Wednesday, October 31, 2018


I've mentioned in previous blog posts that I was involved in a project from 2014-17 called A Hackney Autobiography. This Arts Council-funded endeavour, in conjunction with not-for-profit organisation On The Record, looked into the history of Centerprise, a community centre that existed in the borough, and was at its peak in the 70s and 80s. Centerprise housed a bookshop, café, crèche, youth arts and learning space, local publishing project, meeting place for many radical groups and left-wing newspapers such as the now-defunct Hackney People’s Press, housing advice centre (which my father was involved with), and more. In 2012, it finally closed doors after a long battle with Hackney Council.

Based at Bishopsgate Institute, which contains a huge archive of material, myself and other volunteers began the huge task of digitalising, archiving, and mapping Centerprise’s archive, while many other volunteers on the project interviewed key people who were involved in Centerprise in the 70s and 80s. Along the way, we explored the history of Hackney during that time, from the riots on Sandringham Road to lost communities and the strained relations between police in Stoke Newington and the local Afro-Caribbean community. The fruits of all this work were a website, bookThe Lime Green Mystery: An Oral History of the Centerprise Co-operative – and an app, which offers GPS located auto-tours of Hackney. Get on the 55 bus from Shoreditch to Clapton with the app on your headphones and you’ll find yourself transported back to the day when the area was full of factories, with stories narrated by the ordinary people who worked in those factories and lived nearby. I’ve used the app and it works!

Centerprise in the 1990s - photograph courtesy of Bernadette Haplin

Starting from this Saturday (3rd November), the Hackney Wick arts centre Stour Space will be hosting a free retrospective exhibition of A Hackney Autobiography, which includes photography of many of those who were involved in Centerprise during its heyday. There will be an opening event on Saturday from 3-6pm, after which the exhibition will run daily from 9pm-5am until 21st November.

Stour Space is located near Hackney Wick station; click here to see how to get to the venue. I've also included a map below.