The Alternative London Podcast

In this episode I speak with Don Travis, photographer and co-founder of Future Hackney.

Don has lived in Hackney almost her whole life and is passionate about her community and it's cultural diversity.

Future Hackney is a public art project, telling stories of the area and it's people's through photographic imagery in public spaces.

We talk about her current displays, Gillet Square Stories and Protest Stories - both of which are currently live and can be seen in Dalston and Hackney, respectively.

We also chat about current issues facing the East End and the country at large. We discuss how Don's documenting of protest groups such as; Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, Trans Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter and many more, alongside the current strike action have given Don optimism for a more positive future.

Don is a really strong and inspirational woman, so it's fitting that this episode is released on International Woman's Day 2023.

Enjoy.

You can follow Future Hackney here @futurehackney

In this episode I sit down with French film photographer, Tiffany Roubert.

In 2018 Tiffany took on a part-time role with Alternative London while she developed her photography career. During the pandemic she spent time in her wife, Carla’s native Brazil and took her photography full time.

Tiffany’s images capture a life lived in the moment and her style, along with her obvious rapport with her subjects, can turn the most mundane situations into pieces of art of the highest quality.    

Needless to say, I love Tiff’s work and have really enjoyed seeing her evolving as an artist and building up a well-deserved, dedicated fanbase over the past few years.

Last week saw the release of her first publication – In Between – so I thought it was a good time to catch up and talk about her journey since leaving Alternative London a few years back.

Due to a mistake with the recording, we unfortunately lost the first ten minutes and had to start again. A shame, as we were in full flow and it felt a bit contrived revisiting those parts but I think we found our way back in.

Hope you enjoy it. You can follow Tiffany’s work here: @tiffanyroubert

In episode 20 I chat to artist Dave Buonaguidi - otherwise known as The Real Hackney Dave. 

We chat about Dave’s mid-life epiphany during which he left his marriage and his career in advertising and became an artist. 

Dave is a fascinating guy and a natural story-teller and I loved hearing about his time in 90’s Spitalfields as it just started to become cool (If you’ve been on one of our tours you’ll probably know Dave’s former home, 11½ Fournier St!), his time at channel 4 during the Brit Art Years and how he’s continued to move with the times and constantly reinvent himself. 

I speak to him as he prepares for his solo show at BSMT space alongside other projects and find a guy who is always working to make his art better and who creates it for the people. 

I loved this one, hope you do to.  

You can follow Dave’s instagram here; @realhackneydave and drop your comments here @alternativeldn

In this first episode of the Alternative London Podcast we chat to co-founder of the East End Trades Guild, Krissie Nicolson. The Trades Guild was founded to give independent businesses, the self employed, charities and social enterprises a voice and a platform to organise in the face of rising rents, large-scale development and rapid gentrification in the East End of London.

The value of this union was really amplified for us during the pandemic, so we wanted to publicly thank Krissie for helping us and many others through it as well as finding out more about the Guild, Krissie's journey so far and her tips on how to organise a movement.

You can find out more about the East End Trades Guild on their instagram here @east_end_trades_guild

One of Britain's master bronze makers, artist and environmentalist - it's the one and only Jonesy!

Mark Jones moved to East London in 1988 to take up work as a finisher in a bronze foundry. Apart from a few stints abroad, he has been there ever since.

In that time he has produced works for some of the most well known artists of our times. Alongside his professional work however, his bronze street works have lead him to become one of the most endearing street artists in the East End.

The intricacy and detail of Jonesy's work, not to mention the fact that he's working in bronze, has always blown me away. But this conversation quickly turned towards the purpose and message behind the art on the streets - the environment.

Jonesy was an early advocate for environmenal change and I'm really glad he used this platform to share his thoughts and wisdom with us.

I always love talking to Mark and I hope you enjoy listening to him. Undoubtedly one of my personal heroes

In this episode I speak to entrepreneur and Jewellery maker, Nadia Abbas.

Nadia, Quincey and Luke co-founded Stööki in 2011 as a Jewelery brand with its roots firmly in London youth culture.

