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Your Ad Here

We have been out and about in east London chatting to independent businesses today. Like Kim Cook of F.Cook Pie & Mash shop on Hoxton St who have signed up for the chance to get free advertising with our new project Your Ad Here.

www.your-ad-here.co.uk

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Blackhorse Workshop Launch

Some photos from the launch of our Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow

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Your Ad Here

Meet the artists and businesses involved with our new project.

www.your-ad-here.co.uk

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Interview: We Are Laura

Over the next few months we're going to be interviewing just some of the many different designers, artists and collectives based in or working with the Rose Lipman Building, a space co run between Create London and Mill Co.

First up is the very brilliant design studio 'We Are Laura'.

We Are Laura is a creative design studio that was founded in east London in 2010 by Middlehurst and Woolf. (Can you guess our first names?) We specialise in delivering unique creative solutions, including brand identities and collateral, books, websites, exhibition design, and have reinvented high streets and shopfronts in Willesden Green, Barking and Walthamstow as part of Outer London Fund Regeneration Schemes. We Are Laura projects and products are a synthesis of strong conceptual design and highly skilled craftwork that results in imaginative outcomes that are playful, original and attention-grabbing. Their company has been based in the Rose Lipman Building (co-run with Create and Mill Co.) since October 2012.

Can you tell us a little about how you first met and why you decided to form a studio together?

We met on the MA Communication Design degree at Central St Martins and found ourselves on the same pathway, Digital Media. We soon discovered that we shared a similar approach to tackling briefs and taste in aesthetics, often combining hand-made processes with digital techniques.

 On graduating the MA, we went on to work within different areas of the creative industry, gaining commercial experience. A few years later, after working on some freelance projects together, we realised that we would have more creative freedom if we pursued our own practice and took the plunge to set up the studio.

  Valet Dry Cleaning Specialists, Paint The Town, Barking

You recently worked with Barking Council to help with the aesthetics of their town centre. Can you tell us a little about the project?

 Paint the Town is a high-street regeneration project commissioned by Barking & Dagenham Council. The objective of the scheme was to brighten Barking town centre, particularly the shopfronts and shutters.

Working alongside Bread Collective and Zarah Hussain, who designed and implemented the shutter artworks, our primary focus was to revive eight shopfronts, making an impact to the high-street during the daytime. Our role encompassed liaising with the local traders, creating bespoke design solutions for each shop, including: new branding, stripping back old and untidy signs, and introducing a brighter colour palette to Barking town centre.

The project has been well received and has created a brighter and visually appealing identity for Barking town centre.

 “ Not only me but most of my customers think it looks great. It does attract people’s attention and when you look at the town in general now after the work has been done it looks completely different. It looks more lively, friendly. It’s inviting people to Barking. ”

Sully - Turquoise Jewellers

You have been based in the Rose Lipman Building for a little over a year now. Has working in a building with such a varied creative environment (Art, Fashion, Theatre ect.) had an effect on any aspects of your business?

Definitely. We find our practice is moving towards collaborative, multi-faceted projects and being situated in this building, with so many other creative practitioners, has helped to facilitate and inspire this progression in our work.

 There is always something interesting and exciting happening in the building which adds to the enjoyment of being here. It’s a motivating and vibrant environment, which has encouraged us to develop collaborative self-directed projects. We also find it useful to gain insights into other people’s creative methods and receive feedback on our work from a variety of different perspectives.

  New Windows on Willesden Green, supported by The Architecture Foundation

Your work is quite varied spanning straight design commissions to regeneration projects with councils. What do you feel are the benefits, or potential drawbacks, to such diversity in your work?

 We perceive ourselves as creative practitioners rather than straightforward graphic designers. We approach each brief individually, working through the concept and deciding which visual approach is best suited to conveying the message. We use design as a tool in realising these thought processes, be it tackling a print book for a publishers, or an installation for an architecture company. Being so diverse has an appeal to us, as it means our briefs can change from one project to the next, so we never get bored, constrained or sterile in our thinking. We are therefore not constrained by clients, or medium, and the outcome can be extremely diverse.

Drawbacks can be finding the variety of work on a continuous basis, and not getting pigeonholed into working on certain briefs or within certain fields. We also find that prospective clients, who haven’t experienced our way of tackling briefs, can find the variety in our portfolio confusing. This can sometimes make it harder for us to be considered for certain jobs we want to work on.

Branding of Chats Palace, Community arts & Entertainment Centre, Homerton

 Do you have a long term plan for where you would hope to see your studio in, say, 5 years time?

