The Creative Café (CC) is a pop-up café, gallery and creative workspace on the Marks Gate estate in Dagenham that ran on and off from 2015-18. I established the project in 2015, the CC utilised a space within the Community Centre on the estate transformed into a pop-up café, gallery and creative workspace with a team of local residents from the estate who volunteered their time painting, decorating, upcycling furniture, creating displays and more. The CC was launched in April and was open for 5 months offering a new creative activity on each day of opening. The project in 2015 engaged 959 local residents.

In 2016 we were able to relaunch the Creative Café for nine months from May to January 2017. We engaged a total of 2000 people during the 9 months, becoming a vital resource and arts hub to the Chadwell Heath community.

In the summer of 2018 we delivered a series of pop-up family events during the summer holidays to re-engage with families who had previously attended the Creative Café during 2015-17 and also build relationships with new families and residents.

Impact

The Creative Café became a haven for Marks Gate residents, both young and old, providing a hub for creativity, a space where local people could meet, share, learn and gain new skills and get involved over a cuppa. It became a social space for residents from all walks of life to discuss and exchange ideas whilst having the opportunity to get creative.

The project provided local residents with a platform to celebrate their creativity, develop confidence and feel a real sense of pride and achievement. A unique aspect of the project is that it was intergenerational, engaging local residents from a variety of backgrounds and age groups to participate; to date we have had residents as young as 2 and as old as 93 access our activities.

Residents referred to it as their haven; ‘an oasis away from the chaos that is normally Marks Gate’, providing some much needed respite away from their day to day lives. For parents who cannot afford after school activities for their children and/or have limited transport the café provides a stimulating environment where they can engage with their children and other parents, creating friendships and a local support structure.

The project fostered community links and cohesion by providing a space on the housing estate for different communities to meet and mix. Participants developed friendships and relationships that continued outside and beyond the project thus breaking down barriers, developing positive relationships and facilitated integration.

‘There are people here who speak very good English and some who don’t speak any, but we find ways to communicate and we’re all at the same stage learning something new. I’ve made so many friends, life is all about variety and I have that now.’

Jeanette Scipio, local resident

‘The Creative Cafe brings the Marks Gate community together; it’s proven, I see it every time I come here. It’s changed people’s lives, it connects them and it gets them out of their homes.’

Coby Stewart, local resident

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‘Framing Marks Gate’ tells the stories of some of the Marks Gate residents that I met through the medium of photography and film. Working with the photographer Connie Taylor we ‘framed’ local people with their stories or art. These photos were exhibited at the final event of my residency, the ‘Marks Gate Arts Festival’ and showcased online. I also worked with two filmmakers; Shazia Ur-Rehman and Joseph Obasi to create a series of 6 two minute shorts of 6 very diverse residents using the format of film, you can watch the films here.

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We made tea a big feature throughout the project, hosting a regular weekly ‘Tea-Time Tuesday’ at the Community Centre throughout the course of the residency, hosting innovative craft projects for local residents to pop in and get involved in all whilst supping on our favourite cuppa. A definite recipe for success! Our first project was the ‘Marks Gate Bunting’, in which we asked residents to get crafty and make a flag to add to our growing mission, we wanted to decorate and bring colour to the spaces that we were present in during our residency, once the residency was over we intended to donate the bunting back to the Marks Gate community for them to continue to bring colour to their own community events. Residents could stitch, draw, paint their own individual flags, this project ran throughout the course of the 6 months and in total 356 flags were made creating over 100 metres of bunting!

During our weekly tea fests we met some really interesting and creative Marks Gate residents who we then invited to run guest workshops as part of our Tea-Time Tuesday programme; workshops included candle making and decorating, jewellery design, cupcake decoration, card making, design a ‘doodle’ postcard, create your own loom bands and more. Enabling these residents to run their own workshops was both empowering and a celebration of their creative skills and passions, but also enabled them to share their skills with other local residents, this was a really successful way to introduce new variety to our Tea-Time Tuesday programme and engage more people locally. We loved being able to share and celebrate the creativity that was on the Marks Gate estate!

Here is what one resident said about our Tea-Time Tuesdays; ‘Working with Sadia over the past few months has been such an amazing journey for me & my children. Sadia is truly inspirational, her Teatime Tuesdays have allowed me to be as creative as I was as a child and my children had lots of fun. Sadia has been really supportive of my own creative project and gave me the opportunity to deliver my candle making and decorating workshop during her sessions. I would very much love to work with Sadia again!’ Cassandra Frederick

Our residency also supported the creation of the Marks Gate Arts Collective (MGAC), a new community collective of artists and creative people on the estate; we could never have hoped for such a great outcome and legacy to our work in the area. The Collective will be running their own creative activities in 2015. MGAC also helped us to deliver our two showcase events of the project the ‘Marks Gate Arts Day’ and the ‘Marks Gate Arts Festival’. The Festival has to be our final and most defining highlight of the project; it enabled us to leave the estate on a big high with over 200 people attending our final bonanza. The occasion took place on Tuesday 28^th October and it will remain for us a day to always remember! The event was a ‘tumble down the rabbit hole’ for a unique Mad Hatters Tea Party with a multitude of creative activities including; hat making, cupcake decoration, street dance, candle making and decorating, loom bands, street art and an exhibition of the ‘Framing Marks Gate’ films and photographs.

John Grocott, a local resident who got involved in many aspects of the project had this to say about the event; ‘I was very encouraged to see so many Marks Gate people of all ages (two years to ninety three) enjoying this unusual event which was a culmination of the arts activities delivered over the past few months, each week on Tuesday, by Sadia Ur-Rehman as part of the project A Local Dialogue.I met several people who like myself realised a strong common interest in various arts activities introduced in a friendly way which promoted a really sociable atmosphere at the community centre. I hope to keep in touch with Sadia and her projects to be further inspired.’

Here are some photos that capture the great day had by all:

In total over 750 people engaged with the project during the 6 months we were on Marks Gate.

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‘’The idea for the tea parties came about from my own love of the beverage and how a good cuppa can be the setting for a really good conversation. I wanted to create a space where strangers could connect and engage over a conversation and I thought about an activity that all communities and cultures shared, and tea drinking seemed apt.”

Each tea party served a different type of tea from a different  part of the world, guests were able to experience how tea is drunk in South Asia, North Africa, Persia, China and of course England. An authentic experience was provided with each tea party, I also set a topic of conversation about the local area and history. During the tea parties, the artist collected and recorded stories, memories, experiences of the local area and Valentines Mansion. I also organised two walks/trails of Valentines Park.

The exhibition at Valentines Mansion held on Sunday 22^nd May till Sunday 24^th July 2011 is a culmination of the conversations that took place during the tea parties and the walks that were facilitated. I utilised a range of multimedia practices to present the conversations from an audio installation, silent film, photographs and an installation dedicated to tea. The project was initiated to empower local communities to play a part in the creation of art through local engagement; local residents whom attended the tea parties and walk played a vital role in this.  The project engaged 120 local residents as participants of the project, making art accessible to new audiences and increasing participation in the arts across Redbridge.

For more information about the project, visit: http://alocaldialogue.com/

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