Communities in New York

Stories from the East 

A project by Future Hackney and Abrons Arts Centre 

We are currently seeking funding and support for this visionary project – please contact us if you can donate or provide space to exhibit. 

Project Description

Stories From the East will bring together residents of two historically diverse and creative communities, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and Dalston, a community in the borough of Hackney in East London, to document the beauty, complexity, and resilience of life on the East Side of their city, building solidarity and community cross-nationally. We identified the LES and Dalston as “sister neighbourhoods” due to their similarities throughout history until the present day. Today, both neighbourhoods are home to large concentrations of public government housing for low-income individuals (known as public housing/NYCHA in the LES, or council estates in Dalston) and are rapidly experiencing gentrification and privatisation. Long-time residents fear displacement due to the rising costs but also have deep community ties to their boroughs.

 Within this context, this project seeks to create a photographic conversation between residents of each neighbourhood, chronicling the relation between both places through the eyes of those who call it home. In each city, the lead artists will recruit 5-6 participants, who will participate in paid weekly workshops on photography and community history over the course of two months. We will facilitate virtual conversations and feedback sessions between each cohort, allowing them to exchange stories about their backgrounds, families, and experiences with living in a gentrifying borough. Participants will take photos on film cameras, analyse family photographs as catalysts for new work, and co-create portraits with their neighbours both in their home city and internationally. Through this process, long-time residents will better understand the context they are situated in both locally and globally, while documenting their own living history. The project will culminate in a final exhibition displayed simultaneously in both locales, to be installed at multiple community sites to allow greater public access and engagement, including indoor galleries and outdoors in public sites of neighbourhood significance. 

Future Hackney have been visiting New York gaining insights from social profit organisations. We have visited and worked alongside Henry Street Settlement, Abrons Arts Centre, ICP, The Tenement Museum and Bronx Documentary Centre. We also meet many communities across the city creating a synergy between the stories of Londoners and New Yorkers. Through our links with the organisations above and the communities we met each year we are working towards this co-created project that identifies the resilience and power of East London and New Yorks inner-city communities. “We don’t often hear or see the stories of Londoners. But since meeting Future Hackney, we have seen the issues we face in the Lower East Side and East London to be mirroring each other. Fighting for our rights with organisations rooted in community care is what holds our neighbourhoods together. A project identifying these connections across the globe would be a brand-new way of delivering empathy, understanding and hope” Charis New York 2025