The Hackney Podcast

What’s Gong On With Us

Hackney Podcast — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:15:25 +0000

"Wild Hackney" has been shortlisted for two of the inaugural BBC Audio Drama Awards.

The awards aim to celebrate and recognise the cultural importance of audio drama, on air and online, and to give recognition to the actors, writers, producers, sound designers and others who create narrative drama with sound.

The winners will be announced by actor David Tennant at a ceremony to be held on Sunday 29 January.

Hackney Hear nominated for Technical Innovation Award

Hackney Podcast — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:11:32 +0000

Hackney Hear is excited to have been nominated for the Radio Academy's inaugural Technical Innovation Awards. As you all know thanks to the Arts Council we've been building a prototype app over the summer around the London Fields area and we'll be launching it to iTunes soon so you can all have a go.

We'll be presenting our prototype app at TechCon at the Radio Festival on 31 October. There are just three nominees so fingers crossed for us!

About Hackney Hear

Hackney Hear is an audio iPhone app which triggers interviews, features, poetry and new writing depending on your location by GPS around east London. Funded by the Arts Council, and created by the award-winning Hackney Podcast, Hackney Hear is an immersive soundscape scoring your journey with stories and music, whilst eavesdropping on
conversations from all walks of life. Hackney Hear is due to launch in December 2011 for iPhone for free.

For more information about Hackney Hear visit: hackneyhear.com

For interviews, email hackneyhear@gmail.com or call 07817 168339

About Amblr

Amblr is a new digital platform for the creation of location-based experiences across a widerange of genres. It was founded by Alex Butterworth, the prize-wining historian and crossmedia author along with Stuart Lynn and Joe Zuntz, two veterans of Zooniverse citizen science projects. It’s first slate of projects, developed with diverse partners and collaborations including Hackney Hear will be announced in October 2011.

About TechCon

Tech Con celebrates technical developments in the radio industry at the Radio Academy’s annual Radio Festival. The Technical Innovation Award is new this year: “Whether you are a station engineer who has devised a new idea which helps your station interact with their audience, increase production standards, reduce costs or create revenue, or perhaps a manufacturer or supplier who has brought out a new product or service which helps stations achieve this ... We want to celebrate technical minds throughout the industry who are thinking outside the norm, going the extra mile and achieving the extraordinary.”

Qualifying for Europe

Hackney Podcast — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 11:00:30 +0000

Our good old Night programme has been nominated for the Prix Europa!

http://www.prix-europa.de/en/prix_europa_2011/

Edition 21: Wild Hackney

Hackney Podcast — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 23:28:21 +0000

Photo by Squint/Opera

Download audio file (Edition-21_-Wild-Hackney.mp3)

Wild Hackney is a docu-drama taking you through an imaginary landscape of the Lee Valley after the seawater has risen.

Made in response to the canal and the surrounding ancient flood plains, the piece takes as inspiration the Victorian Gothic novel After London by Richard Jefferies. Written in 1885, the book imagines London reverting to nature after a flood, with only a few survivors roaming the marshland.

Using field recordings of the area, the feature moves through scenes of a future Hackney combinging elements of documentary and fiction to reflect on the allure of urban ruin.

Wild Hackney was commissioned by Folly For A Flyover as part of CREATE 2011 festival. It was installed in the canoe boats to be listened to on the journey from the Middlesex Filterbeds along to Fish Island and the Olympic site. But it should work in its own right as a documentary so listen at home or download it and take it for a walk down the canal or in to the marshes.

Producers: Francesca Panetta and Russell Finch
Narrator: Frank Burnett
Contributors: The Marshman, Leo Mellor, and the River Gypsies
Music: Andrew Pekler, Kev Hopper and Chapters
Additional help: Xavier Zapata and Alex Hocking

Edition 20: Writers on Walking

Hackney Podcast — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 23:00:48 +0000

Photo by Shehani Fernando

We take four authors for a walk through Hackney. Sean Borodale's poem Notes for an Atlas guides us through, we rise early to join Iain Sinclair for his morning perambulation to the A12, Lemn Sissay takes us from his local shop Palm 2 (where all walks begin) to hear of his tale of going barefoot for a year, and Stewart Home walks us from Kingsland Basin to where he used to live in the 80s near Victoria Park, finding it now just a pile of rubble.