 We would like to continue working with a wide variety of clients in varied industries. Our main goal is to combine all the facets of what we can do to provide larger full-scale design lead experiences and identities for our clients.

We have a passion for working with local communities and councils, bringing art and design to the social sector, and we definitely want to see where we can push this aspect of our practice. Collaborating with other creatives and helping to nurture new talent by providing them with varied experiences is also high on the agenda.We want to expand on the “We are Laura” brand and events, particularly in an international field.

Lastly, do you have any recommendations for young people who might wish to found a creative business?

Work hard, be original and be brave.

Set yourself goals and work towards them.

Get advice and help on the business side of things (it’s often the part that creatives struggle with).

Be pro-active and assess often.

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Marcus Coates - School Workshops

Yesterday, as part of the Create Art Award 2013, artist Marcus Coates went into Swanlea School in Whitechapel. Here's a photo of Marcus encouraging his philosophy of 'Irrational Thinking' 

For more info on the project go to: http://www.createlondon.org/event/create-art-award/

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Hadrian Garrard - Creative Time: Art, Place & Dislocation in the 21st Century City

At the end of October, I was lucky enough to be invited to attend the annual Creative Time Summit in New York. This Summit’s theme was hugely relevant to the situation in east London and to what we are working towards in all of our projects.  This year, the title was Art, Place and Dislocation in the 21st Century City, and Creative Time had invited artists, academics and activists from across the world over the two day event.

 The central question of this year’s Summit, which we streamed live at the White Building in Hackney Wick, certainly isn’t a new one. The complex and often sticky issue of the role of artists in shaping cities has been a well-worn debate for some decades. The relationship between artists and creative businesses populating unloved and neglected parts of our cities and the inevitable regeneration and gentrification that follows has examples through cities across the world. However, the speed at which property speculation and a rise in the cost of living has happened and the scale of the impact of this across our communities is now pretty astonishing. Examples of this in parts of Manhattan in the 1980s, particularly in the East Village and Soho and a couple of decades later in Brooklyn and Williamsburg were regular features throughout the Summit.  The resonance with this and parts of our own city were impossible not to spot.  An over-arching aim of the Summit was an attempt to see if artists could, and should, take an active role in making things better for struggling communities in our cities, rather than a passive one in essentially contributing to their increasing struggle.

There were plenty of artists, individuals and organisations setting out to do the former. Laurie Jo Reynolds, through her practice of “Legislative Art” successfully campaigned to shut down the Tamms Correctional Center, a notorious and controversial Super-Max prison in the US. The prison, designed for sensory deprivation, had kept prisoners in solitary confinement for years on end, and I guess this is an extreme example of artists setting out to help things and make a real difference. Other stand-outs were Fulya Erdemci, the curator of this year’s Istanbul Biennial, and her bold responses to the serious problems in the city earlier in the year. We also heard from places really struggling artists attempt to help shape a positive direction for parts of Detroit and Houston and the efforts of those like John Fetterman, Mayor of Braddock, dubbed “America’s Coolest Mayor” by the Guardian earlier this year in turning a town, previously on its knees and now starting to thrive, around and the role of artists and creative solution in that process.

 Whether it’s a responsibility of artists to contribute towards a more equitable and positive city is still very much for debate. However, in all of our own work we’ve made a decision. We want to work with artists and organisations who think there is something unique and powerful that they can offer our communities. And we want to all we can to support them to do just that.

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Marcus Coates on 'Being Animal'.

Short Video profiling the artist from Tate.

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Have a look at this short film of The Paper Architect. The production was created by Davy and Kristen McGuire and staged in Leytonstone Library.

Winner of the 2013 Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award, co-produced by the Barbican with Create London and in association with the Tobacco Factory Theatre Bristol.

More information about the project can be found here

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Here are some design previews created by architecture collective Assemble for the new project Blackhorse Workshop launching in January. More information about the project can be found here: Blackhorse Workshop

On October 22nd we will be holding a discussion with Assemble, the team behind Blackhorse Workshops, and Tom Hodgkinson, writer and editor of The Idler, raising issues about craft and its place in modern urban communities. 

For more information and to book a free ticket click here

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David Blandy's Anjin1600: Edo Wonderpark

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Watch the video from Edward Thomasson’s performance 'Between You and Me' in the Glass House Community Centre, on 6th July 2013.

