Activists launch campaign to ‘shut down’ school dinner themed pop-up
The Round Chapel in Clapton. Photograph: Ewan Munro (Creative Commons)
Activists from campaign group Reclaim Hackney have launched a campaign to “shut down” a new school dinners themed pop-up restaurant.
After School Club is set to open on 22 July and offers “five courses of posh school dinners” at £55-a-head at the Round Chapel in Lower Clapton.
Reclaim Hackney, which was set up to “support and defend” Hackney residents who are “increasingly disenfranchised”, has called the pop-up “idiotic” in a borough where over 40 per cent of children are on free school meals.
After School Club was created by Hackney-based curators Art of Dining, whose co-founder Alice Hodge, a former resident of Homerton and a teacher for six years, said she was “devastated” by the criticism.
The ticket price includes an ‘Art and English lesson’ and a live theatrical performance, while guests will receive a pack including a school tie, homework and a White Russian cocktail inside a milk bottle. The five course dinner will feature a ‘packed lunch’ of pork belly focaccia with plum sauce.
Reclaim Hackney has created an event on Facebook and says it wants to use “imaginative and positive ways to shut down this event” and failing that intends to picket the event during its two-week run.
A campaign spokesperson said: “Those people who are foolish enough or rich enough to flaunt their wealth in one of the poorest boroughs of London need to learn the harsh realities many families in Hackney live in.”
Reclaim Hackney also plans to host a street kitchen outside the Round Chapel and says it has already “forced” the Art of Dining to donate £5 from every ticket sold to national child nutrition charity the Magic Breakfast.
Pop-up ‘misportrayed’
The Art of Dining’s Co-founder Alice Hodge told the Hackney Citizen: “We are devastated. We never meant to cause offence. We love Hackney and we support Hackney every day. We’re totally aware of the problem of poverty in the area.”
Co-founder and head chef Ellen Parr was similarly upset that the event had been “misportrayed” and said the Art of Dining had already been approached by the caterers for a school in Leeds to help “revamp” their menus.
She said: “We will be working with National School Meals week in the future, and we are pleased that lots of positive discussions have already come out of this.”
The controversy echoes last year’s debate over the Death Row Dinners pop-up, which was set to open in Hoxton Square until a tide of public outrage – including condemnation from Amnesty International and prisoners’ rights group Reprieve – caused it to be cancelled.
Previous events from the Art of Dining have included a Mike Leigh-themed 70s dining experience – named ‘Abigail’s Party’ after the 1977 film – and a ‘Servant’s Supper’, set in the staff quarters of a 17th-century manor house in Richmond.
General Manager of Magic Breakfast charity Alex Cunningham, said the Art of Dining’s £5 donation would buy 22 children breakfast.
God, more bullying and threats from the guilt-trip squad. It’s non of their business what other people chose to do or spend their money on.
Reclaim Hackney? Well it was a massive Acid Techno rave party for 20 years and at £50 a gram the entertainment was just as expensive but not so nutritious.
Let’s get back to blood on the streets eh?
This is typical of the thoughtless and offensive types who move into deprived areas and then try to turn them into expensive playgrounds the poor cannot afford to live in. Areas that once had real shops and services that could be accessed by people on low incomes, now consigned to stupid novelties for those with higher incomes and who are clearly too stupid to understand when they’re being had.
I recently visited a venue next to the town hall that was charging £5 for a cheese roll! People are going hungry and using food banks to feed their families. Why wouldn’t they be offended by this show of bigoted ignorance and cynicism?
Why not do something really different and open a place that sells food at realistic prices for all the people in the neighbourhood to enjoy?
The area is jam packed with Turkish shops selling cheap food. But why give up an excuse to whine about cheese eh? Don’t like nice sandwiches? Make your own.
This is ridiculous, Reclaim Hackney seem to be agitating for their own parody column in Private Eye rather than anything useful.
This kind of tokenistic action just discredits a group who could win more friends and more influence if they picked their battles. Tell about the shortage of affordable housing in Hackney. Tell me about rents going up and shops closing down. Tell me about whether kids from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are getting into the best schools locally. Don’t tell me about overpriced roly poly.
I’d love it if someone could show me the real shops and services that are being forcibly shut down now – especially as this is taking place in the Round Chapel which continues to meet a wide range of needs and interests. It seems to me that new cafes and restaurants are coexisting alongside the same old shops that have always been there. Many of the new restaurants have opened in unused premises. The number of money shops and betting shops on the high streets do not suggest a little economy where the flat white is king.
I am utterly appalled at Reclaim Hackney for shutting this down. Art of Dining have worked closely with community groups and the school in which their latest pop-up was to be located would have received much needed monies from this project. I have lived in Hackney for over 20 years – who exactly are Reclaim Hackney reclaing for? It certainly doesn’t seem to wish to raise aspirations or support creativity and new ideas. They just seem to be “fun police” – misguided and luddite. Awful and shameful!
There is no school in the Round Chapel. You would know that if you were from Hackney. Art of Dining, and the ‘trendy, hipster’ new comers to Hackney have made the place a joke in London and throughout the UK.
