Hackney WickED Festival 2008

The sun shone on Hackney Wick 2009’s Festival on Saturday 26 September for a bounty of stalls, activities and artist led projects from Avant Gardening to protests with cloth dolls.

London based project Avant Gardening was onsite for the festival, discussing their plans for a sustainable future and introducing Hackney Wick to the Mobile Allotment.

The modular, mobile planting unit was designed and built by artist Lisa Cheung allowing the freshest possible fruit and veg, and grouping all sectors of the community with environmental and sustainability issues through art, gardening and food.

SPACE artist Lucy Harrison co-ordinated the launch of her new artist residency project, The Buxhall Bee, with SPACE in partnership with Newlon Fusion. Lucy is working over the next few months with the residents of Buxhall Crescent co-ordinating social events, workshops and a publication.

Commissioned by SPACE for Hackney Wick Festival 2008, The Wick Curiosity Shop returned this year with a local WICK quiz, the shop’s photo booth and Hackney Wick tunes. As much an archive as an event structure, it allows existing histories to be collected and new memories to be formed, capturing the lives of a community in transition due to the Olympics.

The Mischief Makers hosted a cloth banner making workshop with protest placards that were paraded to get the thoughts, views and wants of local residents heard. Responding to a newspaper article after the Festival that they felt misrepresented their intentions, the Mischief Makers sent this letter:

Dear Hackney Gazette,

Thanks for the fantastic coverage of the Hackney Wick festival last weekend. We are just writing to amend an element of the article about our group ‘Mischief Makers’. The report called us a ‘mock protest group’ but in fact what we are aiming to do is to give young people a voice through a form of expression which is traditionally an adults’ forum; that of protest and demonstration - albeit in a fun and celebratory way.
To a child at our Protest Camp, the slogans they make and march with e.g. ‘Insect loves Robot’ or ‘Roses don’t wear Sandals’ are the beginnings of the discovery that each of us has a voice, an opinion and a right to have these views taken seriously, whatever our age.

Democracy thrives on freedom of speech and creative rebellious thought!

We run arts education projects for young people. For images of our Protest Camp project we have a blog

Thanks again,

Nicola Godlieb & Sarah Conway-Dyer
The Mischief Makers

Hackney Wick Festival was organised by the Wick Coalition, a constituted voluntary community group of local residents, St Mary of Eton Church, Hackney Wick Community Association, Gainsborough School and SPACE.

Funded by London Borough of Hackney and Family Mosaic