Arcola to build UK’s first all-green theatre

North London’s Arcola Theatre is laying plans to create the UK’s first environmentally friendly arts “campus”, in a multimillion-pound project that will see the company’s new home constructed from straw bale.

If given the green light, the company will relocate from its current building on Arcola Street to a nearby 20,000 square feet plot of land next to Dalston Junction station, which is due to open next year.

It will house a total of six performance spaces, including a 300-seat main auditorium in a permanent “eco-venue” made from sustainable materials, a separate theatre complex with four studio spaces and an additional stage called the Launch Pad, for eco-focused and entertainment events.

The campus will also include a learning and skills suite, cafe and restaurant, a park, a healthy living centre with an environmentally-friendly gym, and offices and laboratories dedicated to the research of green technologies. It will be created in three phases over a ten-year period, which will allow the Arcola to continue producing work while relocating from its current site.

In 2007, the company expressed an aim to become the world’s first carbon-neutral theatre. This has been spearheaded by chief executive Ben Todd under the banner Arcola Energy.

Todd believes this capital development will enable the company to expand its ‘green’ activities. Speaking to The Stage, he explained that a new base will also allow the company to build its artistic programme, offer better facilities for artists and audiences, and provide the transport links that the current venue lacks. He also hopes that it will regenerate the local area and help the Arcola become “subsidy-independent”.

Todd said: “The general problem we have is that the artistic programme does not fit into studio one anymore - the scale of shows we are doing just don’t fit and don’t pay.

“And with the incubator [the scientific research offices], we have got an international profile now. To explain to people which train station to go to and then walk through this dirty market on to a dodgy side street, and the shabby looking facade is the Arcola, it doesn’t really work. We need an iconic building.”

Todd explained that the company hoped to have the main eco-space - the first phase of the development - completed by 2012, in time for the Olympics.

The building will be created using the existing facade of terraced buildings on one side, while the remaining structure will use the straw bale method, in which either bales or a mixture of straw and mud act as a filler on a metal or timber frame.

This system was used on the Siobhan Davies Studios in London and the Centre for Alternative Technology’s science, theatre and education centre. However, the Arcola’s new venue will be the UK’s first major professional theatre to be built using this ‘green’ method.

“Often you will find that organisations like the Arcola will develop to a certain point, where ten or 20 years in, they have a board and call in architects and ask for a shiny new building. Everybody then harks on about how it has lost some of its character and soul. But this will be built by the Arcola, in the Arcola way,” Todd added.

In September, Hackney Council will decide whether the Arcola can occupy the plot of land for an initial four-year period, in which time it will be required to demonstrate its suitability for the site. If successful, the company will begin staging outdoor events in the autumn and will consider setting up a Latitude festival-style theatre tent to use until the eco-venue is complete.

The Arcola is also waiting to hear from the London Development Agency - which is currently leading a £160 million regeneration scheme in Dalston - on whether it has won a grant of £60,000 to undertake a feasibility study.

Boosh from a Flat in Darkest Dalston Release Season 3

Transforming from cult favorite to international sensation, surrealist comedy troupe The Mighty Boosh offer up a third season, employing the familiar blend of anarchic fantasy and bizarre musical numbers to once more wreak their own singular brand of havoc on the unsuspecting laws of time, space, and good taste. Continuing to follow the adventures and mishaps of hapless duo Howard Moon (Barratt) and Vince Noir, still desperately trying to raise the profile of their shambolic musical act (the titular Mighty Boosh), season three ushers in yet another change of venue.

Still sponging off the swiftly evaporating goodwill of super-cool shaman Naboo the Enigma, and his ape familiar Bollo, Boosh v3.0 takes place predominantly in the newly opened “Nabootique,” a second hand thrift store in Dalston. The banter is still comically banal, the stories still silly, and the costumes and make-up of the loony characters utterly irresistible. Yet there is something oddly muted about season three, brought about by the tight-fisted BBC slashing the budget on this third season. Where as previous seasons took in such trippy locales as the desert, the Arctic Tundra, and the Planet Xooberon, much of this season is contained within the confines of the store, which all too often begs to be blown open and for things to really cut loose.

There are high points of course, such as a welcome return for the grotesque green skinned Cockney demon The Hitcher – a cross between the Wicked Witch of the West and Fagan from Oliver Twist – who terrorizes Howard with threats of eels via a swift tinkle of the “Joanna.” Also back is the fabled Spirit of Jazz, which invades Vince’s bloodstream and will cause death by Scat if not removed, forcing Naboo to miniaturize Howard for an impromptu Innerspace-style adventure. The magnificently batty Board of Shaman are also back, including psycho pre-teen Kirk, perennially exasperated bladder Tony Harrison, and Saboo, Richard Ayoade’s brilliantly bitchy rival to Naboo.

