Alex Ramsay silversmith success

The work of award-winning local silversmith Alex Ramsay – who has just moved from a remote workshop in Hackney Wick to the sparkling heart of the diamond and jewellery industry in Hatton Garden – has been selected to launch British Silver Week at Goldsmiths' Hall in June.

Clapton resident Alex took the decision to move her studio soon after winning the silver award in the Goldsmiths' Company Craftsmanship and Design Awards earlier this year.

Many of Hackney’s creative companies are being pushed out of the borough by rising rents and property development, but in this case the relocation of the business is a success story.

“The last few months have been very exciting for me,” says Alex. “I exhibited a new collection of work at the Goldsmiths' Fair and at Somerset House, and I sold out at both shows. I also make bespoke pieces of jewellery and silverware to commission and I’ve recently finished a number of interesting projects, including engagement and eternity rings, wedding presents, candle sticks and pepper pots. So I’ve booked myself into some of the top silver shows taking place this year, and I’ve made the decision to base myself in Hatton Garden, the centre of London’s jewellery market.”

The announcement that her work will feature in British Silver week, the trade’s most prestigious fair, was made last week. “I have to design a new one-off piece to exhibit,” she says. “I’m working on a glass and silver pepper pot which will be a special limited edition with an exclusive hallmark.”

Alex Ramsay specialises in contemporary tableware which combines silver with other materials, including glass and felt. Her latest collection is inspired by the dramatic landscape of the West Coast of Scotland, where she spent a year as a silversmith in residence from 2006-7. Her memories of slate grey rocks and thundery skies threaded with silver sunlight lay behind the design of her glass and silver bowls and dishes. An ethical designer, she only uses diamonds that are certified as coming from zones free of civil war and conflict for her rings and bracelets.

Her rising sales were boosted by a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network. The money was spent on a new website which has won customers from across the United Kingdom.

There are more than sixty jewellery makers and designers like Alex in Hackney, according to recent research carried out by the Innovatory on Richmond Road. However only one third of these small businesses involve full time employment and a number are not profitable.

“The rise in gold and silver prices and the second thoughts people have about luxury purchases as consumer spending falls may hit the market, but jewellery is still, generally speaking, a booming area of sales,” says Hackney Enterprise Network business advisor Patrick Nicholson. “The strong wedding market, and new forms of body jewellery, are all driving sales. Affluent buyers are still willing to splash out for bespoke engagement and wedding rings and other high ticket jewellery items to mark special anniversaries. While Hackney is getting better at holding on to rising talent in the industry, it’s understandable that Alex wants to get closer to suppliers and buyers the top end of the London trade. In this case, Hackney hasn’t lost a business, it has gained a role model and a trailblazer. Her success lights the way for other creatives in the borough.”

People wanting something extra special for a loved one - or just for the dining table - will be able to view the work of Alex Ramsay during an open event at the Clerkenwell Studios from 15-18 May and at the OXO Tower during British Silver Week from 10-16 June.

film funding and mandrake success

One of Hackney’s large cluster of film companies has found West End success in what is proving to be a difficult year for the funding of independent movies.

Backroads, a hard-hitting film on sex trafficking in the Cambridgeshire Fens, made by Mandrake Films of Dalston, has just been screened to great acclaim at the Curzon Cinema in Soho. The leading role in the film is taken by Ian Puleston Davies, a face well known from Whistleblower, Life on Mars, and Silent Witness.

“We’re following up with "I'll Be Your Mirror", a film about women and body image for Current TV,” says producer Lucy Baxter. “It’s always an uphill struggle when you’re an independent, but we’ve got several documentary, drama and multimedia projects underway, including Israel’s Children, a story about young people in the region today, and another called Memories of a Gold Smuggler, for which we’re raising funding.”

Belfast-born Lucy first got involved with filmmaking at Amnesty International and a number of her documentaries have been nominated for BAFTA awards. A live broadcast of open-heart surgery for the Wellcome Trust is another recent breakthrough for the Kingsland High Street company.

“Mandrake is blazing a trail in cinemas and on the internet that other Hackney film makers can follow, but the credit crunch is making it very difficult to raise finance and credit for new movies,” says Kevin Davey at the Hackney Enterprise Network.