Download audio file (Episode-20_-Writers-on-Walking.mp3)

Producer: Francesca Panetta
Reporters: Tessa Gleeson and Colin McNulty
Authors: Sean Borodale, Stewart Home, Iain Sinclair and Lemn Sissay
Music: Mike Brooks, Felix Carey, Chapters, Francesca Panetta, Andrew Pekler, Robert Worby
Readings: Notes for an Atlas by Sean Borodale

Edition 19: Coffeecast

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 11:50:29 +0000

The Third Wave of Coffee is pouring its way in to Hackney. Cafes such as the Penny University, Mouse & De Lotz and the Counter Cafe pride themselves in their artisan beverages, meticulously measuring the temperature of the milk and the pressure of their carefully ground beans. But while this demand for the artisan cup might be a 21st-century phenomenon, coffee has a role in Hackney life that goes back to the age of the Enlightenment. Dr Matt Green takes us into the world of the 18th-century Hackney coffee house, a bustling social space but also a hub of news information. The substance they drank may have been served from cauldrons and tasted like soot, but this was the place for journalists to find stories on finance or religious dissent.

Download audio file (Edition-19_-Coffeecast.mp3)

Ernesto Illy once said that it takes 55 prime beans to make the perfect espresso. The Hackney Podcast's resident philosopher Dr James Wilson ponders the question of taste, and what we might learn from both Illy and Scottish Enlightenment writer David Hume. Climpson & Sons of Broadway Market are clearly serious about their bean varietals; they even roast their own. We go behind the scenes to watch the process, and learn the art of latte preparation from staff at Wilton Way, Lemon Monkey and the Hackney Pearl. Meanwhile, two long-time residents of the borough remember the arrival in London during the 1950s of the Italian espresso bar, natural habitat to the British beatnik.

Our coffeecast ends with a specially recorded song by Rob Gallagher, former front man of Galliano. Also heard throughout the programme is Matthew Herbert's An Empire of Coffee, from the album Plat du Jour (Accidental Records), a project which tackles the "growing obsession with the international language of food and how almost every choice we are being asked to make about what we eat is laced with deadly compromises".

Historian: Dr Matt Green
Philosopher: Dr James Wilson
Bean roaster: Danny Davies of Climpson and Sons
Actor: Jonathan Hansler
Coffee shops featured: Climpson and Sons, Dalston Cafe, Hackney Pearl, Hoxton Cafe, Kingfisher Cafe, Lemon Monkey, Leos, Paulas, Towpath, Wilton Way
Interviews collected by Andrew Dickson, Joanna Lemonnier, Felix Carey and Francesca Panetta
Producers: Felix Carey and Francesca Panetta
Music by Matthew Herbert, Rob Gallagher and Felix Carey

Edition 18: Night

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 09:31:37 +0000

Photo by Shehani Fernando

"Night in London is a brief period of infinite possibility" wrote the journalist and travel writer HV Morton in the 1920s, and nowhere is this truer than in Hackney, which from doors open till dawn chorus becomes an asphalt jungle for revellers, criminals, artists, lovers, all night eateries and taxi drivers.

In the latest and most extensive in a series of themed editions, the Hackney Podcast brings you a night in the life of this 24-hour borough through the words of its inhabitants, as we meet Mare Street's moonlight bookseller, skirt the edges of a Dalston stabbing, rescue a lost and disillusioned party-goer, feast on a Turkish spread at Somine, trail a Homerton rubbish truck, and greet dawn with the street traders of Broadway Market. Along the way we hear readings from HV Morton and commentary from Night Haunts author Sukhdev Sandhu, helping to reveal some of the strange allurement of the dark unknown.

Download audio file (Edition-18_-Night.mp3)

Interviews: Francesca Panetta, Andrew Dickson, Elisha Sessions, Gregg Morgan
Readings: Frank Burnet
Music: Felix Carey, Bryan Kerr, Ruaridh Law, Shane Solanki
Sound and Mix: Felix Carey
Producer: Francesca Panetta

Edition 17: Buses

Hackney Podcast — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:08:43 +0000

photo by Felix Carey

Hackney depends on buses. With no tubes, they're how we get around. But what do you do while you're on the bus? Read, eye up the guy opposite? Is it a space for reflection? Or just irritation? Hackney's bus riders tell us. We hear from Alfie Dennen about his Bus-Tops project, from Anthony Morris the bus mechanic who keeps the wheels turning behind the scenes and from driver Pauline Jacobs and passenger Carole Allen who helped deliver a baby on the 394 last year. Plus bus-themed performances from poet Michael Rosen and musician Earl Zinger.

