hackney designer kits out kylie

Mare Street based fashion designer Emma Roach has been meeting regularly with singer Kylie Minogue, who has commissioned her to design and deliver a costume which the Australian superstar will wear during An Audience with Kylie Minogue, a programme which will be broadcast in late November, coinciding with the release of X, her tenth studio album. The unique garments have the appearance of body armour. Emma Roach has just been awarded a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network to purchase computing equipment for use in her fast growing design practice.

future of television takes shape in hackney

Television is being transformed by internet TV channels, audience participation and voting, new programmes for mobile phones and other portable devices, and the introduction of links to online communities, information services and shopping services. A large number of the small, innovative companies involved in this work can be found in Shoreditch, in the south of the borough.

More than twenty local media companies attended a forum on the future of television at the Innovatory last week to discuss the new business opportunities which are opening up in the sector. The event – jointly organised with the Hackney Enterprise Network – brought together buyers and commissioning editors from major channels and fifteen Hackney-based documentary, video and film companies.

“The market for television and related activities is growing very rapidly, by almost twenty per cent a year,” Kevin Davey of the Innovatory told the audience. “At the same time, traditional broadcasting is coming to an end. The new wave of television expansion is interactive. The new programmes sought by commissioning editors are cross-platform - linking television, radio, and the internet - and in many cases they are also participatory, featuring viewer feedback and questions, viewer voting and the growth of online communities.”

“The companies which will succeed are those who can take existing genres and formats and flip them, transform them, or subvert them with something more edgy,” said Jo Taylor, the manager of 4Talent, the Channel Four outreach team which searches for new suppliers and fresh ideas for programmes “Creatives should identify the participatory, cross-platform potential of their ideas right from the start, and like all media start up companies, work with stronger partners who already have a track record if they can’t deliver it themselves.”

“Channel Four has no in house production of its own,” she told the forum. “So we need new companies to pitch strong new ideas to us all the time. We’re actively looking for a new generation of talented programme makers to come up with proposals which are right for our viewers, who are younger than those watching BBC and ITV. And we are opening our doors to smaller production companies. We are determined that 20% of the new work we commission next year will come from businesses with turnovers of less than two million pounds.”

Channel Four encourages production companies to place sixty second and three minute test programmes on the Microdocs and FourDocs areas of its website. These are continually reviewed by commissioning editors and fees are paid for the best, which are then broadcast. The channel also offers a professional summer school and regularly assesses new movie scripts through its Extreme Cinema scheme.

Rishi Sankar, an Eastenders producer at the BBC, has just been appointed as the commissioning editor for Ability TV, a new channel which will launch next year. He explained that the new channel was looking for companies to make radical new programmes that would actively involve young viewers through web cams, blogs, audience stringers, and citizen media.

“Choice and opinion are highly valued by young viewers,” he said. “In order to be successful, soap operas, dramas, comedy slots, music and magazine programmes all need interactive and multi-platform components that will involve and retain them as viewers.”

“Imagine watching a show which includes a review of a computer game you’re interested in,” said Alestir Waller, the head of channel for Ability TV. “The kind of programme we intend to buy will offer you a trial run of that game in a separate window on your screen while you’re watching the show, then let you comment on the game via a web cam, and see your views broadcast before the programme ends.”

Other east London channels taking part in the event included Greenzone, a shopping channel for environmentally friendly products, and YourkindaTV, which transmits an interactive stand up comedy programme that allows the audience to heckle and vote online. Rarekwai, Hackney’s street art and underground music channel, Glocal films, which is developing a video exchange linking young people in the UK with the Third World, and the ecommerce software company Coublis also took part.

“In television today, the old divisions between creatives, technologists and audiences are being eroded,” says Patrick Nicholson of the Hackney Enterprise Network. “To win commissions in the fast-changing media business, creatives must start to work with technology, telecommunications and web experts who know how to bridge formats, deliver participation, and build online communities. South Hackney has exactly the right mix of companies for that to happen.”

two years of success for London Bites theatre business

The Hackney-based company London Bites, which brings writers, actors, and theatre directors together for informal public performances of new work every month, has a lot to celebrate on its second birthday, including a pat on the back from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, a grant to help build the business over the year ahead, and a new franchise in South Wales.

A glitzy anniversary party was hosted by comedian Shazia Mirza – who has been described as the “Lenny Bruce of female stand-up” - at the Top Floor Bar @Turnmills in Clerkenwell. Talented actors performing new work on the night included Martin Miller, Esther McAuley, Karen Osenton and Andrew McGillan.

For the last two years London Bites has been helping scriptwriters to secure commissions, actors to get work, and London’s theatre directors to book the best new talent in the capital.

For one evening every month, up to twelve performers - who have been selected by audition - perform five minute sets of new drama and comedy onstage in front of directors, industry professionals and the public.

Organiser Claire-Louise English has exactly the right background and connections to make the gatherings succeed. The Hoxton-based manager of London Bytes is the daughter of the actor and comedian Arthur English, probably best known for his role as Mr Harman the maintenance man in the TV series Are You Being Served?

