WORKSHOP44 is a place to grow, to mold ideas, to create innovation, to give voice to the disengaged, to empower.
Proudly serving the community of Regents Estate, it is a space where magical things happen every day.
You’re invited! Save the date - 6th Sept!
Hear about the results of Clear Village’s survey of Regent’s Estate, have your say in new directions we take, and look good for our special photo studio - all with food, drink and local music. See you there!
Big-Time Fun
The Big Lunch turned out to be much bigger than any of us had thought. For those who were not here - you guys missed a lot! Even the grumpy English weather was on our side as the summer in Hackney this year was on Thursday!
It all started with the aroma of Rosa’s jerk chicken which started its seduction right at two o’clock as she placed the first pieces on the BBQ infront of WS44. We had an amazingly diverse menu as almost all of the people present brought something delicious to put on our long table. Wine, beer and juice were also on the list of goods and kindly offered at the bar inside.
And so with the lunch at the Big Lunch an amazin afternoon started. We got the amazing Darren And Fancis running a bike workshop right next to the jerk chicken stand, so we kind of combined healthy transport and tasty food.
Rosie and her magical jewellery stand made the atmophere even more magical and colourful and Ben and Travis ran an almost 3 hours I-pad music workshop and are now actually very close to putting together an album (stay tuned for some upcoming info on that).
Also, we finally got the results from Clear village’s area research - if interested, do drop by and get a booklet with the analysis and all the interesting findings about the area - both the bright and dark sides of Regents Estate.
At some point, as most of us were coping with digestion, Sweet Combination featuring local residents, musicians and kids got the levels of good mood to their maximum limits and jamed till the end of the Big Lunch. If you havent heard them play, you havent heard music!
We simply have to mention Aiming Skywards, Poached Creative, YHWorld, Off Centre, Sweet Combination, Da Boost, Art Against Knives, Aire Projects and all of you caring, sharing and wonderful guys who joined and supported us!
Huge THANK YOU to all the people how made this amazing afternoon possible!!!
We are looking forward to our next Big (lunch) time together, in the mean while – you can always find us in Workshop44!
Workshop44 Big Lunch!
With all of you and us
Mouth-watering food and drinks, live music, dancing, workshops and loads of brightly smilling and happy neighbours – that is what Workshop 44 will look like on Thursday the 26th July. So put that in your diary and start anticipating. If you want to give a hand with the preparation, cooking, cocktails mixing or anything that you think may make the day even more enjoyable – jump on board!
More info coming soon.
July 26th, Thursday 2pm to 9pm
Our playful weekend is sadly over but we now feel even more full of energy, know new games and reminisced how good it feels to just let go and play. We remembered the cool games we used to spend days just completely enthralled in.
For three days we partied…
We sowed mini protests with Craftivist …
We played table tennis with the English Ping Pong Association and learned a brand new game ‘The Ludo City’ built especially for this event by the Article 31.1 team…
For those who did not get a chance to come down to the Workshop44 next stop for Article 31.1 is Weaver Field Adventure Playground where they are preparing a Sunday Play Day for ALL AGES.. Children and Grown-ups are invited to join activities and workshops including COMMUNITY KITE PROJECT, PARKOUR GENERATIONS and PING PONG ENGLAND. As usual, everything is free and open to all. I don’t know about you, but I’ll definitely be there!
We are excitedly expecting next week’s kick start of the 2012 London Festival of Architecture. We will be hosting from the 22nd to the 24th Article 31.1 Project, which inspired by the festival’s theme ‘The playful City’ will explore the social and cultural value of play. It is meant to encourage and inspire people to play and think of the implications of it in our lives.
More importantly we will have plenty of fun games, handcraft, kite building and much more. More details coming up!
Workshop44 is getting bigger! No we are not planning on breaking any walls down and taking over Mustafa’s shelves of goodies we just have increased our numbers and are ready to storm into the summer. Peter from Aiming Skywards has joined the ranks, being officially the first young entrepreneur to take advantage of our ‘FREE RENTING’ scheme. Anyone with a great idea of how to work alongside the residents on Regent’s Estate to improve their lives can do so for free (and with our support) in the Workshop.
Peter is an aspiring entrepreneur who is particularly passionate about his local community and interested in finding solutions for young people at risk of falling into a life of crime. As the founder of ‘Aiming Skywards’ he works towards finding community led solutions to crime as opposed to imprisonment which is very costly and arguably ineffective. The aim of ‘Aiming Skywards’ will be to encourage young offenders and those significantly at risk of offending aged between 16-25 to work in partnership with and for the benefit of the wider community.