New characters come in the form of The Crackfox, who ambushes Vince and steals Naboo’s bottle of Shaman juice forcing Howard and Vince to leap into action before Naboo and Bollo are executed as punishment. Disasters strike as Boosh imposters Lance Dior and Harold Boom land the cover of Cheekbone magazine and steal the gig Howard and Vince had booked at The Velvet Onion, and there is only one way to settle a feud of that magnitude – a crimp-off!

Wild, zany, and unapologetically trippy, Boosh works because of a commitment to the craziness, where no hint of camp, irony, or winking to the camera is permitted to break the spell. Like Monty Python on acid, Barratt and Fielding are of the mindset that you don’t need rules, plot, story, or structure, you just need to be funny, inviting the audience to bend to a creative freedom that literally knows no limits. Still, constrained by a lack of financing there remains an air of unfulfilled potential that no amount of relentless shoestring set juggling can overcome, and the scope of season three remains at times frustratingly limited. We can only hope that the delay in writing season four, due to other commitments, offers enough time for The Beeb to reconsider, as Boosh is a show that definitely requires total free reign in order to function optimally. In the words of the all-knowing, all-seeing Naboo: “Now let that be a lesson to you.”

Mawi talks about the 'Coolest Place in East London'

London-based Jewelry designer and daughter of noted Hmar Mizo litterateur Pu L Keivom, Mawi Keivom talks about her neighbourhood Dalston in East London, which was recently dubbed “the Coolest Place in England” by both 'Vogue Italia' and 'The Guardian'.

“It’s a mixture of Turkish, Afro- Caribbean, Pakistani, Indian, as well as a healthy dose of fashionistas,” Mawi explains. “Dalston used to have cheap rents with big empty warehouses,” adds Keivom, “but now it’s on the cusp of becoming gentrified and trendy.” Well, that was bound to happen.

Mawi has a few suggestions for those of you who, like her, are sticking out the dog days on London’s East Side.

1. Dalston!

“Ridley Road Market is our pride and joy here. It’s East End barrow boy meets African high priestess, and there’s nothing I love to do more on a sunny afternoon than potter around here, checking out the African textiles, exotic meats, and other strange edibles. On a good day you saunter down and hear African beats, gospel music, reggae, and it’s easy to forget you are in London. Dalston also boasts the Rio Cinema, an independent movie house restored to its original Art Deco splendor, and the Prince George pub. The George is situated in a leafy backwater and the emphasis is on quality alcohol—good beers and ales and an extensive wine list. Christopher Kane and Gareth Pugh are two of the designers who live and work nearby that you’re likely to spot here. Great place to chill out over a pint.”

2. More Markets

“The Columbia Road Flower Market is a great place to see real East End culture, hear cockney accents, and see a world-famous market in full swing. All the plants and flowers here are a fraction of what you’d pay at your local florist, and the street is lined with interesting vintage stores, bric-a-brac, food stalls, and great eateries. Round off your day with a pint of beer at the Royal Oak and sample some English grub. Perfect! A great way to spend a lazy Saturday, meanwhile, is the Broadway Market. For coffee in the morning go to Climpsons, and the Cat and Mutton or the Dove for pint and pub food later. You can also sample a variety of gourmet food at the food stalls—anything from Ghanaian food to kosher food, freshly baked patisseries, marinated olives, and organic vegetables. (There are vintage stalls offering clothing at reasonable prices, as well.) You will not go home hungry.”

3. Cheap Eats

“Tayabs is a Pakistani restaurant in Whitechapel, East London. The food is absolutely amazing and it’s reasonably priced. They don’t serve alcohol, but you can bring your own. Their specialties are lamb chops and kebabs, but if you are vegetarian, there are plenty of other mouthwatering dishes. There is also an enormous glass counter filled with Indian sweets. Try the kulfi (Indian ice cream) or the rasmalai to cool down after the fiery curries. Be sure to book in advance, as the queues meander for miles. It’s an hour-long wait to get a seat if you are lucky. Alternatively, you can always find a seat at London Fields. During the weekends people from all over London congregate here to sunbathe, drink, and enjoy a BBQ. It’s the playground for the East London fashion set. The dress code is cool/quirky with bicycles being the favorite mode of transport. Pack a picnic and watch the fashionistas on parade.”

Run-of-the-mill restaurants are so pre-recession - the capital's food cognoscenti are heading to underground home bistros

Arguably the first underground supper club in the capital, Horton Jupiter’s restaurant run from his ex-council flat in Stoke Newington has already amassed more than 1,000 followers on Facebook. Every Wednesday Jupiter serves up vegetarian Japanese fusion-style food to mainly young, mdia types. At £15-£20 for six courses, it’s one of the cheapest underground food venues around and yet one of the most refined, with each dish beautifully presented. If you’re lucky, Jupiter, a musician, might even play something for you.

USP: Beautifully crafted Japanese food
When? Every Wednesday
How much? £15-£20 for six courses

BE.E.T happening is an inventive eating experience.

hap~pen~ing//

n.

1.

