2012 Olympics challenge: Hackney battles to preserve its edginess

Residents have seen the area change beyond recognition with the arrival of the burgeoning £496m Olympic Park Sitting in his Purple Garden, a fecundity of herbs, shrubs, wild bramble and community endeavour on the Lee Navigation canal, Sóna Abantu-Choudhury gazes out toward his new vista. All he can see are buildings, “big, grey Ikea blocks”, across the duckweed-skimmed water, smack behind an imposing electric fence 20 metres away. “Of no architectural value,” he said, above the drone of generators, staccato bursts of drilling and the beeping of reversing lorries, a cacophony of construction that has provided the soundtrack to his family’s life for five years. This is the Olympic experience for residents in Leabank Square, Hackney Wick, east London, one of the residential areas closest to the burgeoning £496m Olympic Park. When Sóna, 49, who works for Oxfam, and his wife Nadira, 36, moved to their flat 11 years ago it looked on to Arena Fields, a wild expanse partially tamed through guerrilla gardening and allotments bequeathed “in perpetuity” in 1900 to one of London’s most deprived areas by Barings Bank director Major Arthur Villiers. Nut trees self-seeded alongside apple, pear and plum trees. Children played under the watchful eye of parents away from the clutches of Hackney’s postcode gangs and nearby Gainsborough primary school used it as playing fields. Now the only view the couple and their two children, aged 11 and eight, share with other residents is of the international press and broadcasting centres and media bar and restaurant. Not for them the aesthetically acclaimed “Pringle” velodrome or Anish Kapoor’s snaking helter-skelter. “The beautiful architecture is for visitors landing at Stratford. That’s the sexier part of the park. We get these massive grey boxes, the arse-end,” he said. “We pleaded for a living wall to cover the grey to make our lives a little bit greener. They said it was too high. It’s like, these are just people who live in Hackney Wick. That’s how people feel, and it’s a real bone of contention,” said Sóna who, through his Leabank Square blog , has a finger on the local pulse. He, like others, agrees there are positives. Three in the square have managed to secure tickets, and it’s hoped local children will attend through the schools ticketing system. Jammed between the underbelly of the A12 carriageway and the canal, Hackney Wick and the neighbouring industrial slab of Fish Island are on the path that will link vibrant Victoria Park with the largest urban park in the UK for a century. The promise is of jobs as regeneration spreads throughout an area of residential estates jostling Dickensian warehouses and unlovely metal-shuttered workshop units. Already, London Overground trains glide into Hackney Wick’s spruced-up station every 10 minutes. Soon, just as in nearby Homerton, a hub of retail, residential and live-work units is destined to rise from the station surrounds. “The battle is not against gentrification. It’s how best to preserve Hackney Wick’s uniqueness,” he said, and he is hopeful the community can. Nearby The Hackney Pearl cafe-bar opened 18 months ago offering day and evening menus, including specials such as slow-roasted tomato and thyme risotto, as an alternative to the local chippy, kebab shop and Olympic Fried Chicken. Owner James Morgan, 43, an erstwhile painter, was drawn to the “nice bohemian feel” of an area now colonised by artists. Like Sóna, he sits on the Hackney Wick development board and shudders at the area becoming another Stratford City, which has a huge Westfield shopping mall. “I will be upset if we even see a Tesco Express,” he said. “But it is changing. Already high rents are driving artists out.” The fight is to prevent redevelopment draining the edginess, rawness and spontaneity that has drawn artists – with about 600 studios, allegedly the highest number per capita in the world – and seen the proliferation of galleries, such as The Elevator . At the entrance to Gate 14 of the Olympic Park, explosions of graffiti art enliven century-grimed warehouses, advertising this recent movement, which is celebrated on 29 July with the fourth annual Hackney WickED arts festival. Sipping coffee outside the nearby Electric Matchbox cafe in 92 White Post Lane warehouse studios, Al, 32, an artist and musician, worries that “a lot of this will disappear, rents will go up, and artists will be driven even further east”. “We don’t want a clone town that doesn’t link to the area’s historic past,” he said. Just up the alley the Hackney Wick Paint Yard, a graffiti-festooned yard used as backdrop for fashion shoots and Adidas advertisements, is being demolished. Stewart Schwartz, owner of the building, has plans to develop an artisan live-work centre there. “It could be like Camden Town,” he said. Unimpressed with the prospect of “people in white shorts running around tracks for three weeks” and the fact the Olympics has already forced him to relocate the printing business he ran from the buildings, he is keen to embrace the area’s artistic potential. At the Schwartz Gallery , space he has donated for communal use by tenants, curator Ismail Erbil describes the latest exhibition, A-L-L-O-T-M-E-N-T-S, as an artistic tribute to the allotments lost to the local community. It’s an example of how those here are keen to preserve a heritage that has also given the world the word “petrol”, matchbox toys, and dry-cleaning. “The Olympics are here,” said Sóna. After the grand closing ceremony, and as the park is converted, those in Leabank Square and surrounding areas “face another four years of building work, of loss of hearing, loss of taste because of the dust and loss of wellbeing”. “We have to ensure we get something back for our community.” Olympic Games 2012 London Heritage Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk

Posted by on July 25, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.