Those ‘cunning folk’ max+noa (formerly known as Sheaf+Barley) have been in residence with LADA since late 2017 responding to our relocation to our new home and helping us settle in to our new neighbourhood in Bethnal Green.
They have developed a project that looks at LADA’s history through the plants that have grown in and around its former homes. On the evening of 10 May 2018 max+noa held an event about their journey through both LADA’s history and the East End of London and invited everyone who has some kind of history with LADA to donate their own plants to be part of a collective planting – and remembering – and laying down of roots at The Garrett Centre.
The invitation to donate a plant to LADA is still open. Please come by LADA anytime (opening hours Mon – Fri: 10.30am – 6pm) with your plant donations, or post them.
“A weed is an invention of cultivated and urbanised space, a plant in the wrong place, a disrupter and an invader to what is already there. Weeds can be useful challenges to hegemony or can run wild and establish their own dominance, like nettles that can be picked for food or like knotweed smothering all other living stuff. LADA has been growing in-between the cracks for almost twenty years and a lot has changed since 1998.
Where is LADA at now? Who is LADA made up of and who have they affected? How can LADA continue to help create spaces that are useful and challenging while also subverting the invasion and overrunning of urban and social space through the gentrification which it arguably has been made an unwilling party to? The history of LADA and its movement through the city is a small reflection of the city itself, and both these things are made and maintained by the people who inhabit it.
This planting is a commitment to the future, to caring for those who inhabit LADA’s space, to growth and renewal.
The work is a sort of pilgrimage to LADA and an elegy to the changing face of East London, and the complex and sometimes difficult interrelation that exists between the two, a hopeful challenge and a way to reconsider the past and present.” max+noa
LADA has also commissioned max+noa to develop a collaborative project, The Mansford Window, creating a stained glass window in collaboration with local folks for our new home at The Garrett Centre. Details of this commission will be announced shortly.
Banner image credit:
max+noa, Credit Christa Holka2020’s Unbound seasonal sale is Twelve Days of Unbound – 12 days of 12 guest editors with each recommending books or films or editions that they would like to give or receive as festive gifts, and all offered at 12% discount.
Read moreHighlighting a selection of LADA’s projects and initiatives we have produced between April 2019 – March 2020
Read moreLADA Statement of Commitment on organisational change and racial equality
Read moreThe recipients of LADA’s online collaborative residencies are the artist Jet Moon and her client ‘Giani’, and the artists Jemima Yong and Kei Franklin.
Read moreA statement from LADA on organisational change.
Read moreWe are delighted to announce that the recipients of the Katherine Araniello Bursary awards are Katayoun Jalilipour and Tammy Reynolds.
Read moreWe are delighted to announce that Aislinn Evans has been awarded the 2020 Future Proofing bursary
Read moreLADA regrets to announce that in the interests of the safety of our artists, collaborators, audiences, community and staff, we are closing our office and Study Room, and postponing all events until the beginning of May, at the earliest.
Read more