Live on the Drive

Live on the Drive

Live on the Drive
2016

 

A Performance Project for girls aged 15-19,  led by performance artist Katy Baird and visual artist Rebecca Lindsay – Addy at the drawing shed’s project space, LockUpNumber11, on the Drive housing estate E17.

Now with NEW Blog! Documenting the exciting Live Art created by the LoT-D girls and more!

Live on the Drive (LoT-D) has been running since September 2016 and is a series of live art workshops, discussions and visits to live events. These workshops focus around discussions and creations of Live Art, and all this encompasses, including visual elements and using this to extend ideas of performance . The workshops have taken place in a range of contexts including the estate, public events such as the Women’s March, and even at Walthamstow School for Girls helping to introduce Year 10s to the project and Live Art. The LoT-D girls work collaboratively and individually to generate artwork in new and exciting ways. The LoT-D girls are at the centre of the project, including passing on their experiences and new found skills to other girls.

live-on-the-drive-poster_final

“I learnt to think about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ and not just the ‘what’.”

“I loved it; it was a really different environment.”

“It was strange in a good way.” “I have an interest in performance art now and feel more confident about performing in front of other girls.”

Feedback from participants, November 2016

Leena Chauhan

Leena Chauhan

Leena Chauhan

leena2 copy

LiveElse[W]here, resident artist Leena Chauhan answers questions by E17 Art Trail blogger Amy Wevill about the work she has developed during her residency and the LiveLunch event on Saturday 31st May.

Could you tell us about the work you will be showing during this year’s E17 Art Trail?

As an artist in residence and part of the drawing shed’s LiveElse[W]here I am showing a series of enlarged screen-prints of Clothing Labels that are placed around the The Drive and Attlee Terrace, covering some of the pre-existing council signage. These labels are from the inside tag in (nearly) every garment stating where it’s from and what it’s made from. My prints have been made from my photographs of the residents’ labels on what garment they happened to be wearing at the time. I enlarged the labels to increase their visibility, especially of where the garment was made, to bring to attention its origin and the trajectory of its arrival here. I screen-printed upon these photographs, layering the details tags found inside the differing garments.

A finale for our project and a place to show the works development was theLiveLunch – an event open to residents and Trail goers alike; I made food on site,Cooking with my Mama. We cooked Kenyan-Indian food and served it to the locals whilst sharing my mothers short stories of her time growing up in Kenya moving to England. Essentially, through using clothing as a focus of this project, I am engaging with sense of identity and belonging and where we (or things) are coming from.

How have you been preparing for this year’s trail? 

I have been commissioned by the drawing shed to make work for theLiveElse[W]here Project which was being actualised over the last few months. My work has acted as an instigator for developing interaction, thought and discussion. I have been working in and around the Estates getting familiar with the area and the locals; for me, the essence of the work was with the engagement of residents by having a real dialogue as an inspiration for the beginnings of the project itself. The work provoked conversations of “quality versus affordability; high-end clothing labels versus cheap labour; identity formation and clothing becoming a cultural identity; human value versus clothes carrying ‘identity’.”

Being a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins, a self-contained environment with latest gadgets and gismos, was very different to working in-situ on Attlee Estate and The Drive. I have been learning to improvise and adapt with what we have and how we can use what that is. During the Print Screening workshops I organised, along with sterling guidance from artist Joseph Kopiel, I had support from the locals: a person offered a gallon of water to aid the cleaning of the mesh screens; another resident offered homemade foods to help keep our stomachs full, whilst other parents encourage their children to partake in the process – it was moments like these that were charged with awareness and positive energy. Nevertheless, this residency has been a short period which has involved a process of gaining some trust and connections between residents and myself.

Could you tell us about an artist/ artwork that particularly inspires you? 

Can I say this I wonder…? I’ve been so very fortunate to work by Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd who’ve both made vast amount of works both collaboratively and individually. On this journey, they’ve both helped me facilitate my project, ground my ideas and help me develop my thinking with intensive talks and contributions. I got talking to them about the some things they’ve both achieved and details of past projects that have been sensitive in approach. Watching them work, being around them, for me personally has been inspiring. Two women: genuine, real, compassionate who both mean what they say and say what they mean.

How does inhabiting a community like Walthamstow help your practice?  

