Another slice of East London is on the way out, the railway arches of Clare Street, the East London caves, East London’s primitive cave system (as the ever excellent writer Iain Sinclair described them) are going, the family businesses, the car repair shops that were here when no one else wanted to be, the East London locals who’s lives are being torn apart as more business rents are tripled and more coffee shops and fancy food establishments that none of us long-term dwellers of East London can afford to eat in replace the forced out car garages and the workshops. I love the energy of Clare Street, the hives of activity, the language, the colour, the motorbikes and bits of cars, we surely don’t need any more sneery hand pulled pork flavoured coffee blending tattoo shops do we?  We artists are getting it bad in East London but these people in the taxi repair shops and the metalwork spaces, they’re getting it worse… Displacement opens tomorrow night on Clare street, Bethnal Green, East London, come celebrate the neighbourhood while you still can. There’s an Organ preview of Displacement here 

The next station is Hoxton…. primitive cave system….rivers…cockiness…. deep breath…. what is left. Cockroach in a landscape, creeping about…. rather good interview by John Rodgers with the ever stimulating Iain Sinclair here… it is completely upside down, just waiting on the next major developer… Meanwhile in the rubble of the developers, things are Not In Use

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Published on Jul 24, 2015 – Author Iain Sinclair talking about his recent books London Overground and Black Apples of Gower. Interview by John Rogers July 2015.

We have addressed these matters (frustrations, fears) quite frequently on these pages (and Organ’s sister Cultivate blog), we’ve been victims of the gentrification process ourselves of course, as have many of our friends and neighbours.  I really don’t like the way things are going around here, the way people are being bullied out….

ORGAN THING: Mare Street, An Idea of Progress? Space, Stik, Last Tuesday Society, Ivan Argote, The Cockney Shoe Model, the Regeneration architect, the impact entrepreneur, the futures thinker and Tony Two Vans…

London Does Need Artists (As Mare Street’s just about surviving Space Studios are saying at the moment), East london does needs artists, very much so, but what it needs far more are taxi repair shops, metalwork shops, car respray spaces, textile printing spaces, shoe makers, small industrial spaces, it isn’t like Clare Street wasn’t in full use, it isn’t like  hundreds of lives are played out down there everyday. When we artists moved in in the last century, we moved in to the spaces that no one wanted, spaces that were closed and falling down, that’s not the case now. Now people are being forced out of very active spaces, art spaces, gallery spaces, repairshop spaces, retail spaces, textile spaces, and all in the name of more coffee shops and a transient uncaring playground that shows no respect for the lives of families who have lived here for generations, no respect for local lives and businesses, for people’s hopes and dreams. Vyner Street was special, Clare street is very special,  the Cockney shoe model is special, I hope she comes to Displacement, she loved Cultivate, we loved seeing her and Two Vans and….

But we can buy ten different types of coffee on every street now. Shame to see the paintworks going, yesterday the Hackney Citizen newspaper reported that “Hoxton staple Paintworks is set to close at the end of July after supplying local artists with materials for 31 years. Based on the Kingsland Road, the shop is staffed by artists from the area and has seen some of the best known names in international art pass through its door” 

I love being part of the East London community, it is something to engage with, not arrogantly replace, Future Thinker? No, future destroyer, see you in Clare Street tomorrow night, there’s a lot of artists complaining about their lot in East London right now, far too few actually engaging with the community though, far too many hiding behind “secret” signpostless gallery space, good to see Displacement happening and art engaging, nice one Mr Cardboard  .. (SW)

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