A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered as art. Happenings take place anywhere, are often multi-disciplinary, often lack a narrative and frequently seek to involve the audience in some way. Key elements of happenings are planned, but artists sometimes retain room for improvisation.

2.

An improvised, often spontaneous spectacle or performance, especially one involving audience participation.

Location...

These Secret Happenings occur at the Shoreditch studio (E2) and residences of BE+K design collective.

A bit about BE.E.T...

We are architects, furniture designers, musicians and artists who are passionate about preparing and eating food.

What to expect....

Expect Fresh Billingsgate Seafood Lovingly Prepared, Old vs. New, Sharing, Unique Eating Experiences, Shoreditch Live-Work Warehouses, Quirky Furniture, Live Video Projections, Art on the Walls

This menu will change seasonally. Goto menu...

How To Book:

Send an e-mail to beeteating@googlemail.com letting us know how many eaters and which sitting you would like to attend.

Donation suggestion: £30 p.p.

Next event: 7th August 2009

Sittings: 18h30 or 21h00

East End street parties making comeback after 28 years

STREET parties are making a comeback in London this weekend—especially in the East End where the tradition goes back 100 years.

It’s all part of a nationwide campaign to bring Britain’s diverse communities together—just like the old days!

East Enders are taking to the streets in a big way, with at least a dozen street parties in Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Stepney Green, Shadwell, Bow, Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Hackney.

TRELLIS TABLES

One of the East London organisers is grandmum Barbara Nunn who is setting up the traditional trellis tables in Stepney Green’s Beaumont Grove.

“I just want to experience an East End street party again,” she told the East London Advertiser.

“A lot of people have never set up a street party or even been to one before.

“The last time I did one of these was 28 years ago.”

Barbara organised her last street party in 1981 to celebrate the wedding of Princess Di and Prince Charles.

BEER AND SONGS

East Enders have always brought the beer and food out and ‘the old jonanna’ for a singalong on big occasions, like the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, VE Day in 1945 and George V’s Silver Jubilee in 1935.

Sunday’s street parties are part of a national project called The Big Lunch, bringing communities together by reclaiming the streets, sitting down to have lunch together and putting a smile on Britain’s face.

Those planned in the East End are:

Whitechapel: Fieldgate Street, Buxton Street and Grace’s Alley (off Wellclose Square).

Spitalfields: Corbet Place (off Commercial Street)

Stepney Green: Louisa Street, Beaumont Grove and Maria Terrace

Shadwell: Flamborough Street, Ratcliff

Bow: Lefevre Park, Mooreville Street and Link House

Bethnal Green: Roman Road, Wilmot Street and Kirton Gardens

Shoreditch: Boundary Street

Hackney: Tudor Grove

Art, free drinks and DJ's in east London

Next Wednesday Whitechapel Gallery opens its doors exclusively to Time Out readers for a one-off celebration of painting with talks from among others Time Out's Art editor Ossian Ward, tours through the new summer exhibitions East End Academy: The Painting Edition and Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, the opportunity for you to meet the artists from Whitechapel Gallery's summer shows, as well as free drinks, DJs and much more.

With limited tickets available at the bargain price of £8.50, get yours before they sell out.

Chocolate Vanilla At Shoreditch House

Its official; summer is sporadically upon us and by way of celebrating you can queue at London Fields Lido, navigate your way through the spotty bums and pubic excess of the changing rooms to finally catch a case of athletes foot (at best) in the pool. Alternatively you could head to the echelon of swimming sophistication on the rooftop of Shoreditch House. Don’t have a membership you wail? Well that's why Shay 'the chef' Ola and Charlie 'Vanillaface' have deigned to assist you in your proletarian plight, temporarily at least.

The respectively chocolate and vanilla hosts of this new monthly pool party held court on Monday night like Shoreditch's answer to the Play Boy Bunnies. Except male, and not blonde. So nothing really at all like the Play Boy Bunnies apart from the overwhelmingly porn star image they have adopted including; lustrous manes of facial hair, miniscule white swimming shorts and a harem of over excited females in designer heels and bikinis swamping them by the decks.

It might sound pretentious but during the painfully short British summer, a little glamour seems so much more appealing than sweating it out in one of Dalston's newly converted dungeons; why not spend the other eleven and a half months of the year doing that? Quite frankly, snubbing this lemon meringue martini fuelled orgy of Ibiza scaled extravagance would be cutting off the nose to spite the (presumably pasty and troll like) face. What other reason could you possibly have not to attend? Unless of course you're not a fan of half price cocktails, panoramic London views at sunset from pink king-sized beds and the only bar staff in Shoreditch who get paid enough to be polite.

In attendance and taking full advantage of the 'anyone and their mum/dog/PA with a laptop can DJ' rule, which, for better or worse has permeated club culture in London for the time being, were the Voguettes. Now it goes without saying that if all the worlds DJs were set ablaze in some horrible freak simultaneous headphone explosion, no celebrity, magazine intern or their mates could step in to fill the gaping musical void left behind. However, it's unlikely that said explosion will ever occur and with this in mind, there is a definite time and place for attractive people with no idea how to scratch, mix or beat juggle to share their talents. With a range of disco, boogie, house, garage, hip-hop, bassline and generally fun infused music, Chocolate Vanilla is definitely it.