When I started university, I lived near Walthamstow market, a place that reminded me of my home. It was the place I strolled when I had to adjust myself to the privileged others from university; what I understood here was how I wanted to be a positive part of this cohesion. Undeniably, the differences that occur due to class systems set an obvious bearing to our daily choices. This was the reason for which I could imagine myself working creatively amongst the crowds, not disrupting what already is, but in my small way helping to strengthen the identity of The Drive and Attlee Estates, and developing myself and my practice as an artist through this process.

What are you most looking forward to during the E17 Art Trail this year? 

I am interested to see the works of my fellow resident artists too, who have been working alongside my project. Most of all, I looked forward to the LiveLunch on Saturday 31st May. It was the first time for me to work with my mother, Minaxi, too. This is a project my mother and I have been talking about for some years! My Mum and I cooked on site, delivering the food, welcoming people whose families come from all over the world – those who both live on the estates and also visitors like us, all of which was very exciting! I guess, she was the centre of my show, as she raised me the best way she knew how, which of course has been a crucial part to the early formation of my own identity and something I wish to cherish, considering family cohesion an important part of social cohesion.

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

For LiveElse[W]here, and at intervals throughout May 2014, artists Leena Chauhan and Pablo Perezzerate worked in residence in our project space LockUpNumber11, alongside artist Jordan McKenzie as co-curator – engaging residents across different spaces in sound, film, drawing, tailored-made performance in people’s homes and print. In parallel, several residents took up residency in LockUpNumber11 as a space to develop their own work and creative ideas.

LiveElse[W]here culminated in our LIVE LUNCH on May 31st, 12-3pm, during which Pablo prepared and shared Mexican food while simultaneously sharing family stories and memories, and Leena cooked Kenyan/Indian style food with her very own Mama. Attended by artists, curators, commissioners, local residents, and members of the public exploring the E17 Art Trail, LIVE LUNCH was also a space for seeing some of the work made by the artists involved in LiveElse[W]here, acting as a springboard for discussing the value of performance and visual artists working on estates such as those on which our project takes place in E17.

Feedback from a participant on the day: “When I walked down The Drive in Walthamstow yesterday afternoon after a lengthy drive of another nature, I knew from first glance how worthwhile it had been to be stuck in traffic from the scene that I was to become a part of in the coming moments. There was artistry not just in the wonderful array of colours decorating the area, but in the cohesion of colour and style of people coming together in exactly the way that I would have hoped, as an informal artist’s assistant connected with the work being produced by the drawing shed group, resident artists of this community.

Grey pillars were decorated with crimson tape, mounted with coloured lines from which hung dazzlingly produced prints in eye-catching hues, and covering the signs issuing commands to the residents about prohibitions, were prints of clothing labels from all over the world, that were worn by local residents, to draw attention to how much diversity was gathered in this small area. Fate could not have produced a more perfect day for the occasion. A lovely, warm, slightly breezy day compounded the warmth that I felt from people of various origins, artists and residents, people of advanced ages, people young and carefree enough to seemingly live effortlessly in the moment, people of all ages in-between, relaxing together after sharing a lunch that was a culmination of interactions on the estate for this project.

There is a world of art that is glitzy and commercial, that perhaps at times makes a deliberate effort to “be more accessible” that I personally feel somewhat alienated from. The artwork of this project, with which I was engaging today, was so much more than the money-making highly commercial stuff. It was real. It was meaningful to me. Pardon my wide-eyed lyrical reflections, but they are induced only because I find this so rare: it really touched me. I’m writing this partly just to capture, in the way I prefer, something of the experience, for my journal, and partly as a simple act of appreciation that I wish to share with the organisers and artists responsible for what I came to enjoy so thoroughly yesterday afternoon. So, the drawing shed with Bobby, Sally, Jordan, Pablo, Angelique, Esther, Jayne and Will and last and for me personally definitely not least, Leena: thank you, and may there be more of a similar nature to come, and take pleasure from.”

Amy Wevill from the E17 Art Trail also joined us for the LIVE LUNCH – read her blog piece here

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research – 9 ELMS – Wandsworth

thedrawingshed.SomeWhereNow

www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

the drawing shed’s new project Some[w]Here Research is underway, opening up new imaginative spaces through engaging residents across the Wandsworth estates of Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens.

Together with performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen and designer-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi, the drawing shed will be working in and between the three estates’ public spaces, activating these outdoor spaces within and across the estates through the visible process of making a series of mobile structures. Exploring the history of the area, including the old soap box factories and go-kart culture, and learning from older people living on the estates Some[w]Here will explore the platforms from which stories are told and conversations take place across the estates, cultures and generations, with the PROJECT BLOG – www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com – providing further space for residents to share and explore old memories and new ideas. Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking.