The network has recently been getting advice from film funding experts at the financial services company Grant Thornton, Film London and the UK Film Council to identify a way forward for Hackney’s independent film companies.

“Putting together the funding package for an independent film is a huge and complex exercise,” says Kevin Davey. “Small budget independent films are backed by private individuals and struggling producers, and they often apply to a combination of the UK Film Council, the BBC, Channel Four and regional film funds like Film London for a significant part of their budget. Pre-release sales, partnerships with production houses and DVD and online distributors also figure in the deal. A combination of a special film tax credit, worth 20% of the budget of a movie, along with the Enterprise Incentive Scheme and bank loans – if you can get them - make up the difference.”

The UK Film Council, which invests fifty million pounds a year in new projects, is currently taking applications from film companies. Every year it distributes around £27 million from the National Lottery and £27 million from the government to support script development, film production, short films, export and distribution, cinemas, and festivals. Recent successes backed by the UK Film Council include Control and This is England.

“A tax regulation which encouraged profitable firms to invest in film as a side effect was closed last year, but fortunately two hedge funds in the city have stepped up to replace them as private investors,” says Vince Holden, Film Council’s head of production finance. “This will help a few film makers putting together movies with budgets of two to four million pounds, but small companies are unlikely to feel the benefit. There’s still a real need for a smart lender in the sector, such as a specialist bank.”

“The market for independent film is growing as internet TV channels – which are crying out for good content - grow in number,” says Kevin Davey. “However these pay lower fees than the large distributors and broadcasters, only partly easing the pressure on small firms.”

A new market for film makers is being opened up by Digital Deli, a fair trade online distributor of independent films which is being assisted by the Innovatory on Richmond Road.

“We’re really committed to the growth of the sector” says CEO Richard Ayers. “Our aim is to enable creative producers to exhibit their work in a virtual market place where they can sell movies and chat about their projects with people inside and outside their industry.”

Digital Deli sells hundreds of films online and takes a much smaller cut of revenues than larger initiatives like Joost and Hulu, which retain half of the income raised.

kylie, posh, madonna dressed by hackney

Hackney is a pressure cooker for new fashion ideas, a place where designers from the very top end of the industry rub shoulders with aspiring newcomers to the trade. The results frequently catch the eyes – and attract the cheque books - of global celebrities like Kylie Minogue, Victoria Beckham and Madonna. So it’s not an industry the borough can afford to lose.

Dalston Lane designer Christopher Kane – whose clients include Kylie Minogue, Victoria Beckham and Beth Ditto - has been grabbing fashion headlines worldwide for the last three years. One of the best known names on the British catwalk, Hackney is an important source for Kane’s work. The ideas behind some of his latest snakeskin shirts and dresses come from a camouflage T-shirt he bought in Dalston Lane as a teenager ten years ago. Kane's designs are now best sellers in the upmarket stores of Paris, Milan, Tokyo and London Angeles. This year he is launching a high street range of cashmere knitwear and jewellery for Swarovski.

Kane honed his design skills at St Martin’s School of Art, alongside Marios Schwab, another big name in the industry who is based just around the corner in Arcola Street. Schwab was recently named Best New Designer in the British Fashion Awards. This year he is using scientific body imaging – such as heat scans – to develop unusual colour schemes for his dresses. He has Kylie Minogue and Kate Moss among his regular customers.

Kylie Minogue recently commissioned Mare Street fashion designer Emma Roach to make a costume which the Australian superstar has been wearing as she promotes X, her latest album. Roach created a very striking and unique outfit which looks like body armour. “There has been strong interest from a number of other chart bands since that order,” she says. The Emma Roach studio has just been awarded a grant from the Hackney Enterprise Network to purchase more computing equipment to help the young design practice.

Superstars also queue up to buy underwear from Buttress and Snatch of Broadway Market, the hottest news in the fast growing luxury underwear trade. The company is benefiting from a backlash against cheap and disposable knickers by upmarket shoppers who are fuelling a "lingerie renaissance." Designer Rachel Kenyon uses vintage trims and hand-clipped lace from the last surviving real lace company in Nottingham, and all her garments are made in the UK from local materials. Her buyers include Christina Aguilera and Madonna. Buttress and Snatch sells well in Barneys department store in New York, which Rachel says is because "I don't scrimp on the frills and fanciness."

