peterson, Amanda Bracken, Staffan Gnosspelius, Liz Charsley-Jory, Dan McDermott, Tim Goffe and Guy Beggs.

L-R:
Liz Charsley-Jory and
Tim Goffe (Artists)

Angelique Hartigan, one of the founders of Bigger Picture Gallery said: “We are delighted to work with Lightbox to launch its latest project on Anerley Hill – The Thicket. We are also very pleased to support our much loved local library”.

“We will assist in sustaining a significant arts movement and hope to return our local area to the cultural destination that it once was” Hartigan added.

Robert Gibson, representing of the Upper Norwood Library Campaign said: “This is a very generous initiative from a community orientated developer and our local artists. Crystal Palace is very proud of its unique independent library which serves all five boroughs of Crystal Palace”.

Gibson acknowledged that the entire community has rallied round to protect the Norwood Library. “Local musicians have already raised money for the library and now our artists. It makes me very proud to be a resident of Crystal Palace” he said.

Artworks on exhibition at The Thicket, Anerly Hill, Crystal Palace.

The gallery is open to the public free, from 10am to 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays from June 15 until August 11.

Janice Hendry, Historian and Librarian
Norbury Library, Croydon.

Croydon Library recaptures the Victorian era workhouse where children were well fed, unlike the grim picture painted in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Taking quotes from Oliver Twist, Librarian and historian, Janice Hendry, compared historical records of Croydon Workhouse and workhouses across London. She made this  remark during a talk held at the Norbury Library, Croydon on Monday, June 10, as part of the events marking the Croydon Heritage Festival.

Hendry pointed out that Croydon ‘inmates’, as those living in workhouses were termed, were better fed than Oliver was in the novel.  She described Croydon as: ‘a jewel dotted with pieces of rare gems and blessed with landmark buildings that are pieces of history worth keeping’.

Although she said that Dickens’s portrayal of the harshness of workhouse life was generally accurate, but Croydon inmates’ experience was different. According to her, Oliver Twist would not have had cause to ask for more in Croydon.

The talk coincidentally was held a day after the 143 years of Charles Dickens’ death on June 9, 1870.

The first workhouse in Croydon was built at Duppas Hill in 1726 and the union workhouse on which the talk was based was opened in 1866 in Queen’s Road. The union workhouse was transformed in to the Queen’s Road Hospital in the 1930′s, specialised in geriatric care until it was closed in 1987.  What remains of the building has now been transformed into an apartment block.

Dickens in his Directory of London published in 1879, described Croydon as “A favourite suburb with men of business,…has favourite race meet- ings.,.. healthy, and though greatly built over is still within walking reach of the open country”.

Hablot Knight Browne (better known as Phiz) who illustrated many of Charles Dickens’s books, lived in Croydon.

More information on the Croydon Workhouse can be found on www.workhouses.org/croydon

Richard Hoggart Building at Goldsmiths College. Pic: Charles Farquharson

The main building of the Goldsmiths campus, a familiar landmark for local and those stuck on traffic on the A2 in New Cross, is  to receive a £1.4 million refurbishment this summer.

The Richard Hoggart Building, named after the literary critic and former warden of the College is over 160 years old

Renovations will take place over a six month period which will see restorations made to its period features and changing the forecourt parking area into a social area with seating, improved access and a space that can be used for outdoor performances and events, as well as widening the entrance and reception of the building.

The current Warden of Goldsmiths, Patrick Loughrey said: “Over the next few months, you will see a great deal of activity as we work on improving the campus for students and, just as importantly, the local community. This will be Goldsmiths’ biggest renewal in 50 years and will, we hope, play a part in re-shaping the architectural landscape of New Cross.”

Mary Quant, the fashion designer and a former Goldsmiths student is heading an appeal to the Goldsmiths community and former students to raise funds for the project.

In a letter to former students, she wrote: “For many of us, Goldsmiths was a coming of age. We learnt of beauty, encountered people from worlds outside our own. We were challenged intellectually and creatively, we experienced the indulgence and pleasure of youth, we grew up, we fell in love. I am still in love with Goldsmiths, and that is why, today, I commend to you this very special appeal to renew the heart of Goldsmiths, by restoring the entrance and forecourt garden of our beautiful and historic building.”

The College has also started work to convert 286 New Cross Road into a professional recording studio that will enable students to graduate with a portfolio of recordings and it is hoped that the studio will also be available for community hire. The full details of the recording studio plans can be found here. The college has a growing reputation as a centre for music with recent graduates including Katy B and James Blake, while Blur were formed at Goldsmiths in the late 1980′s.