“We are always looking for new talent for our show,” she says. “We audition every month and we’re looking for five minute monologues and ten minute duologues. We welcome new writing. If you have a script that you would like to see performed, this is the place to do it.”

“I am doing great since my appearance in Superhero at London Bites,” says actor Dylan MacDonough. “I got a show from it, which led to an agent, which led to a job in television. It’s an approach that works.”

“London is a world centre for performance and composition, but the opportunities for professionals to meet and perform with other actors and writers are actually few and far between,” says the founder of London Bytes, Melissa Leigh. “We provide an informal atmosphere in which performers and writers can demonstrate their work, free from the normal constraints and pressures of a conventional showcase.”

The theatre world has begun to sit up and take notice. A report from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival recently praised London Bites for “introducing excellent new theatrical acting and writing talent to audiences and the media via high quality and compelling shows.”

London Bite’s networking and performance events have also won sponsorship by Spotlight, the main casting directory for stage and screen.

Work is now underway to franchise the pioneering arts business out to theatre professionals in other cities in the United Kingdom, with the support of a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network.

The first of these new ventures, Cardiff Bites, is already up and running in South Wales, and holding auditions. Its first shows will be held in November.

“It is notoriously difficult for new writers and actors from east London to get onto the radar of the theatre establishment,” says Patrick Nicholson of the Hackney Enterprise Network. “London Bites opens doors and makes introductions that matter, as well as laying on a very good night out for everyone involved. It is a theatrical innovation that has begun in Hackney and I will believe it will be replicated across the country.”

To contact London Bites, email clare@standupdrama.com or call 02079232295.

hackney-china trade is growing

Half the world’s computers, clothes and digital electronics are made in China, and more than three quarters of the childrens’ toys distributed around the planet come from its huge factories. Clothes, toys, furniture and shoes that used to be manufactured in workshops in Hackney now come from assembly lines in Chongqing, Shandong and Huangzou. So it’s no surprise that Hackney’s small businesses are starting to reach out to Chinese suppliers and share the benefits of low labour costs and high volume production.

Local regeneration expert and executive coach Chris Hadley has just returned from his third trip to China in three years. Earlier this week he briefed the Hackney Enterprise Network on his tour of Wuhan, Jinzhou, Yichang and Beijing, during which he visited commercial ports - including Han Kou, a major centre for the transport of coal and aggregates – as well as temples, and the monastic centre of Tai Chi culture at Wu Dang Shan, accompanied by inward investors and science and innovation specialist Julia Knight of the British Consulate in Shanghai.

“Even China’s smaller cities are now highly developed and entrepreneurial, with good road and river-based transport systems” he says. “New office buildings are going up everywhere. China now has a huge middle class. Life at every level is commercial, with traders and shops and small factories everywhere you go, and evidence that the peasants are beginning to prosper too. It’s an extremely enterprising society, and this gives rise to a huge contrast between the urban bustle, and the transport of raw materials and manufactured products through the countryside and along the rivers, and the scenic beauty of the mountains and rural areas.”

Chris Hadley travelled with the north London-based Meridian Society, which has devised an innovative way to teach Chinese using the Tian Di Ren (time, place, person) system based on the Chinese sentence structure. The society is also planning a summer school in a village outside Beijing, where visitors will teach local learners English in the mornings, and the be taught Chinese in the afternoon.

In Beijing Chris Hadley also met with Matthew Kelly, who helps local businesses trading with the Chinese capital on behalf of the Innovatory on Old Street. Mr Kelly links Hackney businesses with Chinese manufacturers, exporters, and freight forwarders, making introductions, assisting in negotiations, and ensuring that goods reach shops and businesses in the borough on time and in good shape.

“We’ve been opening doors for Hackney firms for the last two months, with interest mainly coming from the garment, print and construction trades,” Matthew Kelly reports. “We’ve also been helping to provide interpreters and translation, to source samples and prices, and to arrange shipments, helping small firms in Hackney avoid the many pitfalls which exist in international trade. There’s a growing appetite for goods from China in the borough.”

“The price and quality of the MP3 music players we’ve from Beijing beats anything we were able to source in Europe,” says Hackney Wick electrical wholesaler James Wilcox.

“We’ve been importing reclaimed building materials,” says Alan Davis of Redecor in Homerton. “Even with the transportation costs factored in, they cost only 25% of the going rate in Britain.”

On Tuesday night Michael Sinclair, the chair of the Stoke Newington Business Association, launched yet another service which will help Hackney businesses overcome the barriers to trade with China.

“ChinaOnecall is an interpreter in your pocket,” he says. “It provides a twenty four hour telephone link to Chinese staff who are fluent in English and Mandarin. The interpreters will speak over your phone to hotel staff, taxi drivers, business managers and ordinary people on the streets of Chinese cities.“

“There will be no need for a business to feel friendless and misunderstood in China again,” says Mr Sinclair. “One call to us and you’ll be on speaking terms with everyone around you.”

To contact the Meridian Society email mecs@meridiandao.co.uk To contact Matthew Kelly email Beijingoffice@theinnovatory.com For more information on ChinaOnecall visit www.chinaonecall.com