A large number of new designers are hoping to follow in the footsteps of Kane, Schwab, Roach and Kenyon. Of these Kelly Shaw and Goodone are strong contenders.

Retro-womanswear designer Kelly Shaw recently took second place and a cash prize of £2000 in the River Island awards for garments which evoke memories of the 1950s. Victoria Beckham is rumoured to have purchased three of her dresses.

Nin Castle and Phoebe Emerson of Goodone, an ethical fashion business based in Tudor Road, create their garments from hand selected recycled fabric. They call this "mass producing the one-off". Goodone supplies retail outlets in London, Manchester, Brighton and Glasgow along with customers in Europe and Japan The company recently won a Trevor Campbell award for enterprise. A recent grant of £16,000 from the London Development Agency means that Goodone has time to provide advice and guidance to students and other companies on how the fashion industry can become sustainable. "We enjoy instigating positive change in the industry," they say.

All these companies expect to benefit from the extension of the tube line to Dalston over the next two years. But many are also worried about rent rises for studios and the demolition of workshops to make way for new apartment blocks.

“We need to make sure that the affordable studio and workshop spaces which attracted these growing companies to Hackney when they first started out remain a feature of the business landscape,” says kevin Davey of the Hackney Enterprise Network. “Innovative designers create new markets for businesses of all kinds in the capital, and these trailblazing small companies are precious assets in Hackney’s economy.”

masterclass on software development

“If you don’t get to know the needs of your customers better, and check out their willingness to buy first, you’ll waste more money on developing new products than you will ever get back,” software millionaire Ben Finn OBE warned a masterclass for local computing companies last week.

When it comes to making money from carefully crafted software, Mr Finn – who received an OBE in 2007 for his services to the industry - knows what he’s talking about. Early last year he sold the international music notation company Sibelius to American media giant Avid Technology for $23 million.

The musically minded brothers started work on the specialist software – which was used to make movies including Billie Elliott and James Bond – when they were still at school. After twenty years of product development, clever pricing, and well chosen distribution partnerships, Sibelius is now the industry standard worldwide. The educational version of the package is also used in three quarters of the schools in the UK.

Mr Finn’s presentation converted two decades of experience into ninety minutes of expert advice. He explained how to develop radical new products and ideas, choose the right business model, set up the best distribution channels, and select the best strategies for pricing and copy protection, right through to the best way of demonstrating new products and how to pick a name for new software that customers will like and understand.

“Windows is short, evocative and memorable, and it translates well internationally,” he said. “It’s a great name for software. But the first name Microsoft came up with was ‘Interface Manager.’ It was clunky, too long, and dreamed by technicians unable to see the product from a general customer’s point of view. A bad name can kill an new and innovative product.”

He gave detailed advice on international sales, explaining that American buyers are the largest market in the world but they expect to pay half the price that software is sold for in London. “When you get a distributor in the States, you’ll still have to go there to do your own marketing,” he pointed out. “They are great at shifting boxes, but that’s all.” He also highlighted how difficult it is to make money from software sales in Asia. “You can buy Sibelius in every city in China,” he says. “The problem is, it’s all pirated. We’ve never sent a single box east, nor received a penny of income back.”

Mr Finn placed a huge emphasis on the need for companies to research the real needs of their customers, and to check that new features they are planning to add to software products really are wanted, will be purchased, and can be created at a profit before going ahead with expensive development work. He set out a detailed mechanism for prioritising the development of new features and a tested formula to analyse benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) of software development work.

“The latest trend, providing software as a hosted service, reduces the delivery costs of companies and lends itself to charging subscriptions,” he explained. “It’s cheaper to get a new software business up and running now than it was when I first started out, and that’s good. But it’s also easier to lose sight of what your customers want, and to make the same old mistakes.”

Mr Finn was speaking to a group of software architects attending a masterclass the Innovatory on Old Street, where he is an associate of the business advice team.

His words has a strong and immediate impact on the twelve companies taking part.

