I Love Chatsworth Road - writing for the local newsletter

At the moment I am doing some pro bono work for the local publication I Love Chatsworth Road.
In normal times it is a magazine and an instagram account run as a passion project by photographer Jorn Tomter. Now, it is a weekly newsletter about stories from the local area, although stretching a little further into Hackney than usual.

It is a local area that is built up of small independent shops and businesses that are changing weekly - if not daily! And, a lot of people are offering services, crowd funding and doing incredible work during this time.

So this newsletter offers the local community a source of info and a way for businesses to get the information out about what they have pivoted too. This is a newsletter that is positive, and I'm enjoying writing for it! Not all food, but -

Here are some of the things I have written about, for the newsletter.

Hackney School of Food
The story of Hackney School of Food is one of community, changing spaces, the need to adapt and of working together. It is also easy to see everything as temporary at the moment and to forget that community existed before and will exist after, but we can’t just see that the work being done in this community as only for the now.
Helpful Engineering UK
A volunteering project that organises the making of PPE face shields. An interview with the Hackney Hub.
Made In Hackney
This charity has collaborated with a local restaurant and are making over 400 meals a day for vulnerable people in the community.
London Canal Community
I love the canal, walking in the morning with my dog has been the saving grace of this time. Watching the seasons change, seeing the boats - a lot has been happening on the canal during this time, many of those that live on the canal have had to pivot and here is a little about what life is like.

Here are all the featured stories, do read through, there are so wonderful people in Homerton!
Photo at the top by Jorn!

Comments

The Body Eats

When I first saw Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975) I remember feeling a deep hunger. My belly rumbled, my torso tightened and the muscles sucked into my belly button as my body concaved in on itself. I could feel my arms wanting to desperately reach out and seek things to fill me up, to bring close to me, to suck up and consume. I wanted to devour the world. I watched it the first year of my Performing Arts undergraduate, where I thought I would major in dance and movement. In the end I didn’t, switching in the final semester to acting, after struggling to feel fully comfortable with my body moving through space for people to watch. I decided I preferred to hide behind words. Dance has always been a space of thirst, for cravings, for desire – a way to seek out and pursue, a way to rampage through ideas. Moving to be sated. Finishing dance exams growing up I would always be hungry, never being able to eat when nervous. Navigating how to feel in leotards, in front of mirrors, o

The undoing and redoing of me

I am often thinking about the line between public and private, the way it wavers, blurs, disappears. In a world of social media it is a question for everyone, and not just for the stars, royalty, politicians. For me the question broadens into the realm of work. Where do I begin, and where do ‘I’ end. The ‘I’ must interrogate my place within power structures, within cultural narratives, within relatability. My academic research was about a community I am part of, through my father. It was an ‘objective’ approach to examine storytelling, but because it was not a culture I participated in on a daily basis I was constantly negotiating my position in the work, my lens in the re-telling, my biases, my outside-ness and my inside-ness. The story of me became integral to the condition of the research. And, as my professional career has progressed, my approximation to this culture, one that is less known in the wider world, means I have become a tool to crack into these spheres - I have the con

Understanding Malaysia: part one of ?

‘The (Malay)Asian Friend’ I think this will be a series of essays, a disgruntled thread that may take a lifetime to untangle. The continued misunderstanding of a complex nation, where borders and boundaries come from flux, where the jungle makes lines in the earth an impossibility and yet politics, nationalism, colonial lens and the exotic touristic eye compete to limit and define a nation built on migration and the movement of people. (and I realise that this could refer to not just Malaysia!) My original gripe comes from the limitation of how Malaysia food, and therefore Malaysians, gets represented in London. I write in my book (out in a year’s time) that we are boiled down to a few dishes - “roti canai, beef rendang, nasi lemak, nasi goreng, maybe sambal, and now laksa.” The request for these dishes is like a checklist of if a restaurant is ‘authentically’ Malaysia, or someone is authentically Malaysian if they know/like/eat them. You don’t crave nasi lemak, are you really Malaysi

TALKING ABOUT FOOD

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