We talk about the highs and lows of running a sustainable fashion business in a throw-away world, how Stööki survived after the tragic and untimely passing of Quincey and how everything Stööki does is centred around building community. Stööki is more than a brand, it's a movement.

Nadia is so passionate about her craft and a real inspiration to anyone - particularly young women of colour - thinking about starting their own creative endeavor.

You can find Stookie here @stooki and here www.stooki.co.uk and their workshops here http://www.stooki.co.uk/pages/workshops

And a big thanks to Krissie @east_end_trades_guild for linking us up - you can find out more about their amazing work over on their Instagram.

In this episode I sit down with the one and only, Cranio. Hailing from Sao Paulo, Cranio has emerged as one of the world’s best and most loved street artists.

We’ve been big admirers of Cranio and his work since the first time we met him in 2012 so it was great to catch up ten years later for this chat. A lot has changed since then and his unique style has evolved a lot, so it was great to see him in great spirits and form – humble as ever and staying true to his roots.

Due to the translation of this episode it’s short but sweet and we cover Cranio’s story so far, how he deals with success, the message behind his work and his relationship with London – a city he loves and where the people have a lot of love for him.

A huge thank you to BSMT Space for making this happen and for hosting us. To Alice Motta for translating. To Gabriel Dias for recording Cranio’s parts and Stu Ballingall & Samuel Jacintho for putting this whole thing together.

This one felt really special so hope you enjoy it.

Jade LB is an award-winning author from Hackney.

In the early 2000’s chapters of a story started to appear on the blog site Piczo, and suddenly it went viral.

Keisha the Sket was well known for being sexually explicit and violent, despite Jade having no sexual

experience at the time of writing. Suddenly Jade stopped writing and left the story on a cliffhanger.

Fifteen years later she was approached by Stormzy’s book imprint, Merky Books, to publish the original

and re-write the story as a novel.

Both the original and the ‘Revisited’ offer a brilliant insight into young love in the housing estates of

London. And both versions also have a tenderness and maturity as we follow a deceptively smart young

girl navigating her late teenage years.

In this episode, we discuss the nuances of young black girlhood, art as politics, and the toll that Jade's unique situation took on her own mental health how she now feels about

things from a more mature perspective.

In this episode I chat to artist, Ant Carver as he prepares for his solo exhibition - All Alone in a Crowded Room.

This current body of work, inspired by the tragic loss of Ant's best friend, muses primarily on grief and loss. It also displays a shift in Ant's style in which he creates stunning realistic oil paintings on aluminum board, with abstract elements seemlessly blended in.

We talk about all of this and much more and I loved getting to know Ant and his process better as he welcomed us into his world for a little bit.

All Alone in a Crowded Room opens at Copeland Gallery in Peckham on 7th of September, all welcome so get down there if you're in London.

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Oli Hilsdon. Check out the Oli Hilsdon foundation to support https://www.olihilsdonfoundation.org/

Maher Anjum is the co-founder of Tati and Oitij-jo, a community organisation that empowers women in the British Bangladeshi diaspora through creativity and culture.

In this episode we talk about the challenges that she is working hard to help overcome for individuals and the community as a whole.

Maher's passion for this work is clear from the start and the impact that she has is huge.

You can find out more about Oitij-jo here https://www.oitijjo.org/

I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I enjoyed talking to her.

The self-proclaimed Vandal Extraordinaire. Crackney's undisputed finest. Ronzo has been an ever present fixture of the London street art scene since the early days.

His characters exist in their own world but reflect on the issues of our reality and have, as such become iconic cult monuments of the East End and beyond.

As I turned up to his studio, he was all set up to make me a sculpture while we recorded!

We talk about Ronzo's chance move to London from his native Germany. His introduction to the street art scene here from his time sharing a studio at the Stolen Space Gallery and hanging out at the infamous Dragon Bar.

We also talk a little about his move into computer game design (check out his game, Derek Deathfin), his digital art and more recently his NFTs.

Ronzo is always evolving, always creating and always manages to stay ahead of the game. What a pleasure to get this time with him.