It’s an affectionate joke, the way people laugh at North London liberals. People had a far worse perception of Hackney beforehand.
I am from Clapton Jules. I’ve lived here for decades. The joke is on you and on narrow minded jealous types. Having heard the word ‘hipster’ once you have to introduce it into every sneering conversation you have.
Do you know what the Clapton Hart used to be called? No, before it was Chimes – famous for stabbings, shootings, beatings and killings? Nope, course you don’t. Your knowledge is based only on a sense of snobbish superiority to younger people, not facts about our area.
But you appear to laud violence Jules.
Why is it that every left generation must have it’s own Red Guards and killing fields? Why do you turn so swiftly to threats of violence? Thugs and bullies, one and all.
I was born here. Do not make assumptions, Rich. I am well aware of Chimes and the problems attributed to it.
Thanks for bringing that up. Gentrification could be considered a form of racism. Just less overt and spun to seem like a good thing. But for whom. The process inevitably leads to disenfranchised people being out priced from the area they saw as home.
If Clapton and Hackney seem safer now (less black and more white – less poor and more wealthy), it is only because the problems have moved on. Luck old you, eh?
hey Jules, the last time people unthinkingly hated newcomers, it was the BNP. You know – the newcomers came in and took the incumbents jobs, homes, women, etc etc. I am sorry but it is your reaction that is aligned with the racists, not the other way around.
I asked you what Chimes was called before it was Chimes Jules. But yeah, racism. Coz a handful of people want to organise an event in a room that 10,000’s of organisations have hired before.
‘Gentrification’ (such a lazy phrase like hipster) means people who bought their houses cheap are going to sell them and make a big profit.
Or you could put an event on in the roundchapel and make some money (as an old timer your housing costs are surely cheaper than these unfortunate youngsters moving in?).
I read this recently. It made sense without being totally anti new comers or wealthier people.
http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/10/9-ways-privileged-gentrification/
Crap title and the example given is in San Francisco, but worth reading.
“White-iffied”! Seriously? You think white people don’t have the right to live in London? The capital of the UK? It’s for privileged non white people only?
What level of nonsense discrimination are you suggesting? Maybe segregation? Keep people apart and in separate areas.
Because the article was written by a proffesional whiner. Like a lot of modern ‘academics’ she is a grifter and shakedown artist.
Because there silly qualifications are essentially meaningless and add no real productive value to the world they are inventing obscure definitions to complain about so they can collect a cheque at the end of the bitter articles.
She offers no actual facts, just a complaint that a run down bar got taken over by people who cook better food and people started going there more.
But yeah, it was segregated so that no people of colour could go there… Oh no, wait, segregation is her thing.
The woman is a loon. Don’t take my word for it she says ‘I mean, I declare with more fortitude that I don’t want onions on my burrito.
And I hate onions, y’all. But I hate the heteropatriarchy more.’
Ha ha! That’s what you get for your master’s degree from an elite private institution (University of Southern California 2014-2015 undergraduate tuition, $48,280).
You see I’m sick of privileged professional chiselers and basically unhappy people running around the world inventing made up bu##$#|t and ways to divide people so they can pick up a fat pay cheque.
Where is it you’re doing your gender studies MA? And what was the pub called before it was Chimes (and before it was ruined and turned into a pub with nice burgers)?
Reclaim Hackney:
Self righteous bigots
Inciting hatred
Arrogant, ignorant
Bullies and cowards
Mindless propagandists
Vicious intimidation
Who do they remind you of?
Who else wanted to drive out people who were different? Or doing something different?
Dangerous intolerance
Destructive, hate full,
Deluded.
Please!
Don’t allow them to claim they speak for you!
Hackney, known to be previously down at heel. A bit run down in places, but people had lived there happily for decades, sending their kids to schools there, shopping there, living side by side with people from different ethnic backgrounds. Everyone was in the same boat. Same aspirations and same income bracket.
Then the middle class types move in. Educated at the expense of the working classes. Noticeably wealthier than their new neighbours, but loving the ready made diversity and cultural richness of their adopted area. They buy up housing stock, pushing up housing costs up. Boutique shops open up. Trendy coffee shops open up. Cafes that charge £10 for simple fry up open up. Pubs get taken over, tarted up and double the price of drinks. Business rates soar. Long term business go bust. People born in the area move away. Their mothers and fathers stay. Growing older in a place they can’t afford. They no longer go out – everything is too expensive. Surrounded by people who will never understand them – maybe they will employ them as a cleaner/gardener or nanny. Where is the diversity now? Who benefits from the increased wealth in Hackney. This is not rhetoric. This is my personal experience of being born raised and trying to remain in my little part of the world. My name is not Jules (as if?!!) Good night,
Your making a mockery of the poverty that is going on in Hackney £55 for what is meant to feed children who would otherwise go hungry at home? fuck off back to Chelsea you middle class free loading prick. The last time the like of you took the piss out of hackney you lot we’re crying because you couldn’t get insurance from your mates in the city after we stood by and watch our people smash your holes to pieces in 2011. Twat.