Download audio file (Edition-17_-Buses.mp3)

Edition 16: The Empire

Hackney Podcast — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:16:49 +0000

photo by Felix Carey

In this programme we trace the shifting guises of the Hackney Empire - from music hall to bingo hall, from television studio to wrestling venue, to its current incarnation as a home for populist theatre and comedy. Elisha Sessions and Francesca Panetta follow a group of local Hackney Empire aficionados who call themselves The Elders as they prepare to say goodbye to another era in the theatre's history. The gang of mates who ran the Empire since its resurrection in the mid-1980s have been shown the door, and as a new chief exec reconsiders the theatre's "business model" the Elders want to know what happens next.

Theatre and cinema historian Ken Roe takes us through the extraordinary journey of this Victorian gem, along with New Variety impresario Roland Muldoon, who re-opened the Empire as a performance space and spearheaded its recent refurbishment. The theatre's new chief executive Claire Middleton tells us her plans to reduce the £1.5m deficit, while Diane Abbot MP voices her concerns for shutting it next year, letting a theatre go dark, she says, means there is a possibility it won't open again. One of the casualties of the theatre's closure, director of programming Frank Sweeney talks about filling the theatre 1,800 seats every night and we hear from panto pasha Susie McKenna about this winter's production of Aladdin with Clive Rowe.

Download audio file (Edition-16_-The-Empire.mp3)

Edition 15: Bookies, brunch and bats

Hackney Podcast — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:44:52 +0000

photo by Stephen Gill

Photographer Stephen Gill talks to Francesca Panetta about his particular fascination with Hackney Wick, an area he has documented over the last eight years in noisy images ranging from the backs of advertising boards to the banks of the River Lea. A Series of Disappointments brings together discarded betting slips picked up from the floors of Hackney's bookies over a period of six weeks, and which for Stephen portray fragments of human emotion. Inside these shops we hear from the punters themselves, before questioning the Mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, about his campaign to reduce the concentration of betting shops in the borough.

Next, we turn to one of London's latest crazes - secret dining. Springing up all over the capital are "pop up restaurants", run by everyone from keen amateurs to award-winning chefs. Blake Pudding from the London Review of Breakfasts takes us to the Bruncheon Club to sample their Eggs Royale. But will the yoke consistency be up to the LRB's high standards? Is a duck egg Hollandaise advisable? And what's in it for the keen couple who invite six strangers into their home every month?

We finish with a bat walk in Hackney Marshes. Perhaps an unlikely activity for a Friday night in a borough more famous for its nightlife than its wildlife, but equipped with bat detector and microphone Ellen Otzen seeks out our enigmatic furry-eared friends as they hoover up insects among the black poplars of the River Lea. Ecologist Alison Fure explains how they use high frequency signals not only to navigate but to communicate with other bats and even express emotion.

Download audio file (Edition-15_-Bookies-Brunch-and-Bats.mp3)

Edition 14: Water

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:43:11 +0000

This Sony Award-winning programme looks at water and how it fits into the lives of people in Hackney. Author and psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair follows the route of Hackney Brook, a subterranean ghost river which runs from Highbury to Hackney Wick and still makes its presence felt in ways both immediate and oblique. Then to Clissold Leisure Centre for Wet Sounds, a new music event in which electro-acoustic composers Francisco Lopez, Stefano Tedesco, Tom Haines and Leafcutter John serenade their floating audience through speakers both above and below the water.

Moving on to London Fields Lido, architectural historian Simon Inglis explains how swimming pools in Hackney have their roots in the wash houses set up by 19th-century philanthropists in the battle against cholera. And we hear from the people who work and live on Hackney's waterways today.

Interviews: Francesca Panetta, Jason Phipps
Sound and additional music: Felix Carey
Producers: Francesca Panetta, Felix Carey

Download audio file (Edition-14_-Water.mp3)

Edition 13: Cornelius Cardew, mushroom sandwiches and the Dalston Mill

Hackney Podcast — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:41:24 +0000

photo by Eliot Wyman

Francesca Panetta meets the dogs and dogwalkers of London Fields, London Review of Breakfasts editor Malcolm Eggs goes in search of the Magic 9 ingredients at Stoke Newington Farmers Market, and we visit the Dalston Mill, modelled on environmental artist Agnes Denes’s New York work of 1982, and providing a rural retreat on some disused railway line in Dalston. Plus a report from the Drawing Room's recent season of events celebrating the work of experimental English composer Cornelius Cardew, whose graphic score for Treatise will be on display from November.

