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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I gave birth to my first child in May 2015. Using the traditional craft of embroidery; stitches have formed footsteps, feelings, roads, my child’s birthplace and the journey of motherhood in the initial two months on her very first sleepsuit. Each footstep captures the emotions for the first two months from jubilation to exhaustion to a realisation that life will never be the same again.

This work is part of the ongoing series titled ‘The Motherhood Series’ in which I encapsulate my journey as a new mother with the addition of a new embroidered work annually using my daughter’s clothes as a canvas and starting point.

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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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“Pashtun’s are an Eastern Iranian ethno-linguistic group with populations primarily in Afghanistan and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, federally administered tribal areas and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan. The Pashtuns are typically characterised by their usage of the Pashto language” – Wikipedia

The objects displayed in the makeshift museum display, mimic toys that children in the Western world have whilst growing up and grasping the English language. At the age of 5, when I began to attend Primary School in London, English became prevalent slowly but quite surely, slipping into the family home and becoming the primary language of communication in the Ur-Rehman household. I  began communicating with my siblings first and foremost in English, this followed through to parents and my maternal family.

Relearn, Reclaim is me relearning and thus reclaiming my mother tongue, and paying due to my cultural heritage. The museum display pays due to the importance of my mother tongue to me and my family.

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‘Pakistan Zindabad’ was filmed in Green Street, East London, on Pakistani Independence Day on 14 August, 2010. This short documentary captures, how first, second and third generation Pakistanis in England celebrate and mark Pakistani Independence.

Independence Day is a national holiday observed annually in Pakistan, commemorating the day when Pakistan achieved independence and was declared a sovereign nation, following the end of the British Raj in 1947. In 2010, Pakistan was hit by the worst floods in its history.  Independence Day in Pakistan was not celebrated that year as a show of moral support to those affected by the floods. However in London, a series of celebrations took place as documented in this film. Behind the bravado and noise we also get some thoughtful comments about identity and community, and see British Pakistanis coming together to help raise funds for those affected by the floods in Pakistan in 2010.

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I am a creative individual with experience of creating, initiating and developing diverse partnerships as well as leading on delivering a vibrant programme of community engagement/development events I have successfully brokered relationships with heritage, education and community organisations to deliver high quality projects that benefit participants.

I am skilled and experienced in working with community groups, schools, museums and local councils. I have worked extensively in areas of deprivation with diverse communities, hard to reach groups and young people. I have produced events, workshops and educational programmes.

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