The renovation plan is designed to give the campus more of a community feel.

Internal works, started in June in the Richard Hoggart Building, are scheduled to be completed in August while the improvements to the forecourt, which started at the same time, will be finished in December.

Winner of Outstanding Achievement award – Vivian Namagembe. Pic: Tower Hamlets Council

Tower Hamlets is giving 400 young people £1500 towards their university fees.

The scheme was announced at the boroughs first annual Youth Award Ceremony on June 4.

Lutfur Rahman, The Mayor of Tower Hamlets, said that education is his top priority in the borough, and added: “From this September, every youngster who goes to university will get 1500 pounds from its local authority.”

He also said that the council wants its young people to “lead a constructed life and go on to further and higher education and get good jobs.”

Tower Hamlets is the only borough in the country which gives this kind of money to its young people.

A dozen of schools participated in the Youth Award Ceremony and over 300 people gathered to celebrate an oscar-like award night with entertainment, food and prizes.

Teachers and youth workers of the borough had nominated 140 people aged from 12 to 19, as well as some adults aged up to 25 with special educational needs.
A shortlist of 7 winners was made.

The winners were:

Community achievement award – Reshma Rahman
Sports award – Rakim Tatou
Physical achievement award – Numan Ali
Arts award – Mammoth Sound
Project of the Year award – Haileybury SEN group
Personal Achievement – Nimo Abdi Jama
Samad Miah
Award for Outstanding Achievement award – Vivian Namagembe

The prizes were given out to the young people who had significantly helped, inspired, or given back to the community during the past year.

Namagembe, 25, who won the Outstanding Achievement Award, is deaf and have been an active member of Haileybury youth center for the last 10 years. During this time she has lead a number of projects, and been involved with lots of different initiatives across the council. She is currently undertaking a work placement with Tower Hamlets council.

Between the awards being given out at the Britannia International Hotel, young people stood for entertaining the crowd from the stage:

Act 1 – Song by Keilah Miller
Act 2 – Dance by Corey ‘lil saint’ Sumefon
Act 3 – Rap by STOMP OUT CAMP
Act 4 – House of Talent performing a piece called Nemesis

As well as participating in the event, a group of eight young people from the borough helped organising it, this group consisted of: Yasmin Khan, Kim Dinh, Munadiah Aftab, Sabrina Syeda-Ali, Nura Nur, Subana Kalim and Tabassum Noor.

Rahman said: “Today, we had an unified event, recognising and celebrating our youngsters, their achievements and their commitments.”

As well as 7 grand prizes, Duke of Edinburgh Awards were also given out in bronze, silver and gold.

The Mayor with the Duke of Edinburgh Award gold winners. Pic: Tower Hamlets Council

Rakim Tatou, 12, from Oaklands School in Bethnal Green, won the Sports Award. He perviously won the title of ABA England under 34kg boxing champion, and trains every day, while still doing well at school. He said that it was “brilliant” to win the Youth Award.

The band Mammoth Sound won the Arts Award for their positive influence and work in the Arts in the borough.

Vocalists of the band, Kenny Paul Mukendi and Santárna Scott, 19, collected the prize. “I’ve loved helping out Tower Hamlets, it is the best borough,” said Scott.

Mukendi added: “The mountains of opportunities could not have been given in any other borough than Tower Hamlets. They have helped us so much.”

Mayor Rahman said: “We have invested 10 million in our youth services to give the right facilities, the right support and the right youth workers to our youngsters.”

Dinar Hossain, the Head of Youth and Connexions Services, said: “Integrated local youth service is no longer only about youth club.”

Hossain explained that it is about providing universal services for everyone, engaging people into constructive activities and providing services to help vulnerable young people.

Andy Bamber, the Service Head of Safer Communities, said: “When we look at the youth, the one thing that we must all appreciate is that they are our future. They will form the communities that we will live in, and their families will live in. We are actually investing in our future.”

A new channel for musical talent Pic: daveparker

A music school is set to open in Tower Hamlets for 16 to 19 year olds as part of 102 new free schools approved by Michael Gove the Education Secretary.

The school expected to open in 2014 will join The Brit School as one of the only state-funded performing arts college’s in the country which has schooled the likes of Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Leona Lewis.

Around 50,000 school places are to be created when the free schools open and 109 will join the 81 current free schools, including Sir Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute of the Performing Arts (LIPA), which has also had its proposal for a creative arts primary free school in Liverpool granted.