Download audio file (Edition-13_-Cornelius-Cardew-mushroom-sandwiches-and-the-Dalston-Mill.mp3)

Edition 12: Olympic Park Tour

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:39:47 +0000

Francesca Panetta joins John Hopkins - the Olympic Delivery Authority’s Project Sponsor for Parklands and Public Realm - for a tour of the site in East London. This will be London's first major park since Victorian times, and is intended as a contemporary take on the great British landscape and garden tradition. The 100 hectare parkland will accomodate an 80,000 capacity stadium, a velodrome, a Zaha Hadid-designed aquatic centre and a media centre for 20,000 journalists. How sustainable is the development and what will be its legacy for Hackney?

Download audio file (Edition-12_-Olympic-Park-Tour.mp3)

Edition 11: Birdsong

Hackney Podcast — Sat, 23 May 2009 13:37:57 +0000

Recorded at London Fields between 04:00 and 04:30 on Thursday 21st May.

London Fields East Side from 00:00 to 03:32, Lansdown Drive (crows) from 03:32 to 04:10.

Edits in the recording are indicated by tape generated sounds at 02:27 and 03:32.

Download audio file (Edition-11_-Birdsong.mp3)

Edition 10: Kingsland Road

Hackney Podcast — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:34:48 +0000

photo by Briony Campbell

Buzzing, maddening, chaotic, dirty, dangerous and fun is how locals describe this section of the A10 between Old Street and Dalston Junction. Hackney poet Shane Solanki has written us a song all about the Kingsland Road, starting a bit further north, up in Stamford Hill. We meet some of the stall holders at Kingsland Waste street market to find out what drags them out of bed even on the bleakest and rainiest Saturday mornings. Then it's down to Crooked Billet Yard to meet Oliver Bulleid of Cox Bulleid Architects for a tour of their Shoreditch Prototype House - a model for low energy living in dense urban environments.

To end, photographer Briony Campbell on her current project documenting the street's nightlife - she takes us to meet the proprietors of Abel’s Social Club, Passing Clouds, Stoke Newington International Airport, and Visions Video Bar.

Download audio file (Edition-10_-Kingsland-Road.mp3)

Edition 9: Interior Design, Meg Hillier MP and F Cooke Pies

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:23:44 +0000

Richard Shed, creator of the Here Hook, is our guide to some of the borough’s interior design workshops including Studio F1, where we meet Simon Maidment, Gitta Gschwendtner and Sam Johnson. Sheridan Coakley, director and founder of manufacturer and retailer SCP, describes recent trends in British design and how the industry will be affected by recession. Meg Hillier, Home Office minister and MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, talks to Francesca Panetta about immigration and English language learning. And we end with a glimpse into the kitchen of the F Cooke pie shop, established over 100 years ago. Bob Cooke shows us how they make their pies.

Download audio file (Edition-09_-Interior-Design-Meg-Hillier-MP-and-Cookes-Pies.mp3)

Edition 8: DIY Cocktails, Victorian book clubs and the London Assembly

Hackney Podcast — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:21:53 +0000

Off Broadway’s cocktail consultant Benji reveals his method for the perfect Martini. Jennette Arnold, Chair of the London Assembly, explains how she and the rest of the Assembly hold Mayor Boris Johnson to account, and why the Dalston regeneration scheme may have to reconsider their goals and think about new partners.

Guardian journalist and Clapton Pond blogger Dave Hill takes us to his local corner shop Palm 2 to meet proprietor Abdullah and his wide range of olives. Abdullah expanded his empire a couple of years ago to open Organic and Natural on the other side of Lower Clapton Road. He shows us his Stoke Newington-imported luxury breads and wonders whether the recession will impact on his shop.

Margaret Willes, author of Reading Matters tells us about John Dawson's eclectic collection of books left to Shoreditch Parish Church in 1752, the rebellious Victorian all-female reading group in Newington Green, and the difficulty of browsing in Hackney's early public libraries. To end, we return to Off Broadway for a Blood and Sand cocktail as made by Harry Craddock at London’s Savoy Hotel in 1922.

Download audio file (Edition-08_-DIY-Cocktails-Victorian-Book-Clubs-and-the-London-Assembly.mp3)

Edition 7: City Furnishings

Hackney Podcast — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:19:02 +0000

photo by Shehani Fernando

Francesca Panetta is joined by Joanna Smith from English Heritage for a tour of the buildings at the heart of the furniture trade in Victorian and Edwardian Shoreditch. Brad Lochore from the campaign group OPEN Shoreditch and George Galloway MP for Bethnal Green and Bow argue for sustainable development on the advancing City Fringe. Children’s Laureate and Hackney resident Michael Rosen performs his agitprop Regeneration Blues, recorded at a recent OPEN event at Cafe OTO. Plus we visit the art gallery FormContent, a curatorial project space in Ridley Road.