Oh rats! There’s a Banksy graffiti down our alley

Insurance investigator Laurence Lewis and nephew Jamie Collins spotted the ‘rat’ design often linked to the famed street artist while travelling home on the number 25 bendy bus in Whitechapel.

The bus stopped briefly in front of an alley next to Starbucks cafe when they spotted it.

“We’ve seen seven or eight Banksy works in the area,” the 53-year-old bachelor told the East London Advertiser. “So we recognised it straight away.”

DOUBLE CHECK

Laurence arrived home nearby and grabbed his camera and returned to double check.

And there it was—a rat holding a gun, which had been stencilled onto the wall at the end of the alley off the Whitechapel Road.

Nephew Jamie said: “Banksy paints a lot of rats—that’s his trademark.

“I find them fascinating because he’s done exhibitions all over the world. Now he does Whitechapel too.”

The East End’s most-famous ‘Banksy’ known to be authentic is the one on the wall of Bethnal Green working men’s club in Pollard Row.

Dalston's Mill! Can an artist's wheatfield in Hackney switch the mood on climate change?

Something bizarre is happening in the area of Dalston, in London's Hackney, where I live. As I write, half a dozen men are hunched over planting half-grown wheat on derelict wasteland. Next to them, architects are building a windmill that will generate the energy to power two bread ovens. When it opens on Wednesday, it will host breadmaking, music, theatre and feasts for anyone who wants to step away from the noise of the shops and traffic-clogged nearby streets.

Watch and learn all about the mill.

It's an installation linked to the Radical Nature exhibition, at the Barbican, in London, but it's evidence of an art that is penetrating some of the least hospitable places, very far from galleries, to open up conversations in unexpected ways around our relationship with land, food and each other. Can we think differently about the way we use land, produce food and relate to each other?

The origins of Dalston's wheatfield lie thousands of miles away, with Agnes Denes, one of a generation of American land artists who took art out of galleries and away from making objects to be bought and sold. In 1982 she planted wheat on two acres of wasteland on Battery Park, two blocks from Wall Street; her harvest was worth £158, produced on land valued at $4.5bn. The photos of waving golden wheat juxtaposed against the Manhattan skyline became an iconic image of environmental art. With her collaboration, her idea is now being recreated in Hackney.

At a time of growing anxiety about how we feed a crowded earth – food security was discussed at the G8 last week – her image of fertility and sustenance is even more poignant, and no longer outlandish. Such possibilities of food production in the city could be commonplace for our children. Havana, famously, learned to largely feed itself from within its city limits after imported Russian oil dried up in the 1990s.

The point about Denes's work in Dalston – and the exhibition at the Barbican – is that it raises for a new generation the role art can play in shifting attitudes towards our natural environment. With fortunate timing, Tate Britain also has a retrospective of another land art pioneer of Denes's generation, Richard Long. Or look north to Manchester's International Festival and Gustav Metzger's extraordinary uprooted, upended trees set into concrete. On every side, artists are putting their shoulder to the wheel, trying to prompt the revolution in values and attitudes required to deal with environmental crisis.

Can art succeed where science is proving insufficient to generate the will to act effectively on climate change? Scientists sound increasingly desperate as the evidence they are carefully accumulating stacks up but fails to prompt the urgency they insist it requires. Science seems only to create a panicked paralysis: a language of probabilities, statistics and numbers fails to gain traction on the public imagination.

Is this where artists have to step in to prompt understanding, to challenge what is taken for granted, to turn our ideas upside down? To that question, Tim Smit, founder of the Eden Project, quotes CS Lewis: "Science can lead to truth, only the imagination can lead you towards meaning."

If this all sounds a little esoteric, think again. Peterborough council is at the beginning of fulfilling a huge ambition to make itself the environmental capital of Europe. It believes it probably has the largest number of environmental businesses on the continent. To re-orientate the city around sustainability, it plans to build art/culture into every step of the process. Devolving decisions to neighbourhood councils, the council's leader, Marco Cereste, sees art as vital to prompting that local engagement that can generate the sense of belonging crucial to environmental sustainability. "It's no good the council saying recycling is a brilliant idea and urging people to change from the top, it's got to come from the bottom up," he says. Art can initiate and broker the conversations, it can shift preconceptions, argues Michaela Crimmin whose Arts and Ecology programme at the Royal Society of Arts has been the quiet powerhouse facilitating projects all over the country.

But art can never be didactic, insists Smit. At the Eden Project the art can encourage people to "look anew, and transform their view. So many of us are skating so fast over the surface of so much," he says.