We give a big welcome to Peter and looking forward to working alongside him.
Get your bike fixed day
For just one day, our workshop got turned into a bike repairing shop as Bikeworks showed up with their tools, rolled up their sleeves and started fixing peoples bikes but also teaching them a thing or two!
This Tuesday we started one of the coolest projects so far run in the WORKSHOP44. We will create in collaboration with YH, OffCentre and the BBC a music video for our very own talented AG. Throughout this month we will run every Tuesday a workshop meant to create a scenario and prepare everything for the shooting which will take place on June 2nd and after some editing by a professional BBC team, it will be screened at Picture House by the BBC!!! How exciting!
So far we have decided on the song ‘I feel sorry for my enemies’ and ideas are slowly building up after watching loads of videos. The favourite was Eminem (no surprise there) with a touch of Michael Jackson in the background. So far we are inclined towards a split screen which shows London Fields and tells the story of living here.
Let’s see what else we come up with next Tuesday at 4pm! Everyone’s invited to join!
PIMP UP OUR SHUTTERS GRAFFITI WITH ART AGAINST KNIVES
We were very happy to have AAK graffiti our shutters!Together we organized a weekend long drawing, painting and doing graffiti workshop alongside Dan from Sweet Combination who provided us with an energetic musical background. Many young people from the area helped to create and paint a unique design for our shutters, but also made their own arty graffiti boards which now bring a touch of colour to our space. Next stop: pimp up Mustafa’s (our lovely next door shop keeper and management committee member) shutters!
Poached Creative, a company specialising in writing and design for charities and the social sector, is running its six week training programme at Workshop 44 on 4th April 2012. The first session, Introduction to communications started with a presentation showing how communication works, the barriers, the different forms of communication and how to identify your audience.
By taking part in the training you will receive a mix of work experience and a structured training programme individually tailored to your needs, which are broken up into core units where you will learn about interviewing, writing essentials, writing for the web and social media and introductions to editing. After training you get to put what you’ve learnt into action where you would be writing a blog entry for YH World or for In My Shoes so you’re working on real projects.
Over the following weeks trainees have had the opportunity to take part in other modules such as feature writing, reviewing and opinion writing and even writing for the web. The training not only gives you new skills but improves existing ones too. 100 percent of the trainees gain skills and confidence as a result of working with Poached and 90 percent go on to paid work, internships or further training. At Poached Creative part of the creative team are formed of people who are unemployed gaining skills, experience and confidence through training.
SWEET COMBINATION - AG, DAVID AND DAN ON BASS
SWEET COMBINATION MUSIC JAMS
Sweet Combination music jams are a platform for expression, group practice, experimentation, and musical evolution within the community. The ethos of the jams is to cultivate a focal point in which the community can meet regularly to express itself collectively by making music together. Based in Hackney, an area brimming with culture and tradition from all over the world, the jams are a meeting point at which those cultures and traditions can meet and blend to evolve into new styles. The jams are focused on being a family orientated form of expression where all ages of the community meet, contribute or just enjoy.
Sweet Combination has been performing in the WORKSHOP44 every Wednesday for the last two month working along talented young people to develop their musical talent, pushing them to improve their skills and offering them a platform to perform alongside established musicians and to gain experience in live performance. In collaboration with YH World and Off Centre, this month we will be filming a music video for one of the talented young musician AG, to be screened at the Picture House in June as part of BBC Radio 1 Fire in the Booth
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE REGENTS ESTATE
On Thursday, 15th March we were happy to host the exhibition ‘A day in the life of the Regents Estate’, attended by many local residents as well as art lovers from the nearby area. This was the culmination of a three months project on the Regents Estate where WORKSHOP44 is placed, run by photographer Jamie Leith from AIRE Projects, a London based arts organization that aims to give a voice to hard to reach people by means of creative and engaging outlets.
This unique and exciting community photo project tells the story of a hidden community through the lens of locals that equipped with a disposable camera, set out to document every hour of a day in their lives. This immersion into peoples’ lives turned out to a wonderful, if rather gloomy exhibit, still on display in WORKSHOP44. Three residents Debbi Hayden, AG and Jhone parsons were instrumental in the curation of this story; dedicating thir time to the project and helping in all aspects of its execution. The photographs were all hand printedd by Lee at Rapid Eye and Ray’s Frames made the frames for us, a local family-run framing business.
This project aims to be a celebration of the regents Estate and it’s community, as well as Hackney as a whole. For more information on this project or future work please contact us: info@aireprojects.org.uk.
