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

Opinions about media

Jamie Oliver & American podcasts In January this year, whilst lying in the Aotearoa New Zealand sun on my mother deck, sipping a beer I listened to the Sporkful podcast with Jamie Oliver. It is a succinct 35 mins – which, I think is a good length for a podcast. It picks up on certain aspects of his career but aims to cover his whole life story, in particular the fact he is the best-selling nonfiction author in the UK of all time, and the irony of him being dyslexic and not reading a whole book till the age of 38. I understand the desire in a short interview but trying to give an overarching sense of a man and his whole career - this means there is a lot of myth building. Jamie is like a politician, he goes in with good intentions, does great stuff. Then gets caught up in his own Kool-Aid and loses touch with the real people, and the full discussion. Which is, ironic, or rather amusing, because of what he says about politicians – “these are people that are car...

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 Mal...

Bodies broken into boxes

The launch of Sourced's new season on Trees had me thinking a lot about landscape, and the systems of landscape, and how us humans are part of that systems. I have a lot of feels, after so much reading I do, that doesn’t always allow for concise ‘academic’ or ‘journalistic’ writing - there is no argument to be made. When I think of landscapes, I often think of trees, of the jungle. And this thinking is always a visceral one, the feeling of a landscape on my skin, in my bones, and translation down generations. I’m interested in how colonialists saw these ‘new world’ landscapes; there were ‘Enlightened’ thinkers who deeply thought about the environment, but saw the environment as an influence on the people as opposed to a conversation - the landscape was a un-thing; oppressive even. The environment was a way to justify a hierarchy of race, and from there racial definitions became ways to legitimise slavery, exploitation… our beloved environment was a reason to subjugate. So ...

TALKING ABOUT FOOD

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