In Radical Nature, over 40 years of artists engaging with nature is crowded into a gallery. It doesn't fit, either literally – a tree chopped into metre lengths and bolted back together again is bumping into the roof – or metaphorically. It's overwhelmed by the powerful ideas it contains. Here is the story of a culture deeply disturbed by the impact it is having on the natural world, fearful of what it can salvage: the fragments that have ended up in the Barbican – a section of forest on its side, a floating island, vegetable beds – are like the flotsam of a dying civilisation. This is a howl of despair full of guilt, fear and anxiety. Metzger's Flailing Trees in Manchester are in the same vein; he admits he has used "brutality to expose brutality".

This is art the art world has not much cared for. It was deeply political, and not collectible or sellable; it never commanded Damien Hirst style headlines. The pioneers who began their careers in the 1960s and early 1970s – Metzger, Denes, Long and Joseph Beuys – never sought or acquired the status of big selling artists. They may have been prophets, but spawned only cult followings.

Perhaps their time has finally come; we need their thinking and sense of urgent political morality. The Barbican exhibition includes the resurrection of several iconic pieces of these pioneers, to help us connect back to a heady moment of environmental and political activism. Only in the late 1990s did a new generation of artists resume the preoccupation, but that 20-year lapse is a warning that environmental engagement seems to wax and wane. Will the current fascination prove simply a fashion of 2009 or an enduring obsession?

What some curators want is an iconic image that will smash through indifference and become the rallying cry for a generation. What others argue is that art is not a magic bullet; it can work at a much more intimate, local level, which is transformational. In Dalston's wheatfields something of that seems possible; a public space has been claimed that is not about people rushing through, but opens up the possibility to meet others and share knowledge. One of the architects busy making his windmill, Nicolas Henninger, admits he doesn't know how to make bread. He's hoping someone will turn up who does, and he can learn. The implicit message is that if he can learn, so can anyone else. This is not artist as celebrity genius producing a commodity but a much more modest, self-effacing facilitating of the creativity of the crowd.

Squeezed into the gaps between a supermarket and a shopping centre, this wasteland has flourished as a garden of buddleia, wild grasses and trees sprout out of the ruined houses – it's now a stage for a set of ideas about skill, craft, food, energy and conviviality. It's an ideal of reclamation that has more to say about us than about the land. It's brings to mind Raymond Williams's comment that "to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing".

Dalston Dances In The Square

Dancing in the Square had Gillett Square in Dalston alive and kicking and doing the running man on Saturday afternoon. We turned up in time for a kickass hip hop dance performance from the endlessly energetic all female b.supreme which turned into a mass streetdance workshop with locals from ages 4 to 50+ taking to the stage to slide, bubble, criss-cross and bogle with some seizing the opportunity to do their own thing and freestyle their arses off to whooping acclaim at the end. We left the high camp, neon green vision of Boogaloo Stu and Miss High Kick Dance teaching the Square to bounce samba style with line dancing, West African dance and drumming and a tea dance to a swing band yet to come.

East End Academy, London

Launched in 1932, the East End Academy is one of the longest-standing exhibitions open to artists living or working in the East End of London. Understandably, over the years it has operated as a launch pad for many a young budding artist, including Cornelia Parker, Antony Gormley, Richard Wentworth and Rachel Whiteread. This year the exhibition has focused on painting, inviting submissions from more than 600 painters from the East End. Twelve have been selected from a judging panel that included the Turner prize nominee Gillian Carnegie and art market expert Francis Outred, the head of contemporary art of Christie's auction house. Of the 12, the duo Cullinan Richards will be familiar thanks to their appearances in shows at the South London Gallery and Mobile Home Gallery. Look out too for Luke Dowd, who has shown at Hotel Gallery's former space on Old Bethnal Green Road.

• Whitechapel Art Gallery, E1, to 30 Aug

Dalston Square becomes magnet for artists

Barratt’s stunning new Dalston Square development in Hackney, East London, is becoming a focal point for some of the capital’s most promising new artists.

The spacious marketing centre at Dalston Square – a very large, naturally-lit area that could almost have been made for hanging artworks – has already been used to showcase art and photographic work provided by top art students and graduates.

As a result of that show, held earlier this year, Barratt East London commissioned one of the artists, oil painter Sara Sherwood, to produce limited-edition mounted prints of her striking London scenes. These are now given as welcome gifts to buyers at Dalston Square as they move in.

The latest art event at Dalston Square is the first week-long exhibition by Dalston Square’s ‘resident’ artist Alexandra Blum, staged in a commercial building adjacent to the marketing suite on the new development.

Alexandra – who is based on site at Dalston Square - is fascinated by construction and all that goes with it, from the changing skyline of cranes and scaffolding to the steady evolution of the buildings that result. Entitled ‘Phenomena of Change’ the show featured a series of sketches of the site from different areas of the development. Alexandra worked side by side with the contractors whilst construction was in full swing.

Local film-maker Suki Chan is also shooting scenes at Dalston Square for an arthouse film under the auspices of London-based support group Film and Video Umbrella. The film will be out later this summer.