Out of the 102 that have been approved to open from September 2014, 46 are located in London. Many of the schools are to be based in deprived areas or where there is a shortage of school places.

Natalie Evans, director of the New Schools Network said: “The free schools movement has accelerated at an unprecedented pace, spurred on by increasing support from teachers particularly in disadvantaged areas where the need for good schools is even more pressing.”

However the Labour party and some teaching unions say they draw money and pupils away from other schools and tend to be located in more affluent neighbourhoods because the schools are established as academies, independent of local authorities.

They also have increased control over their own curriculum, teachers’ pay and conditions, and the length of school terms and days.

Fears the free schools give too much freedom to faith-based groups or fundamentalist agendas have also emerged – although schools must show their curriculum is “broad and balanced”.

Pic: Lucy Johnson

Tucked away in the St George’s Town Hall on Cable Street, the Unite Community Centre is working to help underprivileged people in the Borough. This is the first of a number of such centres that will be rolled out by the trade union Unite.

The centre will be open five days a week between 10am and 6pm, and is a new move by Unite to become more involved in local communities.

Unite has opened the centre with support from Tower Hamlets Council and a capital grant from Barclays Bank to fund a state of the art learning suite which will be used by residents visiting the centre.

Welfare advice will also be available to help local people take steps to alleviate the impact of government cuts.

Users of the centre will also be able to join Unite at a special community membership contribution of 50p per week.

With Tower Hamlets being one of the most deprived boroughs in London and having the second highest unemployment rate, especially amongst young people, the centre aims to equip users with skills to gain further employment.

It offers various educational services, and also advises individuals how to create CVs and prepare for interviews.

East London Lines spoke to Ellie O’Hagan from the centre on how it has been used in the first week since opening.

Ellie outlined the prominent social issues in the area: “There is a big problem with child poverty here, lots of children live in poverty in Tower Hamlets. There’s also a problem with economic inactivity, which are people who don’t have a job, aren’t looking for work and don’t claim benefits. Those are two huge problems here.”

Ellie also spoke about the aims to “dispel alienation and isolation” in the area in order to regain a sense of community and shared purpose.

Outlining the teachings at the centre, Ellie stated: “The main skills that we teach are ESOL and IT and those courses start in September. We also offer back to work courses, photography and foreign languages.”

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Pic: Zanstekan

A Goldsmiths postgraduate student’s online project based  in Lewisham called Zanstekan, aimed at bringing science news to the Kurdish community, has been so successful,  it has developed a larger web presence.

Sarhang Hars and co-founder Peshwaz Faizulla wanted to bring a new way of thinking to the Kurdish media, by creating a place that questioned the world surrounding its readers.

Originally from North Iraq, Hars 30,  has been running Zanstekan for a little over a year, beginning with a single Facebook page called Science made simple.

The Facebook page now has 27,500 followers and following this level of success, he has decided to expand it out into a separate website with its own domain name.

Zanstekan means “science” in Kurdish and the organisation is dedicated to promoting science and establishing the foundation for science journalism in Kurdistan.

Hars says: “we thought it would be a good idea to have a website to introduce readers to scientific method and content.”

The organisation monitors major science agencies and websites, taking news or discoveries and translating them into Kurdish to be published online.

One of the biggest motivations for Hars was that once he got out into the world and was exposed to real scientific material, he got a “understanding of how the world works and how fantastic it is.”

Hars says the site seeks to “indirectly influence” the thinking of its readers in the context of the religious background of Kurdish culture and society.

He says the material being published on Zanstekan is being seen as authoritative since many other journalism outlets link to them and cite their work.

The organisation has been promoting London’s museums to Kurdish readers a popular interest as there is nothing similar in Kurdistan.

As well as providing information, the group has produced videos of simple science experiments that can be done at home.

Hars and members of Zanstekan hope to gain funding from British institutions such as the Richard Dawkins Foundation to be able to run public events and science camps for readers of all ages.

Engage is TimeBank’s new youth project in Tower Hamlets. Pic: TimeBank

The national volunteering charity TimeBank have set up a new youth project in Tower Hamlets called Engage — a ten-week programme providing support for young people aged 16–18, who are not in education, training or employment.

Aklima Begum, the project’s co-ordinator, said Engage is a necessary programme for the borough’s young people:

“Tower Hamlets has a very high youth population — actually one of the largest in Europe — and it also has quite high unemployment rates among this group. Therefore, it is very important that we engage these young people, motivate them and skill them to create better chances to get jobs.”