“I feel that the transfer of knowledge from software gurus like Ben to a company like mine is invaluable for someone like me, as I move from factory management to software development,” said Marcia Lazar, the director of F2IT in Great Eastern Street, which is designing software to manage production processes in the fashion industry.

“He was really well informed on all the key issues facing software companies which want to grow,” said Leon Tong, the manager of Bright Lemon, which builds social networking sites for the government and the British Council in its studio in Provost Street. “I’ll be putting some of his advice on marketing and pricing into practice straight away.”

"It was well worth attending," said Geoff Marchant of Coublis in Tabernacle Street. "I found Ben's comments about internationalisation, particularly differential pricing, interesting, the distribution discussion was very relevant and his views on brand names were entertaining."

The masterclass was sponsored by the Gateway to Investment, which has helped more than thirty new companies in London raise a total of £22 million of private equity investment over the last two and a half years.

top end but temporary apartment hotels

Eye catching temporary apartment hotels could be erected in the north and south of Hackney over the next few years, before being donated to charities for the homeless, as the result of a radical design breakthrough by local architect Tim Pyne.

Sclater Street in Shoreditch has been selected as the most likely first location for a pioneering thirty two unit self-catering hotel which will take only nine weeks to build, and operate for eight years, before being taken apart and relocated to another piece of wasteland somewhere else in the capital.

The M-hotel – pronounced motel - is a development of the highly acclaimed M-house, a luxurious two-bedroom metal bungalow Pyne designed with Michael Howe of Mae Architects.

The apartment units are made from insulated aluminium panels and lined internally with plaster walls. Made in Newcastle, they contain state of the art kitchen and bathroom fittings, and top end furnishings in the living and sleeping areas. The apartments, each of which has a balcony, slot into a customised steel rack, and are designed to last one hundred years in a changing series of locations..

“At average rental costs for the area the self-catering units will pay for themselves within twenty four months,” Pine explains. “The new hotels will put unused land waiting for development to good use, and give a better return to landowners than temporary car parks, an all too common use of land in limbo. They will draw the European business people arriving to work in the City’s new skyscrapers into Hackney, which will benefit from higher council tax revenues and increased spending in local shops, bars and restaurants. At the moment international business staff are often put up in hotel chains or distant suburban flats with long commute times. Temporary self catering hotels of this kind are also an obvious way to accommodate people working on Olympic projects in the north and east of the borough over the next four years.”

The hotels could turn Hackney’s backstreets into designer locations. “Attractive visual branding from fashion labels like Paul Smith and Prada will be mounted on the external panels of the hotels, sharing and promoting their visual cool,” he says. “Olympic sponsors may also be interested in this feature.”

As well as providing much needed accommodation for the growing international business community, at high speed and low cost, Pyne believes that his innovation will benefit some of the poorest people in the capital too.

“I would like to think that when the apartments are removed from temporary sites, having paid for themselves many times over, the units could be given to charities so that homeless people and couples caught in miserable, temporary accommodation could benefit from them,” says Pyne. “I believe that many large companies could be persuaded to do this. I also think that housing associations and charities will realise that units of this kind can be deployed more quickly than traditional new build, and can complement their modernisation plans.”

“The M-hotel is an innovation with potentially huge local benefits,” says Patrick Nicholson, a construction specialist at the Hackney Enterprise Network. “Hackney’s daytime workforce in Broadgate and in the Olympic Park will get local accommodation, landowners will get higher rental income, local traders will get increased business, the Town Hall will get more Council Tax, and charities and the homeless will get a valuable trickle down too. It’s a great idea.”

Pyne’s rapid assembly, mobile M-Hotel has already generated enquiries from developers in Libya and Dubai, from enthusiasts for extreme sports who need accommodation near mountains and glaciers, and from the organisers of an international sports event shortly to take place in Africa.

recycled fabrics key to sustainable fashion

The innovative design work of goodone, an ethical fashion business based in Tudor Road, Hackney which uses only recycled fabrics, features in a recent online report by Clare Davidson for the BBC.

Goodone - which supplies retail outlets in London, Manchester, Brighton and Glasgow along with customers in Europe and Japan - is run by Nin Castle and Phoebe Emerson.

The company "mass produces the one-off" by creating individual garments from a unique combination of hand selected recycled fabrics.