Alastair Baird, managing director of Barratt London, said: “We’ve know from the moment we started work that Dalston and the wider area around it absolutely buzzes with creativity, and is home to lots of new and established artists.

“We’re glad to be working in co-operation with artists who actually care a great deal about East London generally and about Dalston in particular, and who want to part of the change that is taking place there. It is entirely in the spirit of the Dalston Square regeneration.”

Dalston Square is not only one of London’s key strategic regeneration schemes; it offers some of the best value new homes in the capital, with one-bedroom apartments starting at under £256,000.

The £160m project is providing over 550 new homes, shops, a library and archive, plus a brand new station for the East London line extension at Dalston Junction. At the heart of the scheme is a major new town centre space around which the new homes and amenities are being built. Barratt is developing the scheme in partnership with the London Borough of Hackney, Transport for London and the London Development Agency.

The marketing suite and show apartments are open off Roseberry Place, Dalston (E8) – visit barratthomes.co.uk/dalston for more information.

London Lane Fete

On Sat 11th July at noon till 6pm celebrate summer with home made goods , lingerie, vintage treats, DJ's, delicious cales, hot dogs, pimms, home made lemonade and frolics to be had...

Where? In the car park behind London Lane, London Fields.

Levi's London Showcase Returns

Clothing brand Levi's is holding a residency at East London's Vibe Bar and a secret gig in the next instalment of its "Ones to Watch" series this week.

The "5 Night Revue" showcase will be respectively headlined by emerging acts Dananananaykroyd (July 7), Passion Pit (July 8), Hockey (July 9) and Everything Everything (July 10). Friendly Fires has now been confirmed as the headline act for the fifth night at a secret outdoor East London location on July 14, which is only open to competition winners.

"Ones to Watch" held sell-out showcases in 2008 featuring Metronomy, Bombay Bicycle Club, Micachu and the Shapes, and Broken Records amongst others. It is now in its fifth year and has showcased acts such as the Kooks, Editors, We Are Scientists and the View.

Ticketing and competition details are available at www.the-fly.co.uk/lotw.

New Gilbert and George show Jack Freak Pictures opens at White Cube

THEIR unconventional relationship has long been a source of coy pride to them and bemusement to others.

But East London's most curious couple of artists, Gilbert and George, have finally gone and done the traditional thing - and got married.

In the week that they prepare to launch their newest exhibition at London's White Cube gallery, the duo have finally confirmed they are now legally spliced.

"We got married last year at Bow register office," said George. "We thought it was probably about time."

Their two staff, Yi Gangyu and Keith, were witnesses - and the four enjoyed a slap-up reception meal in a local East End curry house.

It comes after years of speculation about the pair. They first met in 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins. In a 2002 interview they said: "It was love at first sight" - a rare comment about the nature of their relationship. They live in Spitalfields and have an eccentrically rigid routine, breakfasting in a local cafe at 6.30am every day and dining nightly in a Dalston Kurdish restaurant (their house has no kitchen because they can't abide the "mess").

But George has also insisted: "We prefer to live in sin. We are the ideal feminist couple. We have equality in our relationship.”

Further questions were raised three years ago when it was reported George, 67, was married when he first met Gilbert, 66.

The Times claimed he and his wife, Patricia, also conceived two children, Sunny and Rayne.

The duo's new exhibition, Jack Freak Pictures, opens at White Cube Gallery's two spaces, in Hoxton and SW1, on 10 July.

Call to extend street ‘booze ban’ zone to tackle liquor louts

A BOOZE ban zone could be doubled in size to get rid of street drunks and liquor louts if the idea gets public backing.

Town Hall chiefs at Hackney are considering extending Dalston’s fledgling ‘no drinks’ boundary drawn up last year to tackle anti-social behaviour.

The ‘Designated Public Place’ order gives police powers to confiscate alcohol from anyone causing a nuisance.

Cops have slapped 145 penalty notices on yobs so far, since the ‘zero tolerance’ enforcement began in January, 2007.

But now the idea is to push the ‘dry zone’ boundary further out to Shacklewell Lane and Dalston Lane because families in fringe areas say their lives have been blighted.

Moshi Moshi @ The Garage

So after three years and a touch of asbestos - which has all gone now, worry not - Highbury Corner's Garage is back open and heading in the right direction if this Moshi Moshi night is anything to go by. A monthly party put on by the independent London record label, it launches this Friday with an impressive bill, taking over all three rooms of the refurbished venue. In the main space, Casiokids will be heading up the bill with DJ support from the chaps from Plugs as well as some folk from the label, whose record bags are likely to bulging with hits you have heard as well as hits you haven't. More live sounds will happen upstairs thanks to Django Django and Teeth and there'll also be a special thecocknbullkid Vs Platform set happening on the decks. Last but by no means least, Owen Clarke of Hot Chip will be playing records in the Mini Bar as will Dalston Oxfam Shopper Todd Hart.

