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Is Hackney WickEd back this year? People have been asking us, phone calls demanding information and such (something that happens rather a lot here in terms of art events), It looks like there is some kind of attempt to revive the once beautiful thing that was the Hackney WickED weekend. At the moment it is rather unclear in terms of who is behind the move or what (if anything) will actually be happening? We not really expecting art installations on every street corner, spontaneous dance parties on the street blocking bus routes, hand built temporary galleries, art drops, and stages on Fish island but is something happening? Information is at best vague.
What we will find? Will we find anything? Hackney Wick is a much changed place, well documented now, gentrification, all those new build blocks where the DIY artists studios and the artist led creativity once was. What there is there now in terms of the developer-approved purpose built art spaces as part of the new builds seem a little “controlled” and almost certainly under the thumb of those damn property developers who really have ripped the soul out of the place.
The Wick these days feels more like one big bar, one big eating and drinking fest, consume rather than create. The real Hackney Wick is long gone now, there hasn’t been anything like a proper Hackney WickED weekend since 2019 and that one, in all honesty felt a little sanitized, attempts by organisations like Here East have felt like little more than art washing, taking part kind of left a bad aftertaste.
Hey, we all know the real Hackney Wick is long gone, that was back then, this is the here and now, can some of that spirit be found? Can something ne revived? The weekend is scheduled for July 28th until 30th and officially (or unofficially) billed as HWED DIY Open Studio – Just “Studio”, not studios and from what we can see the two still surviving big Space-run Studio buildings, the Britannia Road complex and Bridget Riley studios (surely vital to any WickED weekend?) have their own opening scheduled for the weekend of September 16th/17th (16th being an unfortunate clash with this year’s Art Car Boot Fair at Kings Cross).
Response from whoever the WickED team are now has been pretty slow, actually besides some automated response, there has been none even though their Facebook page asks people to get in touch. Here’s what they say on the pretty vague Facebook event page…
“Hackney WickED started in 2008 as a collective voice to celebrate art and support the artist community in the growing threat of gentrification and London 2012 Games. As a volunteer led organisation, bringing in seasonal freelancers when possible, the lockdown really made it impossible to carry on our work – not only the threat of social distancing but unsuccessful funding applications that would have helped us to get through. Many locals got ACE grants, all kinds, but as the criteria was often based on commercial profit losses, we fell through the gaps, sadly as many small grassroots arts organisations probably did… Anyway, we miss you, our community miss each other, so here is a tentative, shall we just do something… ? DIY, or more like Do It Together… no programme, no comms, no map, just word of mouth and socials?? Like in the early days? A knees up to say hello again to each other, first and foremost? Get our spirits and heads together to see what we can continue to do as a community? All food for thought… We’d be happy to hear your suggestions, any input of skills that could be brought into the team, all welcome”
They did ask people to direct message them via their Facebook page (that still has a header feature the 2019 WickED), sending a message, as we did 48 hours ago results in is this automatic message – “Hello, thank you for contacting us! We’ve received your message and appreciate you getting in touch. As Hackney WickED is once a year summer event it may take us some time to respond to messages outside of the event period” – I would have thought, considering we’re a week away from the date we are probably in the “event period” right now?
So in answer to the phone calls and e.mails, we think something maybe might be happening next weekend, we don’t know where or what? We don’t know anything in terms of scale? We’re trying to be positive, we’d love to think some of that beautiful spirit can be revived or maybe even built upon, is Hackney Wick more about a plastic glass of beer, an overpriced slice of pizza and all those property sales offices than being about art now? There is of course still quite a bit of graff on the actual streets, a touch of street art, not as much wall space or builders boards as there once was of course but there is still a lot. There is something suggested to be happening for the weekend of July 28th/30th, there is a Facebook event page, other than that we haven’t got a bleedin’ clue mate, if we find out anything more worth telling you about we’ll post about it, watch their social media I guess…
The Hackney Wicked Facebook event page
Stop Press: Sunday 23rd July – We did finally get a response yesterday after a little more prodding, “there’s nothing planned, we hoped to start a conversation again to see if people feel they’d want to revive it or recreate it somehow. All I hear is nothing is the same there any more, different crowds. So unsure if it would be relevant or artists want to be involved. I really hoped an underground Wicked could take off but the reality is it takes a lot of organisation to get people involved and then prepare their studios..”. There you have it, it feels to me like we have a different generation of artists now, conditioned by a rather different more corporate conservative rule-based art school agenda, not sure there’s much of that united underground feel that did drive the Wick and lots of East London back there, not sure who’s or what is actually left in terms of Hackney Wick’s artists and studios. I don’t even know who we were talking to via the HWED Facebook page, I guess, with one week to go, the answer is nothing looks to be happening. The wick, like the rest of Hackney feels very different now, if there is still art that there isn’t too much unity, there’s a different set of gate keepers, the guts have been ripped out…
Previously…
ORGAN THING: Hackney Wicked, a taste of Inside Out and that packed out opening night last night…
ORGAN THING: Hackney Wicked is upon us, Aida Wilde and Edwin are Left Outside….
ORGAN THING: My Hackney Wicked weekend and the Fifth One Hundred Pieced art piece….
THE ORGAN 
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