The company won a £15,000 Trevor Campbell award for enterprise in 2007. A more recent grant of £16,000 from the London Development Agency has enabled goodone to provide advice and guidance to students and other companies on how the fashion industry can become sustainable.

"We enjoy instigating positive change in the industry," they say.

hackney's fashion vanguard: kane and schwab

Dalston Lane designer Christopher Kane – whose clients include Kylie Minogue, Victoria Beckham, Naomi Campbell, Beth Ditto and Swarovski - has been grabbing the headlines as London Fashion Week looms, along with risk-taker Marios Schwab - who is also based in Hackney. Both designers honed their skills at St Martin's School of Art.

In her survey of East London based designers for the Observer, Sarah Mower calls Kane "the 25-year-old Glaswegian poster boy for London's latest fashion surge."

Christopher Kane's designer clothing is available from upmarket outlets worldwide, including Browns, Dover Street Market, Barneys, Corso Como, Villa Moda, Maria Luisa in Paris and Quatar, Joyce in Hong Kong, Corso Como in Milan, Tokyo and Seoul, Ikram in Chicago, Maxfields in LA, Comme des Garcons in Tokyo, Sotris in Athens, Elle in Perth, and Podium in Russia.

new wave of eco-building in hackney

The Olympic organisers and the developers in Broadgate aren’t the only people erecting futuristic buildings in Hackney. The borough is now attracting some of the most innovative architects in London, and they are using wood, straw, recycled materials and wind turbines in their attempts to reduce the local impact on the environment. And Hackney’s school leavers are also about to get the chance to train as pioneers in the new building techniques.

Plastered bales of straw are the main material used in an innovative new building at Hackney City Farm in Goldsmith’s Row, where a training centre designed by the environmental experts Amazonails has recently opened.

“The foundations of the centre are rammed earth tyres, and the bale walls are plastered with lime and clay recycled form the farm’s own pottery,” says Emma Appleton. “The main cross beam of the building is made of greenheart wood, a tropical hardwood reclaimed from the Norfolk sea defences. We also salvaged a teak boat from the 1930s that has been stripped down to make the desks in the room.”

Cath Hassel of Ech20 was the first teacher to use the space, in a workshop on water efficiency for Town Hall staff. “This is the best room I have ever trained in,” she says. “It has warm natural light, and uses natural materials. The interaction between the delegates was really high and I’m convinced the room aided that.”

“This building points the way forward for companies looking for less environmentally damaging forms of creating homes and workspace,” says Patrick Nicholson, a construction specialist at the Hackney Enterprise Network. “The materials for a house built with straw bales cost significantly less than brick and block. The outlay for a family-sized strawbale house in the UK would be about £60,000 plus the price of the land. Plastered strawbale walling has a surprisingly high level of fire resistance, and the UK currently produces 4 million tons of straw a year more than it needs. This is sufficient to build 250,000 well insulated and affordable new homes a year.”

Strawbale building techniques will be demonstrated at this year's Ecobuild show, an annual event dedicated to sustainable forms of design and construction, at Earl's Court from 26-28 February.

Hackney Council recently granted planning permission for a nine-storey tower in Murray Grove in Shoreditch which the architects, Waugh Thistleton, say will be the world’s tallest timber residential building.

The Stadthaus will be constructed using an Austrian solid timber system with wood from sustainable spruce forests, giving the tower – which will only take nine weeks to build – an unusually low carbon footprint. The stair and lift cores, load-bearing walls and even the floor slabs will all be constructed entirely from timber. Demand for the nineteen flats in the tower was extremely high and all the apartments were reserved on a recent launch day.

Waugh Thistleton’s designers are also the brains behind the fourteen storey Kinetica, fifty six apartments and three floors of commercial space to be built in Ramsgate Street, behind the Kingsland Shopping Centre, by 2010.

The futuristic tower is specially designed to harness wind power, which will be captured on its south side by four vertical turbines designed and installed by wind technology experts Quiet Revolution. Any renewable energy generated by the turbines which is not used by the residents will be forwarded to the National Grid.

The building will also have a very unusual façade – pixillated like an over-enlarged photograph - inspired by the images produced by German artist Gerhad Richter. The external surface will consist of thousands of black, grey and white panels made from waste timber.