• The Garage, Highbury Corner, N5, Fri

Dalston's white christmas!

Do you remember Dalston's white christmas? Wasn't it great to see the area looking so nice, and in the making was the biggest snowman in Hackney! More fun went on at London Fields with and assortment of fun looking snowmen, creatures and strange objects!

Welcome to Dalston, now the coolest place in Britain

Long dismissed as a fading east London suburb with a chaotic daily market, a strip of cheap Turkish restaurants and a rudimentary relationship with street hygiene, Dalston E8 now finds itself the unlikely owner of Britain's coolest postcode. Its roll call of fashion habitués reads like a Who's Who of past and present design figureheads - Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh and Marius Schwab have set up shop there, while old guard visionaries Pam Hogg, Terry De Havilland and Jimmy Choo are frequently out and about.

Dalston nightlife has been blessed with a series of pop-up club nights at crumbling 80s nightspots Passions, Blushes, Visions and Passing Clouds. Wander around at 11pm and the feeling is not dissimilar to being in the lower east side of Manhattan at its mid-90s peak.

Dalston has its own music magazine, the Pix, edited from a basement in the Bootstrap, an EU funded creative enterprise that also rents space to Pugh and the artist Matthew Stone, while pop stars Lightspeed Champion, Jack Penate and Big Pink all operate from corners of E8.

Unlike Hoxton - the East End enclave that last drew in London's up-and-coming creatives - Dalston has always been a vibrant place, thanks to its Afro-Caribbean and Turkish communities. "There was already a night-time street culture here. Throwing another demographic at it hasn't hurt," says Dan Beaumont, who has run London's most feted monthly club night, Disco Bloodbath, in the area and has just swung open the doors of a new bar unapologetically named the Dalston Superstore. "Everyone's surprisingly accepting," he adds.

After the opening of posh members' club Shoreditch House and Terence Conran's Boundary Hotel in nearby Shoreditch, Beaumont felt the shift eastwards and followed his nose to Dalston. "Not everyone wants to drink fancy cocktails on roof terraces," he notes - and there's certainly a local lunacy to the area that has so far escaped the gentrifiers sweeping across London's other less celebrated suburbs.

"You can walk down the road and see everything from Pam Hogg squeezing a melon in the Ridley Road market to a man wearing a sack preaching to the traffic lights," says Hanna Hanra, editor of the Pix. "Everything is possible. It's a fabulous, optimistic place."

Hanra thinks E8 is unquestionably the best postcode in London. "For architectural beauty, cleanliness, stench factor, road safety and trying to walk at a normal pace down the pavement, definitely not. For being somewhere exciting, absolutely."

Tudor Hackney

Can you imagine what Hackney looked like 400 years ago? Well it's changed a lot as you can image, from villages and picnicing grounds to a sparalling east end London and one that's finally come of age!

Government help for London first timers

The First-Time Buyer Initiative – a Government scheme designed to help people get on the property ladder – is coming back to Barratt’s new Dalston Square development in Hackney, East London.

The First Time Buyer Initiative (FTBI) enables aspiring buyers who cannot otherwise afford to buy a home outright, to purchase a minimum of 50% of a new home with the Government’s Homes & Communities Agency providing the remainder of the funding.

An earlier tranche of FTBI funding proved hugely successful at Dalston Square. Additional funding now means that a further 20 or more homes there can be made available to qualifying first-time buyers.

“When FTBI was launched here last year, it was a tremendous, sell-out success” said Barratt East London sales director Gary Patrick. “We’re delighted to able to help more people onto the home ownership ladder.”

Dalston Square is not only one of London’s key strategic regeneration schemes, it offers some of the best value new homes in the capital, with one-bedroom apartments starting at under £256,000.

The £160m project is providing over 550 new homes, shops, a library and archive, plus a brand new station for the East London line extension at Dalston Junction. At the heart of the scheme is a major new town centre space around which the new homes and amenities are being built. Barratt is developing the scheme in partnership with the London Borough of Hackney, Transport for London and the London Development Agency.

With one-bedroom apartments extending up to a massive 832 sq ft – that’s actually larger than many modern three-bedroom/two-bathroom houses – Dalston Square offers space standards that are now rare in the capital.

All apartments at Dalston Square have fully-fitted bathrooms and an open-plan living/dining space with fully-fitted, integrated kitchens. A unique feature of the homes are ‘winter gardens’ – enclosed balconies which can be opened up in summer and closed off in winter to enable outdoor space to be enjoyed year round.

The current phase of Dalston Square offers one-bedroom apartments at full-market prices from £256,000. Under the FTBI scheme, qualifying buyers can get on the property ladder for a minimum of 50 per cent of the full price.

The marketing suite and show apartments are now open off Roseberry Place, Dalston (E8) – visit barratthomes.co.uk/dalston to find out more.

Dalston is leading the way in East London fashion stakes

A bloke in a quilted Barbour jacket and tasselled loafers is barking orders into his mobile phone.

