Next Gen News

A stroll through the streets of Hackney Wick in the stillness of the afternoon, past the shells of old factories and graffiti-strewn walls of galleries, Daren Ellis is a man at home in a new part of town. The art director fell under the spell of the neighborhood in 2009, when he came to collect a suit by a young designer for London Fashion Week. Then on to Soho, he decided it was time for a change. He bought a house in the country called Iceland fish, rented a place near and in April opened an exhibition space, studio lake.

Beguiled though populated by all the usual reasons artists in this part of town, you is - big sky, low rents, and community - Ellis has a special reason for his move to the east. He has spied an opportunity. When he goes on a road bridge closed to traffic from fences and a big blue tarp, is the silence of empty streets way to the roar of a construction site. Across the seaweed-strewn waters of the Lee Navigation, the white triangles of a 80,000-seat, ? 537m stadium pierce the skyline.

"I 'm here because of the Olympics," says Ellis, 42, already has two games-themed exhibitions, has been one of them a collection of aerial photographs of the site. "There are a lot of interesting things happen here because of the Olympic Games. I 'm not so much in them as an event, but as it is in east London and how the vision of transforming built for the Olympic Games The Olympic Park is interested .. will be great. "

Not everyone is so optimistic. For several years, as the great successes of the Young British Artists edged punching her once, for reasons of Hoxton and Shoreditch was rich, but mild, emerging artists, further progress of the center for affordable space. Hackney Wick, they felt that they had stumbled on a piece of secret London. With one year to go before the Olympics, but it is no longer a secret. And during discovery has brought new interest and new money, it has also brought concern.

Gavin Turk, one of the leading YBAs and now a proud resident of Fish Iceland, there is a sense of

text:

Now the East End is prepared for another incarnation: as a trade center, city planner 's dream and all-round global inspiration. Since London beat Paris in 2005 to become the host city - a day of triumph is quickly lost amid the rubble of the 7 / 7 bomb attacks on the next day - this area is in the spotlight like never before. Millions of pounds were in the five districts Olympic Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney cast, Greenwich and Waltham Forest. New transport links have been built, old ones upgraded. Huge new office buildings and apartments Hope for the latest wave of arrivals meet: bring middle-class professionals, with the gentrification itself. The pace and scale of change is unprecedented, and many would argue, necessary. For the one factor that has remained constant in East London 's history of poverty is that the districts that border the Olympic Park are just some of the poorest in the country.

"You must look only to the health indicators to tell you that the further east to get there, the lower the life expectancy, the less opportunities in life, the lower the chances of the educational system, to get a job," Rushanara said Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow. "Now we have a long life 's opportunity; [let' not. S] blow this opportunity of the Olympic Games and the legacy that goes with it"

Ricky Burdett, chief adviser on architecture and urbanism in 2012 and was now advising the Olympic Legacy Park Company, hopes the Games will be "a very important role to play in rebalancing the town during the time", in the evening, the inequalities . Or otherwise - - While rushing towards, a legacy, would be warned not to evaluate its success clearly true, for decades, he said he was hopeful. "It sounds a bit romantic to say but I must say that contaminated in the Olympic Park the other day and seeing a swan in areas that I saw a year and a half days and terrible. It all was something to see the change "

Nestled between Hackney Wick and Stratford, which are 2.5sq km of land on which the Olympic park will be built, the nerve center of operations in 2012, the focus of the Games and their legacy. In an allusion to the leading role it is playing, the Royal Mail is the postal code where E20 - previously used only by residents of Albert Square EastEnders .

