These multidisciplinary activations have seen the programme collaborate and work with various local practitioners and artists with a strong connection to the borough. Working with the award-winning designer Martine Rose, we celebrated Windrush Day 2021 by creating  Windrush hampers for local residents with specially designed tea towels, a traditional piece of Caribbean ephemera that is known for archiving family recipes.

Artist and designer Halina Edwards created a textile piece that was installed outside Vogue Fabrics, a queer arts and entertainment hub in Dalston. This work, titled ‘A Place For Everyone’ was made with reflective fabric to be viewed day and night by passers-by on this busy thoroughfare in Hackney.

Inspired by Veronica Ryan’s commission, Future Hackney launched an exhibition of large-scale photographic works around Hackney, a celebration of Ridley Road Market and its community.

Rooting the programme in the local community, we held a month-long photography and poetry residency at Hackney Archives, working with Autograph, Real Selfie Project and East London-based poet and StoryTeller, Adisa the Verbalizer. The workshops entitled, Selfies and Stories, saw St John James Primary School, East Bank Seniors, Hackney Youth Service, The Mouth That Roars, St Michaels Congregation produce their own images and poetry enriching Hackney’s Archive of its local community and inspiring intergenerational groups to delve into their history and photograph themselves and one another. The photographs and poems are being collated into a limited edition run of zines that will be distributed across the borough as part of Hackney’s Windrush Day festivities.