But we are not in Chelsea: we're in Dalston, home of a thousand and one kebab shops and a clutch of faded nightclubs with names like On The Rocks and Passions.

Though it may not be immediately apparent when you alight from the overland train at Dalston Kingsland station, according to no less a tome than Italian Vogue, Dalston is hot, a ringing endorsement that will have residents either rolling on the floor in mirth or patting their biker jacket-clad backs in self-congratulatory agreement.

Even the 149 bus seems to swagger as it shunts its way down Kingsland Road.

More pictures: Dalston's fashion superstars

Anyway, the quilted Barbour jacket is far from the last one I'll see all evening, for they appear to be quite the thing in E8.

So, too, are biker jackets, tomato red hair, plaid shirts, tea dresses, turned-up jeans and white plimsolls, which seem to be standard issue among Dalston's inhabitants, whether they be man, woman or beast.

The plimsolls are brandless and hail from any number of shops but are most cheaply procured from a doorway in Cheshire Street, where a man sells them for a fiver.

At The Cat & Mutton, at the London Fields end of Broadway Market (one of the blokes in the 118 ads works behind the bar. Well, of course he does!), the mood is jovial. Everyone is drinking pints outside. The boys look better than the girls but the girls still look good.

They look a lot better than the girls in neighbouring Hoxton, simply because they're not really trying so hard. Hoxton girls possess that knowing, buttock-clenching trendiness that suggests that when they're not out drinking, they're at home in their flats making videos of themselves to post on Facebook.

Our next stop is the Moustache bar, an intimate drinking den in the basement of a barber shop at the Stoke Newington end of Dalston. It's closed.

Maybe they saw us coming and turned the lights off. We did used to be fashionable, my hubby and I, but while age cannot weary us, the years have certainly condemned us to a wardrobe that would be unlikely to pass muster in E8.

Next we're off to Dalston Superstore, a newly opened space where the barman is really friendly, despite our clothes.

At one end of the bar, a girl in a white prom dress and ankle socks is swigging a bottle of pear cider, one eye made up in spidery lashes and heavy eyeliner, Clockwork Orange-style. At the other end sit Christopher and Tammy Kane, stars of London Fashion Week, who work out of a studio nearby.

So, too, do the designers Marios Schwab and Gareth Pugh, which probably has much to do with why Dalston is currently usurping Hoxton as a place of anthropological interest among the “style cognoscenti”.

The pear cider is bloody lovely, and Dalston Superstore conjures that magical sensation where you feel you're at the centre of the universe. “It's like the Orchard Bar,” says hubby, and he is right.

The Orchard Bar is in downtown New York, and something about the Superstore's minimalist concrete surfaces reminds us of it.

As the bar fills up with prom-queen girls and check-shirt boys who look like interns from Postcard Records, we breathe it all in through our eyes and sigh. For to be young and in Dalston seems like a very nice thing indeed.

Don't look up! More towers planned for London Fields

Last Thursday Southern Housing Group (SHG), a charity, gave a public presentation to the local community of its scheme for a second towerblock at London Fields, eastside. SHG said it had considered feedback from meetings with Hackney Council and Boris's GLA planners when designing the "slender" 19 storey tower development of 78 very high density flats, houses and commercial units.


It was claimed that, compared with the existing site at 22-24 London Lane, the design and scale of the development would "enhance" the surrounding low rise buildings of the Mare Street Conservation Area. Admittedly it is not in a designated Tall Building Opportunity Area - but the professional view was that at street level people apparently don't notice towers (Don't look up!).

SHG said it wants "a scheme everyone is happy with" but members of the public voiced passionate objections to the development for a whole range of reasons. Perhaps people fear yet another charitable developer is seeking to exploit the London Fields location to the comunities disadvantage. Will SHG redesign its scheme to meet local objections or just plough on regardless?
If you can offer support or skills to help the the local community in London fields then you can find "No Hackney High-Rise" contact details here.

PS The meeting was held in Free Form Arts' award winning Hothouse building on London Fields east - a superbly designed and finished low-rise development offering true community benefits.

The high-rise hives of east London

Beekeeping is growing in popularity as Londoners respond to fears the insects may become extinct.

The London Beekeepers Association has been inundated with people keen to set up hives to produce honey and protect bees. It has begun helping install rooftop hives in Dalston.

Chairman John Chapple, who looks after a hive on the roof of the Royal Festival Hall, said: “Beekeeping is surprisingly popular within London, and we think there are around 5,000 beekeepers within the M25, with more appearing all the time.

“You can put a hive anywhere, even on a concrete roof. And if you look after them, they are perfectly harmless.”

The number of bees in Britain has fallen by 10 to 15 per cent in the past two years because of disease, with some estimates suggesting the drop
could be as high as 30 per cent.

Mr Chapple says an average hive costs about £300 to set up, and requires an hour of work a week. If maintained, each hive can produce around 50lb of honey a year and can help increase wild flowers. Each hive can support up to 40,000 bees.