9elms03.webSurveying the scene on Thessaly Road

9elms6.webBeautiful garden path on Savona

9elms7.webWhose in goal on a sunny afternoon

9elms13.web9elms08.webOut and about – all things mobile

9elms09.webOver the wall to Covent Garden Market

9elms11.webWatching Battersea Power Station changing before their eyes

City of London Festival, 2011

City of London Festival, 2011

City of London Festival, 2011

Labern+Lloyd with PrintBike were invited by The Campaign for Drawing to take part in The City of London Festival in July 2011, to make mono-prints with office workers, tourists, and literally whoever walked past. Day One was very wet indeed.

!

Cycling to our new site at Great St Helen’s on the second day.

This second day was windy!

And the other passing enterprise on wheels needed directions and a print or two…

In the afternoon, the sun came out.

Lots of people made a lot more printing on fluorescent paper.

There were some poetic moments…

And the prints glowed.

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

the drawing shed invited residents, passers-by, friends and other organisations to participate in their mini youth festival, ‘Festival Here’, on Sunday 1st July 2012 from 12pm to 5pm on the green area at the intersection of Prospect Hill and Attlee Terrace (E17 3EG).

Festival Here was led by the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project with the support of Roisin Feeney, performance director from The Albany, Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd from the drawing shed, and “…Ask Freda”. The day centred around the girls’ new performative work that used film, Twitter and den-making. The girls have been using the quad spaces and streets of Attlee Terrace to explore how teenage girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?), and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets – redefining and examining their rights to be more visible within their communities.

the drawing shed invited artists EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS to make interventions and socially engaged works as part of the festival, while  ClayOven provided more than 70 pizzas for over one hundred local residents, passers-by and invited guests. The project was supported by Walthamstow School for Girls, Asham Homes, Waltham Forest Council and Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project. It was funded by Arts Council England and Hoe Street Community Fund.

For further information email thedrawingshed@gmail.com

PERFORMANCE PROJECT. For more information Click Here

Conflict Resolution with YIAG

(Waltham Forest Youth Independent Advisory Group)

Guest Artists: EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS


PEOPLELIKEUS

PEOPLELIKEUS

PEOPLELIKEUS, A LIVE TWITTER PERFORMANCE, 2012

The PeopleLikeUs Collective led its first Live Twitter Performance as part of the E17 Art Trail in September 2012. This public Twitter writing performance has further extended this space beyond the estates and into the ether where others were able to join the PeopleLikeUs Collective in writing to the hash-tag #bestow during the recent E17 Art Trail, September 2012. See our Blog During Spring and Summer 2012, the drawing shed @WordintheHand worked with writers Jacob Sam- La Rose and Dorothy Fryd on a Twitter live art writing project PeopleLikeUs, with residents of Attlee Terrace, The Drive and Hoe St in E17.the drawing shed’s interest in using Twitter for Live writing and Open Performance is in pushing the creative boundaries of dialogical art practice led by artists in both public and community spaces, exploring innovative ways to connect communities and to build virtual relationships; The value of difference and cultural values exposed and in creative collision, has become the material fabric of a rising and responsive Community of the Imagination.

Over the spring and summer of 2012 the PeopleLikeUs Collective met regularly to write together and use Twitter as a creative space to explore, share and riff off each other in the ether.

In collaboration with the E17 Art Trail Poetry Trail organisers, we warmly welcomed everyone with Twitter on their mobile phone to join us on Sunday 2nd September, with Jacob Sam-La Rose, in a Live performance during the E17 Art Trail. On the streets of Attlee Terrace , The Drive and the Hoe Street Ward  and using the 140 characters of Twitter, we wrote on the hashtag #Bestow to embrace The E17 Art Trails Poetry Trail. Participants needed to have Twitter on their mobile phone to join us in this collaborative writing project. A full briefing  at 2pm at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY was given to all participants. No previous experience of using Twitter in this way was needed, though the basics of Twitter and a Twitter name were.

At the end of the performance at 4pm, tea, flapjacks and scones were served courtesy of “…Ask Freda”, a local residents’ community group, at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY.

TO TWEET:

1 – Set up a Twitter Account, Click Here

2 – Download on your mobile the Twitter App (For info about Twitter for Android Click Here, for info about Twitter for iPhone Click Here)

3 – Tweet under the hashtag #bestow

4 – Alway leave a single ‘space’ before and after #bestow or it will not be picked up within the group of Tweets and your contribution will be invisible to all of us!