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Buildings that Make Projects

We’re now looking back over the summer we’ve spent with the building. Projects have included the Royal Court Theatre bringing in major stars Imelda Staunton and Toby Jones as part of the acclaimed play by Annie Baker, Circle Mirror Transformation; the equally well-received and sold-out financial education show for kids called Bank On It; a summer school for teenagers wanting to get into fashion and a lot more besides. The building is now fully occupied and home to a group of local creative businesses and, importantly, Open School East, a new non-fee paying postgraduate art school which we are proud to have helped establish. 

It’s hard not to see the building now as a fully operational arts centre, and the projects we’ve delivered, as well as being ambitious and world class, have involved hundreds of local people. Having our partners at Mill Co. Project to look after the building's day to day upkeep, also means we're able to host wedding parties, wakes, community meetings and workshops for teenagers in the hall upstairs, so it’s still very much a community centre and we’re especially happy about that.

Opening the doors of this particular building has made us think about one thing in particular... for all the talk in the art world of the importance of artist-led projects, it’s in fact been a building that seems to have led to the work we’ve seen here so far. The Rose Lipman Building’s location right in between some of Hackney’s most affluent and most challenged communities, its recent history as a community centre and the need for us to help it continue this function, has shaped our ideas and approaches to the work we have placed in it and fostered a real connection with the local community. Thanks Rose Lipman, wherever you are and long may it last!

Hadrian Garrard, Director, Create London

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Some of the illustrations made by Sebastian Harding for the launch of our Hitchcock's East End Season. To view and download a pdf of the full map and walk click here 

You can read more about the project on our official site

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“The Barking Bathhouse, a responsible, ethical and desirable initiative…a pioneering project for Barking.”

New York Times

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The Barking Bathhouse – Something and Son

The Barking Bathhouse was a unique new space that drew on innovative health, beauty and architecture practices designed and built by design practice Something & Son.

Built on the site of a derelict pub and former public bath, TheBathhouse consisted of 10 darkened, prefabricated, timber pods, reminiscent of farm buildings in nearby Essex and beach huts in Kent, containing massage and treatment rooms, a traditional sauna, an ice room, a bar and a shingle beach.

The Barking Bathhouse brought art and the community together to transform an empty site in the centre of Barking into a new social space, aimed at embedding the health and wellbeing of locals and visitors into the heart of the project. The Bathhouse revived the spirit of Barking’s former bathhouse, which, before closing in 1986 after 87 years of operation, catered for the health of local people. The new structure was inspired by both 20th-century working men’s bathhouses and ultra-modern spas. Its raw aesthetic challenged traditional notions of luxury, whilst creating a peaceful space in which to relax. Furthermore, The Bathhouse’s pod-based design, prefabricated and assembled on site, was planned with the future in mind with the pods being relocated for continued use by the local community.

Combining a spa with a bar, this unconventional Bathhouse combined massage and treatment rooms with informal recreation spaces . Something & Son worked with local beauticians to present a range of treatments including massages, body treatments, manicures and pedicures. Gardeners from the borough were also charged with the task of developing natural treatments with an emphasis on local allotment produce. In the relaxation area, visitors were able to socialise and sunbathe on loungers in seaside-inspired pebble bays under an open roof, whilst in the bar they could sip healthy cocktails and smoothies under a canopy of cucumber vines that provided the raw materials for the spa treatments.

Local participation was embedded across all stages of the project including construction and programming. The Bathhouse was built over six weeks with local volunteers’ input, and Something & Son built relationships with local businesses, colleges and residents groups. The project created eight local employment opportunities: two full-time managerial roles and eight part-time roles including bar staff, box office/bookings, venue spa manager, beauty and health therapists.The Bathhouse established kick-start business grants for four Barking and Dagenham based, beauty and health therapists, and provided regular mentoring support from a professional spa manager.

The Bathhouse provided a platform for, and collaborated with, local arts group Studio 3 Arts connecting with the Summer Sorted programme across photography, fashion and music workshops. Local green community groups donated mint and sage for use in spa smoothies, the compost created by smoothie or juice pulp was then donated to local community gardening groups. The Bathhouse also supplied hard wood ashes from the sauna to community gardens to make soaps, with the first batch of soaps donated to The Barking Bathhouse for use in the spa.

Over the summer period, The Bathhouse also ran a varied events programme including laughter yoga, clowning workshops and comedy nights – reflecting its ethos of cultivating happiness and promoting wellbeing.

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“It challenges your creativity, confidence and courage... eye-opening, magical, memorable and utterly unique.”

Time Out London