Week 3: Photography day 1

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The People’s Kitchen @ Passing Clouds

Pic: Seb Taylor.

Wash, peel, chop, simmer, whisk, stir, mix, fry, bake, talk, teach,  learn, invent, relax, share, taste, and connect…

Sound like a good way to spend your Sunday afternoons?

A project called the People’s Kitchen has come up with a recipe for successful social interaction in Dalston. Every Sunday a banquet created from surplus food donated by local suppliers is put on at Passing Clouds and other local venues.

Circle Sports, helping young people into work

Pic: Stephen Archer. Chris Paine, manager of Circle Sports, Dalston

With 975,000 people aged 16-24 not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the UK it is welcome news to many in Dalston that Circle Sports has opened a new sports store on Kingsland Road this month.

This is because Circle Sports is not an ordinary sports store but an innovative retail social enterprise that helps 18 -24 year olds into work, by providing a non-academic pathway into employment. Designed to inspire and motivate young people out of unemployment the practical based training includes bespoke coaching and mentoring, alongside retail and entrepreneurial training.

The social enterprise has a proven track record of helping NEET individuals into employment and speaking of the success of the training Chris Paine, the shops new manager said: “We’ve managed to get over 60 young people back into permanent work over the last six years so were making, only a small difference, but certainly making a difference to their lives.”

Closed by Order

This week I returned to my old stomping ground of Dalston, for the Big Issue journalist training course. My first photo assignment was drawn from the building opposite, a police station of my youth, where I more than once sampled the restrained accommodation.

Around the side – everybody used to enter through the front and leave via the back – where a kind stranger in the doorway invited me in to take some ‘pics’. Since being a police station the building has been sold to a private developer, first rented flats, then more profitable as a hostel. The police car park out the back has been developed into social housing. An alleged sweetener to the council.

A side view if the stairwell inside of the former Dalston Police Station. Hackney

Outside two elderly gentlemen, precariously holding onto their ‘special brews’, boasted about how many times they had spent nights in the old ‘nick’. One, sadly, pointing out that he often got himself arrested, just so he had somewhere to stay.

Inside of the old Dalston Police Station now a homeless hostel

A passing Eastern European woman, who has lived in the area for over ten years, knew it as the site of a ‘notorious’ police station. But what I remembered was the ‘notorious’ enmity between the police station and the Four Aces nightclub nearby. Summed up by graffiti sprayed on the first night the station was vacated.

‘Closed by order of the Four Aces club’

Ironically the club became a part of the Dalston Library extension. Public institution becomes private hostel; private club becomes public institution. No surprises to anyone familiar to housing in the area or London in general, but then both station and club are personal to me, because it is also an intricate part of my own history.

Week 2: Portraits

Week 2: The Old Dalston Police Station

Exterior of former Police Station on Dalston Lane Hackney currently a hostel.

Inside of the old Dalston Police Station now a homeless hostel

A side view if the stairwell inside of the former Dalston Police Station. Hackney

Week 2: Local people and places of interest

Pic: Seb Taylor. Paul Smythe, co-owner of Farm Shop cafe in Dalston, which brings the countryside to the city by growing their own organic produce.

Pic: Jaz Watson. Hackney farm cafe on Dalston lane grow their own food and keeps chickens for fresh eggs, providing customers with fresh and local organic food

The site of former CLR James, Dalston. Now occupied by St Giles Trust and home of the Big Issue online journalism course.