5 – To read the stream of #bestow tweets, click on the hashtag #bestow

 

SOME[W]HERE

SOME[W]HERE

SOME[W]HERE

https://somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking

the drawing shed worked on a project Some[w]Here  on the three housing estates Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens in Nine Elms, London referred to locally as ‘the island’, the land-locked social housing area opposite the now infamous Battersea Power Station site, with the new American Embassy being built on its flank, to be surrounded by an insulated, ‘double skinned’ layer of privately owned flats for a new richer community.

Our project Some[w]Here explored through the metaphor of the Go Cart and the Soap Box, both migration and the fluctuating gifts of memory in relation to early street play (imagination, resilience, survivability) and the first days of work (alienation) for current residents who have come to live in the area from all over the world.

It was this critical friction of an artist-directed discourse between older estate residents, men and women of 68 – 98 years, that informed the content of the work: contemporary go cart inspired objects and mobile Soap Boxes, built on the streets with architect-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi whilst live/performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen made provocative interventions, and we as lead artists created quieter works as individuals triggered by this multi-layered approach and the ‘unfixed’ organic methodologies of the collaborative works we make.

Both this very accessible ‘public’ work and the disruption of the streets created the rupture in dominant ideas that flowed into these quieter individual responses. In this liminal space, and in the case of Nine Elms, a physical in-between space too of an echo chamber within which we found a ‘Point of Resonance’,  creating performative and film-based works as individual artists – like the project’s poetic body piercing.

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

Residency: TEXT FESTIVAL BURY, MAY 3 -AUGUST 9, 2014

As part of Text Festival 2014, the drawing shed, aka artists Lloyd+Labern, set up THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL: a selection of old manual typewriters in Bury Sculpture Centre for a residency spanning the Laurence Wiener exhibition; Over the months they invited the local Bury public to take part in a number of events, interventions and opportunities to slam the keys, copy those carbons, make new music, write a love letter, settle an old score, make overtures to a community, create the only page of a novel, type out an apology, make a flat plan sculpture, write a poem, type alone, write together.

Event: Twitter: #un_civil

Exploring the [un]civil in contemporary society, Lloyd+Labern worked with a group of artists and writers to construct a score for a performative text work using Social Media Twitter for Neighbour : Stranger, a collaborative live art writing project. Opening up a space in the commons of the ether, the work was a call and response that extended the enquiry beyond the physical space of the Gallery, where the collisions of experience, ideas and form could take place, and the poetry of this work hit the discomfort of the prosaic and bounced up into a mile high space. Screened in real time in Bury Sculpture Centre, exhibition visitors and artists were invited to join us in the ether, or on the typewriters in response to the emerging conversation.

The Exhibition:

the drawing shed artists Labern+Lloyd were in residence at intervals over the months of the Laurence Weiner exhibition, creating several new works in collaboration with the Bury public and through provocations with local artists. Inspired by scientist Dr Elodie Briefer’s research on the SkyLark’s song and its split-second nuanced changes in recognising both Strangers and Neighbours, the artists made a number of new visual works using the Typewriter and its Carbon Copy investigating the [un]civil in times of austerity and migration.

 

The Public Typing Pool – Call Out : for Typewriters:

“Iris Murdoch wrote on a Bijou Erika…..Allen Jack Kerouac an Underwood portable, William Burroughs a Remington or whatever he could get his hands on. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used an Erika Ten Portable, Françoise Sagan a 1950’s Smith Corona Portable, George Perec an Underwood 5, and Anne Sexton a Royal Quiet Deluxe…. Ginsberg loved an Underwood 5 or was it a Remington No5?

The Public Typing Pool will work with local groups and will be open to the public to enjoy throughout May, June, July and August! Do you have an old Olivetti Lettera 32 / 22, or a Remington or a majestic old Smith Corona ….all makes, sizes and shapes are welcome!

Bury Art Museum is making a Call Out for old manual Typewriters – if you have one you could donate to create the Public Typing Pool as part of this project to launch Bury Sculpture Centre. Your story about your typewriter can become part of the artwork…!”

