Will the WickED prevail?

Photo: © Jessica Mudditt

The Hackney WickED festival got into full swing yesterday with a kaleidoscope of street parties and events. Several thousand festival-goers spilled out of the trains at Wick station to soak in the art and atmosphere.

With more than 400 artists involved, the festival represents perhaps the tastiest cultural recipe in London this summer. But Hackney WickED also has a more subtle aim – to preserve the unique artistic habitat of Hackney Wick for the artistic community that has evolved here.

A recent survey found that Hackney Wick has more artists per capita than any other place on the planet. But this wondrous artistic outpost is threatened by development and redevelopment surrounding the Olympics.

Though the artists want to stay, and they are prepared to work flexibly with the local authorities to find ways of enabling that to happen, they fear that they will be pushed out by the wave of regeneration that is planned for the area.

Joanna Hughes of Mother Studios has been in Hackney Wick for the last nine years. Not only is she one of the organisers of the festival, but she has also represented Wick artists in negotiations with the various agencies charged with overseeing the development of the Wick.

Hughes notes that the organisation set up to run the festival – the Hackney WickED Community Interest Company – has also played a crucial advocacy role in furthering the collective interests of the area’s artists.

She explains that the older-style large-windowed industrial buildings found in Wick are ideal for artistic endeavour. Yet there is growing pressure on the artists to move out of Hackney in search of affordable studio space.

“Once the artists leave zone 2 and they start to be pushed further and further afield out to the fringes of London, there won’t be any artists knitted into the everyday cultural fabric of the city.

“And once we’ve left, there won’t be any return. I think we’re losing viable options, we’re losing places to go to set up studios.”

Hughes is hopeful that a solution will be found, but in the meantime the precarious future of the artistic community in Wick lends a unique urgency to the festival.

More on the Hackney WickEd Festival here.

Hackney WickED Art Festival photo gallery here.