For the organizers of the games, what happens in the park after 2012 is almost as important as what happens during it. They promise the country for a large city park and a university will be used. Out of the athlete 'village will benefit around 2,800 new homes - half of them affordable - and from the stadium will be a new base for West Ham United and a running track. For many local people, the park is a source of joy. "Everyone 's enthusiastic" said Samira, 15 "Bring It 's kind of community together.' \

That's one view. It is not Iain Sinclair 's. The writer and Cassandra from Hackney today is the war to the Olympics and declared all of them - in its modern incarnation - is. For him, the Olympic Park is a sacrilegious invasion of a precious landscape, a top-down "\ big project" that was imposed on local populations with little regard for their needs or desires. Sitting in Victoria Park, next to what was once a lake but is now a crater of mud and garbage, he articulates his disgust. The park, a maze of wires and fences and signposts, is currently the regeneration of the Olympic Games is not mentioned, however, Sinclair says, "it 's the overflow of his funny money'. Splashing around and have spent S ".

Sinclair, whose new book, Ghost Milk , Explores the follies of the big projects in the UK and beyond, would perhaps be more patient with the interruption, if he wanted to believe in a position in the great Olympic story, after which the games can only be a good thing for East London. However, dismayed by the temporary removal of parts of the beloved community - gardening, for example, and soccer fields - sprout and repelled by the vision of a Westfield shopping center next to the stadium, he feels nothing but despair. "The Olympic Games have been just a huge engine for the enforcement of corporate development and the remaking, the rebranding of the entire region, it \ s made that happen faster 's what was" said "he added, and added: "Basically, it 'sa trick of the funding for an ongoing condition of the building and the housing and an alphabet soup of crazy quangos that you tell, how beautiful everything is and speaks a false heir, which in reality only generate a huge mall Australian shopping center. "

For those who might tentatively suggest that such an influx of money and development, need to east London from any use of the local population, Sinclair has a history lesson. "What happened at the docks went away Who with the money, there were vast fortunes from the construction made the building of the railroads, the construction of a deepwater port? Created all this enormous amount of money from east London, but it didn ' t go to East London;. it went elsewhere, that 's .. what happens "

At the corner of Bow Road and Harley Grove, wearing a shabby block of flats, a commemorative plaque. "A tribute to George Lansbury, who lived for 23 years in the House earlier on this page," it reads. "He was a great servant of the people of Bow." A former leader of the Labour Party and fighter for social justice and better working conditions in the East End, died Lansbury May 1940, just months before the Nazi bombs began to fall. But his neighborhood is in need as a worker 's hero as ever.

Walking home past the Lansbury block, Norman, 57, says he is optimistic about the changes occurring because of 2012. But he feels more could have been done to include local people. "They should have had priority and discount on tickets, and local schools should've done too, because our young people don't have too much to do and lots has been taken away from them already." Norman, who doesn't want to give his surname, has four sons, but only one of them is working. "Two of them have been in prison, one still is. The other two are on the streets mostly," he says. He himself is looking for work, but hasn't found anything yet.

It is Ali 's concern that their constituents from the Olympic boom be left as they reap the reward of the allegedly failed "trickle-down" development of Canary Wharf. She wants more to be done to the locals in the expected 100,000 jobs will be created, and is still angry that the Olympic marathon was moved to the center of London. "By and large the people were very excited and positive, but they feel \ re cheated 'a great chance," she says. "If they are locked out of these opportunities, that generation will never forgive us."

The East London of today, says Sinclair, a place of "is big culture shock", a place of gangs is "next to the picnickers on the lawn sipping champagne" London Fields.

Lloyd French, a community development worker who came to London from the Caribbean in 1964, has been entertained by the reaction in Dalston, the arrival of the bourgeoisie. "I tend to laugh now, because my Afro-Caribbean friends are now saying the same things I heard when I arrived," he says. Their complaint? "The yuppies \."

A mural on the side of the house next shows people of all ages and colors, smiling and making music together. This is Hackney Peace Carnival Mural from 1983, when he was commissioned to pay tribute to the solidarity of the local people in the face of the global nuclear threat. The characters in the mural are celebrating in the face of an uncertain future. Asked if she believes that East London 's new money, you could kill the culture, the special Dalston, Janet makes Sawkins says: "No, you' ve got a positive turn of events or provide you 'll be in the doldrums ever won 't you? "