 

 

Man walks into The Public Typing Pool at Text Festival in Sculpture Centre Bury; he speaks to no one and sits down at one of the manual typewriters donated by a public call out, and he writes for 40 minutes: 

‘I Loved Her’

He then gets up and walks out leaving the typed sheet, the copy and the carbon. Beautiful.
Neighbour : Stranger

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

Artists Labern&Lloyd “trace the curve of the sun’s rays as they just graze the surface” (James Maxwell, Physicist)

What does society keep in the dark, and how can it be illuminated? Labern&Lloyd of the drawing shed, working at Tate Modern as The Light Collectors, collaborated with scientists hosted by The Institute of Physics in November 2015. Together they invited the public to engage in an afternoon of Black Light, with open conversation and research. Hundreds of people throughout the day took part in an ongoing dialogue with top physicists and astro biologists about the science and politics of light.

Framed by an installation drawn from the artists’ ongoing research into the hidden at this critical point in history, ultraviolet light revealed the disjuncture between extra-ordinary scientific explorations across the full spectrum of light and the endemic slow violence caused by human domestic light poverty across the world.

Labern&Lloyd chose the human labour and skill of hand cutting the paper stencils over a period of 12 hours, matching the year round daylight hours experienced daily by people living on the line of the equator; the prints are screened in the same UV used by the British Security Industry to track our movements, identity and money.

The Public Typing Pool©, with its manual typewriters fitted with invisible UV inked typewriter ribbons, welcomed the public to contribute to an ever growing installation of contemporary concerns, made from UV ink texts and drawings revealed through the use of hand held Black Light torches.

Part of the International Year of Light in collaboration with the Institute of Physics.

 

 

 

WITH THANKS

the drawing shed would like to thank the following people and organisations for their invaluable contributions to this project:

Dr Matthew Clark, Chemist and Education Manager & Richard Ashworth, Colour Experience Manager: Society of Dyers and Colourists

Dr Sergio Ioppolo & Daniel Weatherhill: Astrophysicists, Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University

Ali Hudson: Evolutionary Biology and astrophysics student, Edinburgh University

Toby Shannon: the Institute of Physics’ Coordinator of International Year of Light

Joseph Kopiel, Artist: stencil cutting and screen-printing

University of East London: ADI, Print Studio

Tate Modern: Public Programmes, Community

Brian Rothwell, typewriter ribbons: Inkjet Stores, Bury, Greater Manchester

Simon Foster-Ogg: provider of things interesting and light-related

 

PRINTBIKE

PRINTBIKE

PRINTBIKE

PrintBike – the mobile print workshop powered by its Brompton fold-up bicycle (and sponsored by Brompton!) has been working both on the estates in Waltham Forest and across London since Autumn 2010. Currently it resides at Arlington, the large homeless hostel in Camden where the drawing shed is in residency with its Irregular Bulletin project.
In 2012, PrintBike worked hard at a local primary school in E17 as part of a series of Saturday printmaking workshops with families, during the Silver Jubilee street part on the estates and as well as took part in the E17 Art Trail in September. 2011, Labern+Lloyd were invited to take PrintBike into a number of diverse settings, from a park in a deprived part of Waltham Forest to the heart of the City of London to the Peoples Supermarket in Lambs Conduit Street near Holborn (and to Adhocracy at the Rich Mix in Bethnal Green, August 6-7). These three pieces of work were visually linked by the astonishingly direct and equitable medium of mono-printing that engaged a vast array of people and led to the re-tiling of a duck house, the dressing of shop windows and fleeting words on a city square bench.

The PrintBike project’s conceptual intention in E17 has been to get individuals to physically move from one estate to the other so as to set up adult discourses using PrintBike. To this end, Studio Polpo designed a simple mobile printing-making trailer for the drawing shed, built in Waltham Forest and powered by an orange Brompton fold-up bicycle.
‘We have used screen/mono-printing as the main tools with which to trigger ongoing visual ‘conversations’ in contrast to the omni-present negative signage that loudly punctuates the estate. In agreement with the estate manger’s CEO – indeed, with whom we have discussed the project intentions in some detail – and with residents, we have slowly ‘taken over’ the over-blown signage to create different levels of discussion through which to explore and not exclude uncomfortable, potentially ‘critical’ voices within this temporary exchange. We anticipated that these voices might at times be discordant, and inevitably diverse, ranging from the descriptive to the poetic to the banal to the political, therefore moving back and forth between the external and the internal’.
‘We have involved a volunteer resident in two lots of training and we are building in more of this so that the residents themselves can start to co-lead creative workshops with participants linked to the signage project. Thus our developing competence as printmakers is beginning to be transmitted down to residents, a number of whom are now developing skills and realisable means of expressing their ideas, concerns and creativity’.
‘We are using print to encourage debate amongst residents across both estates, as well as for residents to explore experiences and language, and contribute to developing a sense of place and ownership in what has historically been a somewhat fragmented community with a documented low level of ‘well being’.

