Artists accuse cider giant of ‘pirating the spirit’ of Hackney Wick

Full colour at Red: revellers at Hackney WickED weekend

Cider brand Kopparberg has been accused of “pirating the energy and spirit” of Hackney Wick over its plans to hold a six-week festival.

The Swedish company wants to hold the Kopparberg Urban Forest in a disused car park at 37–41 White Post Lane in Hackney Wick from 10 June–12 July.

If Tower Hamlets Council gives the go ahead, the free-to-enter festival will host live acts and DJs as well as supply alcohol to up to 800 revellers every day until 11.30pm.

Gill Wildman, who runs a design studio overlooking the proposed site, said: “It’s another example of big brands coming here and trying to make a lot of money, money going out of the area and not staying in the area”

Ms Wildman says her concerns have nothing to do with ‘nimbyism’. She missed the deadline to have her views heard by the council, and was told her letter wouldn’t be taken into account.

“I’m happy for things to happen here – it’s just the scale of it with 800 people here every week for a whole month.”

Financial clout

Artist Erik Perera spotted the Kopparberg application on a lamppost, and posted a photo of it on a Hackney Wick Facebook group, where it generated a string of heated comments.

“They do say they’re going to make the effort to engage the local community,” said Mr Perera. “But what’s annoying is that actually quite a few of us have tried to do similar things in the area and have been knocked back. We want to make sure that people with more financial clout and bigger brands are being held to same sort of standards as everyone else.”

Mr Perera claims there are enough locally-based musicians, artists, stage managers, carpenters and people who make their own drinks and food to put on a similar festival “five times over”.

“It’s a pretty easy thing for the community to do,” he said. “So there’s that feeling of ‘why aren’t we being allowed to do this?’

“When the large brands come in it feels like maybe they’re pirating some of the energy we’ve tried hard to achieve in the area and we’re not sure what comes back out of it.”

Local artists invited

But a spokesperson for Kopparberg said the festival is looking to engage local people wherever it can.

“We will be recruiting for bar staff locally, and will be paying the London Living Wage as we did last year [in Dalston],” the spokesperson said. “We will also be inviting local artists to perform and create.”

Anna Maloney, director of Hackney WickED festival, hopes Kopparberg Urban Forest is “put through the mill as hard as we were last year”, when it comes to security and clearing rubbish.

“For Hackney Wicked and other local organisations, the police and council have made it quite difficult to put things on,” said Ms Maloney.

“They made us responsible for the security of the whole of Hackney Wick and Fish Island, we had to take all the waste from the area … Maybe it’s slightly unfair that big brands can more easily afford that.”

Representatives from Kopparberg are to attend the Hackney Wick and Fish Island Cultural Interest Group on 10 April to discuss the event. The Kopparberg spokesperson added: “It’s not in our interests to upset locals and we will be doing everything we can to reduce the risk of that.

“All the bottles will be plastic, as will the glassware. Nobody will be allowed to leave the site with bottles. We have a clear policy on drunkenness. We had over 20,000 people through the doors last year and had only one caution and no arrests, over the course of five weeks.

“We will be investing significantly in toilets. We will have additional bins and recycling in place, and we will be investing in daily clean ups around the venue.”