Jenny Lewis is an award-winning photographer who embarked on her own projects after a successful career shooting for editorials. She has published three books: Hackney Studios, One Day Youngand 100 Years and has exhibited her work around the world. Her intimate portraits focus on people in the East London Community so I wanted to meet her and find our more about her work and inspiration.

Through these unique and deeply personal projects and their subsequent public interventions, Jenny has brought the faces of so called 'ordinary' people to a wider audience. By placing them back into the visual landscape they make the subject feel extraordinary. 

Jenny invited me to her studio space which is a calm oasis alongside the Regent's Canal where large scale images from 100 Years are exhibited outside for by passers to enjoy. Spending time with Jenny in her studio, I quickly realised she has a remarkable gift that we experience through her art - the ability to capture the feeling of living in the moment whilst simultaneously feeling like time has paused.

Special thanks to former guest, Aida Wilde for introducing me to Jenny.

In this episode I chat to the brilliant Jay Ka3s.

Jay is a ln East London based, Spanish street artist, muralist and animator whose current body of work deals with our relationship with the online world with his style he refers to as the glitch.

We talk about Jay's background in hip-hop and graffiti, the astonishing efforts he went to to get his degree and how he eventually started a successful mural agency.

Jay's love of graffiti culture is palpable and he is an artist totally dedicated to his craft. It's been great to watch his work progress over the years and I loved having this opportunity to speak to one of the nicest guys in the game.

Saki & B, also known as Saki & Bitches is a Japanese artist based in East London. Originally a make-up artist, she relocated from a temporary stint in New York to the East End in 2009 and soon started painting her renowned Bitches on the streets.

Over the past six years Saki has worked predominantly in the studio where she has refined her painting and drawing styles which betray her lack of formal training. Her overtly sexual and provocative imagery seemed to have various abstract meanings, until the Me Too movement triggered an epiphany resulting in a new found understand of the work she creates.

In this fascinating chat we talk about how Saki's rebellious streak led

In this episode I sat down with the amazing Ben Wilson, better known to most as The Chewing Gum Man.

Ben is an artist and sculptor from North London who is best known for his miniature paintings on discarded chewing gums in London and beyond. He has transformed thousands of these pieces of waste into beautiful, colourful images around the world, including hundreds on London's Millennium Bridge alone.

They are often dedicated to people, pets, local businesses and landmarks and always have a sense of humanity at their core. Often hard to find and existing in a grey area of ownership and public space it is a contradiction to what Ben sees as an overly consumerist age.

I've been following Ben's art for many years and every time I discover a new piece it never ceases to blow me away or put a smile on my face.

We talk about his life and how he sees the chewing gum project as an act of community service, how it lead to his arrest and the subsequent court case with the City of London Police - which he won.

Talking with Ben, you can't help but feel the passion and love he has for his art and the people and world around him. At the end of the episode Ben took a photo of me in the podcast studio and painted it outside with a dedication to the podcast.

Despite the fact this was the second time he has attributed a piece to me, this one really did blow me away and gave me the biggest smile I've had in years.

Aida Wilde and her family arrived in the UK from Iran as asylum seekers when she was a child. During her formative years she has become a well-respected print maker, educator, curator and artist in her own right.

We discuss the culture shock of arriving from the middle east to Sunderland, onto her move to London and eventually her home of Hackney Wick. Aida’s work documents the fast-changing landscape of the Wick as well as calling out social injustice in all its forms, in particular ridiculing the patriarchy and the absurdity of the gender gap.

We talk about all of this and go off tangents about football culture, the creative industries and how she has maintained her integrity whilst dealing with the opportunities that success has brought her.

At every turn Aida was open and honest with wherever the conversation took us, and I left her studio feeling extremely privileged and grateful to have been allowed into her world to record this chat.  

Mohammed Ali is a British Bangladeshi artist from Birmingham. He has recently been spending time back in the East End's Banglatown where he has family connections (as well as Bangladesh itself), listening to stories from the local community to create a mural to celebrate 50 years of Bangladeshi independence.

Coming from a graffiti background, Mohammed moved into mural painting and filmmaking. He runs the arts organisation, Soul City Arts and is a trustee of the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

We managed to squeeze in this recording at our studio late one night during the creation of the piece. We talk a lot about the mural itself and its important role in giving a platform to the prominent, yet underrepresented Begali community in the urban art world.