CLAYOVEN

CLAYOVEN

CLAYOVEN

The idea of ClayOven came to us when we were making the drawing shed in the cafe garden of the Forest YMCA with the help of our carpenter and residents – the ‘Y’ sits to the South of the two Hoe St estate communities – many of the Y’s residents aren’t able to cook their own meals due to the lack of kitchens and they expressed really strong feelings about how this denied them connection to a deeper cultural part of themselves, one that is signified by the making and sharing of food.

In fact, the mobile ClayOven came into being for the Big Lunch, June 2010. Launched at this community organised event on the two estates where residents decided that they needed it to bemobile so it can remain safe and unattractive to bored teenagers, this extraordinary ‘gift’ to the community was made by many local families and has now been well and truly understood as valuable, creative and a powerful connector. We still hope to build another small oven in the residents garden of the YMCA.

It has also been at the heart of the ‘cook and eat’ sessions where ‘…AskFreda’ and the drawing shed have invited families to share the cooking of a simple culturally-specific meal together in the open air, and will continue over the winter of 2011 / 12  in each other’s homes as another facet of the dialogues we set up across the estates. This community cooking which is led by local families,  informs the community cookbook that documents the building of the ClayOven and the ritual of food within the everyday, within evolving personal / community identities.

A Print image for  the home will also be created by the family cooks as the project develops, again led and inspired by residents as Art Activators for their own communities. This is the story then of the making of the ClayOven!

Since making ClayOven the drawing shed and ‘…AskFreda’ community group have had several community feasts all based around local cooking and in the open air. When ClayOven comes out it creates opportunities for local growers to donate vegetables, local cooks to share recipes and their cultural skills with others and an unthreatening casual space for friendships to be forged.

Stories of ClayOvens across the world also get shared and it becomes a space that fires the imagination; on July 1st 2012 ClayOven was used to make over 72 pizzas for a youth arts event, ‘Festival Here’, led by young people taking part in the Performance Project.

It has also been at the heart of the ‘cook and eat’ sessions where ‘…AskFreda’ and the drawing shed have invited families to share the cooking of a simple culturally-specific meal together in the open air, and will continue over the winter of 2011 / 12  in each other’s homes as another facet of the dialogues we set up across the estates. This community cooking which is led by local families,  informs the community cookbook that documents the building of the ClayOven and the ritual of food within the everyday, within evolving personal / community identities.

A Print image for  the home will also be created by the family cooks as the project develops, again led and inspired by residents as Art Activators for their own communities. This is the story then of the making of the ClayOven!

TOP BOY BAKERS

TOP BOY BAKERS

BAKING PROJECT LAUNCHING JANUARY 2017!

Started by boys living on the estates, our fabulous baking & mentoring project, now for boys aged 12-16, will be supported by adult men who will train as mentors & encourage boys from the estates to develop their baking skills, learn to sell what they produce and share their culinary creations with families, friends, neighbours & the wider community.

The project was launched in January 2017 with baking workshops led by expert East London bakers at Today Bread bakery and café on Hoe Street. Men and Boys – this project is for you!

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO SEE WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING TO DATE:

https://topboybakers.herokuapp.com

tbb-mentors-poster-thedrawingshed_poster

tbb-seekingboys-poster

MENTOR TRAINER WANTED

top-boy-bakers-with-oven

Top Boy Bakers is an exciting and innovative baking and mentoring project for adult men and vulnerable boys aged 12-16, living in and around The Drive and Attlee Terrace estates in Walthamstow. The men and boys will participate in a programme of bread and pizza making workshops led by Alex Bettler – a talented local baker and founder of Today Bread in Walthamstow Central.  The men will also be trained as mentors and provide on-going support to the boys to ensure they make the most of their new baking skills.

We would like to hear from men aged 25+ who have some baking skills or an enthusiasm to learn, and who are interested in becoming positive role models to the boys. We are also seeking a professional male trainer to deliver a series of mentoring training sessions.

Please see the brief for the Mentoring Trainer below. If you or someone you know is interested in delivering the training or becoming a mentor, please get in touch with Clare Moloney, Community Development Coordinator, thedrawingshed.community@gmail.com 

top-boy-bakers_brief-for-mentoring-trainer