Engage is training ten young people living in Tower Hamlets about project development — teaching them everything from budgets to marketing strategies. They are then encouraged to use these skills to set up their own projects in the borough.

During the ten week programme participants will be matched with volunteer mentors. The mentors work in a wide range of sectors and offer their mentees training and educational help and support.

One of the young people participating in Engage is Kawsar Hoque. He heard about the project on a job fair in East London and joined because he wants to improve his work prospects.

Hoque’s project aims to make sure that young people from 9–11 years-old are encouraged to keep healthy and active. He is organising a football tournament where different schools are competing for a visit to Wembley Stadium.

“I have never done project management before and I thought it was going to be very challenging,” Hoque said. “I didn’t have too much confidence.”

“I am half-way through the project now. It has boosted my confidence and now I think it is realistic that I can deliver my project,” he added.

When the project ends the mentors will continue to work individually with their mentees for up to six months.

Two winners shortlisted Pic: Saskia Black

Students at Hackney Community College have been shortlisted for their anti-smoking film What Will You Do About It? for the National Cut Film Festival awards.

The Cut Film project aims to dissuade young people from smoking.

It was started by the Deborah Hutton Campaign group, a peer to peer smoking prevention charity, in memory of Vogue journalist Deborah Hutton who died of lung cancer aged 49 from smoking in her teens and early adulthood.

Riad Ahmed, 17, and Dushane Ashani Brown, 17, told East London Lines that they “didn’t have the words” to describe how excited and proud they were to have their talent recognised by being shortlisted.

Riad wrote the film  from the perspective of a cigarette, acting was by Dushane. They both hope to pursue careers in the creative industries.

As part of the festival, Cut Films gave 10 schools across Hackney training in video and film so they could learn transferable skills, as well being informed about the dangers of smoking.

The Deborah Hutton charity began the Cut Film project to inform teenagers about the dangers of smoking in a way that would attract their attention. Emma Wrafter, the charity director, said: “We wanted to target teens in a way that would engage and resonate with them and film seemed like the best option.”

The key aspect of the project is that it is teenagers telling other teenagers about the health risks from smoking, rather than adults.

Dushane thinks this approach works: “I think I’d rather learn about the danger of cigarettes from people the same age as me, because I can connect to them more easily. I think as well that teenagers are more honest; they say things from the heart and believe in what they’re saying.”

All the films are available online, which Emma Wrafter hopes will give teens the chance to “share them on social networking sites with their friends, family and local community.”

Diane Abbot, MP for Hackney, has backed the project, saying: “Hackney Cut Films Competition is an important and inspiring project, which raises awareness of the dangers of smoking, peer pressure, and the shocking effects of smoking.  It’s projects like this that are giving young people a voice.”

There will be an award ceremony at Hackney Picturehouse mid-July (date still to be confirmed) to celebrate the films made in Hackney.

Winning film to be announced at BAFTA HQ in July. Pic: Bafta

Then on July4 the students at Hackney Community College who participated in the project will attend a national award ceremony at the headquarters of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) to find out who has won the Cut Films Festival.

The Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London. Pic: Victoria Galvin

The annual Goldsmiths Graduate Festival is currently being hosted at Goldsmiths,  University of London in New Cross. It features over 100 events, such as public lectures, musical installations and performances with an aim to showcase postgraduate talent.

New to the festival this year is the participation of students from universities in Madrid, Prague, Australia and Sweden, as well as Goldsmiths’ sister college, Queen Mary.

Tim Hickman, a PhD candidate in Goldsmiths’ Sociology Department involved in organising the programme, praised the festival for developing wider partnerships between Goldsmiths and other universities: “This is an opportunity to go global… and make these new partnerships and relationships with universities across the world.”

Les Back, Dean of the Graduate School at Goldsmiths, spoke about the growth of the festival since its inception in 2011: “My vision for [the festival] initially was [that it would be] great… for students to celebrate, and also communicate, their work and their ideas — [to have] a festival that was about thinking, making and communicating.”

This year the festival boasts its busiest and most diverse programme to date, on the theme of “Cultural Alternatives”. Hickman says the event is one of the biggest of its kind as a result of the nurturing environment of Goldsmiths and the enthusiasm shown by the participants.

Staff and students will be presenting their work from April 29 until May 17.

The Goldsmiths Graduate Festival is free and all events are open to the public.