Kinetica will be launched at the Hoxton Hotel on Great Eastern Street on Wednesday 20th February.

“These ground-breaking new buildings are pointers to the way the construction industry is moving,” says Dave Geddes, who runs a specialist centre for new construction techniques at Hackney Community College on Falkirk Street. “That’s why we are launching a new Diploma for 14-19 year olds in construction and the built environment in September. The next generation of architects and builders will need to be experts in low carbon footprint buildings which draw on renewable energy sources, and the college intends to stay at the cutting edge of the industry.”

The new qualification in construction and the environment is a joint initiative linking the college and Stoke Newington, Haggerston and Cardinal Pole schools.

“The construction industry is booming in Hackney, but it’s also changing its spots at the same time,” says Patrick Nicholson. “Local builders, and people buying or commissioning new buildings locally, are being forced to reduce their impact on the environment by high energy prices, new regulations and public opinion. Every building firm, and young person thinking of entering the industry, must move with the times and play their part in making London a more sustainable and cleaner city to live in.”

hackney's house of straw is sign of buildings to come

Plastered bales of straw are the main material for an innovative new building at Hackney City Farm, an education and training facility completed by Amazonails in December. The building points the way forward for companies and clients looking for sustainable and less environmentally damaging forms of construction over the years ahead.

The materials for a house built with straw bales cost about the same as those needed for a conventional timber-frame house, but significantly less than brick and block. A family-sized strawbale house in the UK would cost about £60,000 plus the price of the land. The UK currently produces 4 million tons of straw a year more than it needs. This is sufficient to build 250,000 homes a year.

Strawbale buildings are not the fire risk you might imagine. They have been subjected to rigorous testing by Amazonails, who say that the bales resist burning for the same reason it is difficult to burn a telephone directory. It is easy to set fire to one page, but not to a dense block of paper. When plastered, strawbale walls have an even greater resistance to fire.

Design consultant Barbara Jones, the director of Amazonails, recently supervised the construction of the largest strawbale building in the UK, the new offices and auction room of fine art auctioneers G E Sworder and Sons of Stansted Mountfitchet in Essex, which will open in May. The building was constructed using a new technique called ‘compressive framing’ in which the roof is supported on a timber frame while the strawbale walls are constructed. It is then lowered onto the strawbales, which become the loadbearing structure. The roof then protects the strawbale walls from the weather while they are being plastered.

Strawbale building techniques will be demonstrated at this year's Ecobuild show, an annual event dedicated to sustainable forms of design and construction, at Earl's Court from 26-28 February.

luxury underwear by buttress and snatch

The Hackney company Buttress and Snatch recently featured prominently in a Guardian survey of the growing luxury underwear trade. Journalist Leonie Cooper writes of a "backlash against disposable fashion" and a "lingerie renaissance" which includes "a flourishing of upmarket, bijoux underwear brands."

"Rachel Kenyon fell in love with underwear thanks to her glamorous French grandmother's pink boudoir. A fashion graduate of Bristol UWE, she now runs the frilly and silly underwear label Buttress and Snatch, which has fast become a burlesque favourite. When it was founded in 1999, however, it was nothing more than a lighthearted performance-art project. "We were all about dressing up fancy and showing off," says Kenyon. "It wasn't called burlesque or anything then. It was quite a funny joke to dress up like olden-days ladies when we'd all spent years being scruffy punk rockers." Now Kenyon's flamboyant bloomers are worn by the likes of Christina Aguilera and Madonna, and over the past year Buttress and Snatch has racked up top underwear sales in Barneys department store in New York, which she attributes to the fact that "I don't scrimp on the frills and fanciness".

Kenyon admits she always has a waiting list for her showy designs: "I've never been able to keep up with making enough pants for everyone who wants them!" Kenyon's underwear is less than cheap because of her time-intensive methods and use of deluxe but ethical fabrics. "The clothing industry these days is all about mass production, globalisation, cost cutting and maximising profits rather than craftsmanship, tradition and beautiful things," she laments. She uses vintage trims and hand-clipped lace from the last real lace company in Nottingham, and all production takes place in the UK with local materials, to support the British fabric industry."