Download audio file (Edition-07_-City-Furnishings.mp3)

Joanna Smith’s furniture tour was organised by the Hackney Society. For more walking tours visit their website.

Edition 6: Iain Sinclair

Hackney Podcast — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:17:12 +0000

photo by Belinda Lawley

London chronicler and Haggerston resident Iain Sinclair talks to Francesca Panetta about Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire: A Confidential Report. It's his eagerly awaited ‘documentary-fiction’ based on forty years of living and working in Hackney, a borough he describes variously as exotic, seductive, radical, difficult and bloody-minded. Hear about the author’s walks with photographer Stephen Gill and fellow psycho-geographer Will Self, the mysterious world of Kingsland barbershops, and how the Olympic vision is set to erase Sinclair’s own beloved topography.

You can buy the book here and here. Read the Hackney Citizen’s interview here and watch Shehani Fernando’s recent film for guardian.co.uk here.

Download audio file (Edition-06_-Iain-Sinclair.mp3)

Edition 5: Legacy in the Dust

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:15:17 +0000

Francesca Panetta attends the premiere of Legacy in the Dust, a film charting the history of the Four Aces in Dalston. She talks to the club’s founder Newton Dunbar, singer Winston Reedy and the film’s director Winstan Whitter. As construction is underway to redevelop the site into a major transport interchange, we hear the views of OPEN chairman Bill Parry-Davies and Hackney mayor Jules Pipe. Our resident philosopher James Wilson offers his thoughts on healthcare and quality of life in Hackney, and we end up on board a British Waterways maintenance boat in the company of Alan Farmer and Colin Wright.

Download audio file (Edition-05_-Legacy-in-the-Dust.mp3)

Edition 4: Beyond the A12, and What She Found There

Hackney Podcast — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:13:08 +0000

Francesca Panetta reports from the first Hackney Wicked, a festival showcasing emerging artists and galleries in Hackney Wick. We join Hashley Brown of the London Review of Breakfasts for some Turkish menemen at Cafe Alizza on Kingsland High Street. The council's Cabinet Member for Environmental Sustainability Sophie Linden is questioned on green issues by our dedicated Environmental Advisor, Duncan Clark. Finally, with all eyes on the US presidential race, Jane Howe of the Broadway Bookshop recommends some American literature, from John Updike and Philip Roth to Jonathan Safran Foer and Don DeLillo.

Download audio file (Edition-04_-Beyond-the-A12-and-What-She-Found-There.mp3)

Edition 3: Sound Designs

Hackney Podcast — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 13:08:07 +0000

Francesca Panetta visits Cafe OTO, the new music venue in Dalston run by Hamish Dunbar and Keiko Yamamoto, and meets one of their regular performers, Atsuko Kamura.

After a lesson in brake tuning at bicycle cafe Lock 7 and a bell-themed sonic adventure along the Regent’s Canal, we conclude with an architectural tour of one of London’s key post-war social housing developments, Woodberry Down, with the Twentieth Century Society’s Suzanne Waters. To join other walks like this visit the Hackney Society.

Download audio file (Edition-03_-Sound-Designs.mp3)

Edition 2: Shoots, Leaves and Shops

Hackney Podcast — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:06:01 +0000

photo by Tom Hunter

Francesca Panetta joins Hackney artist Tom Hunter for a stroll down Mare Street whose many and varied shops are the subject matter of his latest exhibition of photographs currently on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood. In the first of a series of ethics lectures James Wilson ponders the question of difference in Hackney, while Diane Abbott MP offers her views on education in the borough and London mayor Boris Johnson. Plus we catch up with the Manor Garden Allotment community of Hackney Wick at their watery new home in Leyton. Moro restaurant's Sam Clark was there to sort the leaves from the weeds.

Download audio file (Edition-2_-Shoots-Leaves-and-Shops.mp3)

Edition 1: Herbed Beans and Olympic Conspiracies

Hackney Podcast — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:55:46 +0000

Francesca Panetta invites Hashley Brown of the London Review of Breakfasts to sample an alternative Full English at Little Georgia at its new home in Goldsmith’s Row, Haggerston - never before have baked beans come under such close scrutiny. She drops in on Ridley Road market where she meets some aggrieved stall holders, and questions Hackney mayor Jules Pipe on market regulation. We end up at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston in the company of arts correspondent Andrew Dickson who reviews their latest production, Torn by Femi Oguns.

Download audio file (Edition-01_-Herbed-Beans-and-Olympic-Conspiracies.mp3)