There has since been some high profile pieces, critical about the commissioned nature of the mural by Tower Hamlets, written in National papers. As these chats aren't scripted we didn't go down that route this time so I didn't get his take on this.

I hope though that this recording can be a testament to Mohammed's personal connection to the community and his genuine desire to represent the people in his art as well as his integrity as an artist and human.

You can find out more about Mohammed on his instagram here @aliaerosol

sb 15/10/22

Adelaide artist Jimmy Cochran, better known as Jimmy C, has created large scale murals in his unique drip style and exhibited his work in galleries around the world. We first met Jimmy in 2010, not long after he moved to London and have enjoyed a close personal and occasional working relationship ever since.

His artworks have been an ever present fixture of London since his arrival here; his trademark drip heart is now the official meeting point at London Bridge Station, and his depiction of David Bowie in Brixton became the first piece of un-commissioned artwork in the UK to receive listed status from English Heritage.

We talk about Jimmy's artistic success and his intimate relationship with East London. As always there's no plan for the conversation so we go off on a few tangents too.

You can find out more about Jimmy and see his work on his instagram @akajimmyc

Jo Peel is an artist, film maker and animator from Sheffield, UK. After studying in Falmouth, she spent her formative years in the East End before moving back to Sheffield.

Jo's artworks alongside their technical brilliance and visual beauty provide an important archive of the ever-changing urban landscape. Her animation and more recently film work is both unique in style and visually captivating, focussing on themes of development, community and gentrification.

We've been fortunate enough to work with Jo over the years, so we talk about some of those projects and her journey as a trailblazing female artist since, as well as her ongoing relationship with East London after her move back home.

Jo will exhibit at the Ben Oakley Gallery 10 years after her first solo show there later this year.

You can find out more about Jo on her instagram @jo_peel and see her film work on her vimeo https://vimeo.com/jopeel

In this episode we take a trip to BSMT Space Gallery in Dalston to meet up with its founders, Greg Key and Lara Fiorentino. We met several years back when we were both running urban art galleries in East London. I warmed to them both instantly and could see that they ran their space with passion, fun and a sense of community.

Knowing first-hand how difficult life in the gallery world can be, I wanted to find out how they have managed to thrive in a changing landscape and establish one of the leading galleries of its kind in the UK.

Their connection and positivity really shines through and I could've stayed chatting to these guys all day. I hope you're as inspired by them as I am.

You can find out more about BSMT Space on their instagram @bsmtspace

In this episode we sit down with WRDSMTH not too long after his recent move to East London from California. Although we'd been introduced previously and said hi a few times, this is the first time I'd met someone properly through the podcast.

I was really grateful for his willingness to come and record before any had been published and for his openness during our conversation.

We talk about acclimatising to the weather and the convenience of London's proximity to Europe, before getting on to his fascinating career from published novelist and writer to world renowned street artist.

Through his trademark stencilled typewriter and pasted word interventions, WRDSMTH manages to communicate strong ideas and emotions with succinct visual language. This has led to his work resonating with the wider public and forging a close connection to a fanbase that transcends the street art world.

You can find out more about WRDSMTH on his instagram @wrdsmth

David Speed is co-founder the Graffiti Life agency with his business partners Iona Thomas and Adam Brazier. As well running a successful agency, David and Adam also hosts the hugely successful Creative Rebels Podcast.

Over the years of painting for a living, David's spray can skills have elevated to a different level and this led to the creation of his neon portraiture style which he is now well known for.

We have had a friendly working relationship over the years and when I bumped into David painting in Shoreditch I mentioned I'd been considering podcasting. He was so supportive and encouraging and he was literally the catalyst for us to actually get around to starting this.

Sitting down with David, you can really understand how he's become so successful in the creative world. He is full of wisdom from his years of experience and I'm really grateful that he shared it all with us here.

Recorded November 2021

You can find out more about David, Creative Rebels and Graffiti Life on these instagrams: @davidspeeduk @graffiti_life @rebelscreate