Steve Chapman, better known as Steve Xoh, is a visual artist and creator with an unusual, yet endearing and playful twist on reality. In this episode we talk about Steve's wide-spanning array of unique ideas and his need to constantly create. With a seemingly endless pit of inspiration, from the surreal to the down right silly, he captures his audiences imagination and brings them along for the ride. Despite the huge success of some of these projects, Steve has an admirable and intuitive sense o...
Mar 22, 2023•54 min
In this episode I speak with Don Travis, photographer and co-founder of Future Hackney. Don has lived in Hackney almost her whole life and is passionate about her community and it's cultural diversity. Future Hackney is a public art project, telling stories of the area and it's people's through photographic imagery in public spaces. We talk about her current displays, Gillet Square Stories and Protest Stories - both of which are currently live and can be seen in Dalston and Hackney, respectively...
Mar 08, 2023•55 min
In this episode I sit down with French film photographer, Tiffany Roubert. In 2018 Tiffany took on a part-time role with Alternative London while she developed her photography career. During the pandemic she spent time in her wife, Carla’s native Brazil and took her photography full time. Tiffany’s images capture a life lived in the moment and her style, along with her obvious rapport with her subjects, can turn the most mundane situations into pieces of art of the highest quality. Needless to s...
Nov 15, 2022•32 min
In episode 20 I chat to artist Dave Buonaguidi - otherwise known as The Real Hackney Dave. We chat about Dave’s mid-life epiphany during which he left his marriage and his career in advertising and became an artist. Dave is a fascinating guy and a natural story-teller and I loved hearing about his time in 90’s Spitalfields as it just started to become cool (If you’ve been on one of our tours you’ll probably know Dave’s former home, 11½ Fournier St!), his time at channel 4 during the Brit Art Yea...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 3 min
One of Britain's master bronze makers, artist and environmentalist - it's the one and only Jonesy! Mark Jones moved to East London in 1988 to take up work as a finisher in a bronze foundry. Apart from a few stints abroad, he has been there ever since. In that time he has produced works for some of the most well known artists of our times. Alongside his professional work however, his bronze street works have lead him to become one of the most endearing street artists in the East End. The intricac...
Oct 18, 2022•37 min
In this episode I speak to entrepreneur and Jewellery maker, Nadia Abbas. Nadia, Quincey and Luke co-founded Stööki in 2011 as a Jewelery brand with its roots firmly in London youth culture. We talk about the highs and lows of running a sustainable fashion business in a throw-away world, how Stööki survived after the tragic and untimely passing of Quincey and how everything Stööki does is centred around building community. Stööki is more than a brand, it's a movement. Nadia is so passionate abou...
Oct 18, 2022•46 min
In this episode I sit down with the one and only, Cranio. Hailing from Sao Paulo, Cranio has emerged as one of the world’s best and most loved street artists. We’ve been big admirers of Cranio and his work since the first time we met him in 2012 so it was great to catch up ten years later for this chat. A lot has changed since then and his unique style has evolved a lot, so it was great to see him in great spirits and form – humble as ever and staying true to his roots. Due to the translation of...
Oct 18, 2022•20 min
Jade LB is an award-winning author from Hackney. In the early 2000’s chapters of a story started to appear on the blog site Piczo, and suddenly it went viral. Keisha the Sket was well known for being sexually explicit and violent, despite Jade having no sexual experience at the time of writing. Suddenly Jade stopped writing and left the story on a cliffhanger. Fifteen years later she was approached by Stormzy’s book imprint, Merky Books, to publish the original and re-write the story as a novel....
Oct 18, 2022•36 min
In this episode I chat to artist, Ant Carver as he prepares for his solo exhibition - All Alone in a Crowded Room. This current body of work, inspired by the tragic loss of Ant's best friend, muses primarily on grief and loss. It also displays a shift in Ant's style in which he creates stunning realistic oil paintings on aluminum board, with abstract elements seemlessly blended in. We talk about all of this and much more and I loved getting to know Ant and his process better as he welcomed us in...
Oct 18, 2022•49 min
Maher Anjum is the co-founder of Tati and Oitij-jo, a community organisation that empowers women in the British Bangladeshi diaspora through creativity and culture. In this episode we talk about the challenges that she is working hard to help overcome for individuals and the community as a whole. Maher's passion for this work is clear from the start and the impact that she has is huge. You can find out more about Oitij-jo here https://www.oitijjo.org/ I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as...
Oct 18, 2022•45 min
The self-proclaimed Vandal Extraordinaire. Crackney's undisputed finest. Ronzo has been an ever present fixture of the London street art scene since the early days. His characters exist in their own world but reflect on the issues of our reality and have, as such become iconic cult monuments of the East End and beyond. As I turned up to his studio, he was all set up to make me a sculpture while we recorded! We talk about Ronzo's chance move to London from his native Germany. His introduction to ...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Jenny Lewis is an award-winning photographer who embarked on her own projects after a successful career shooting for editorials. She has published three books: Hackney Studios , One Day Young and 100 Years and has exhibited her work around the world. Her intimate portraits focus on people in the East London Community so I wanted to meet her and find our more about her work and inspiration. Through these unique and deeply personal projects and their subsequent public interventions, Jenny has brou...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 3 min
In this episode I chat to the brilliant Jay Ka3s. Jay is a ln East London based, Spanish street artist, muralist and animator whose current body of work deals with our relationship with the online world with his style he refers to as the glitch. We talk about Jay's background in hip-hop and graffiti, the astonishing efforts he went to to get his degree and how he eventually started a successful mural agency. Jay's love of graffiti culture is palpable and he is an artist totally dedicated to his ...
Oct 18, 2022•56 min
Saki & B, also known as Saki & Bitches is a Japanese artist based in East London. Originally a make-up artist, she relocated from a temporary stint in New York to the East End in 2009 and soon started painting her renowned Bitches on the streets. Over the past six years Saki has worked predominantly in the studio where she has refined her painting and drawing styles which betray her lack of formal training. Her overtly sexual and provocative imagery seemed to have various abstract meanin...
Oct 18, 2022•42 min
In this episode I sat down with the amazing Ben Wilson, better known to most as The Chewing Gum Man. Ben is an artist and sculptor from North London who is best known for his miniature paintings on discarded chewing gums in London and beyond. He has transformed thousands of these pieces of waste into beautiful, colourful images around the world, including hundreds on London's Millennium Bridge alone. They are often dedicated to people, pets, local businesses and landmarks and always have a sense...
Oct 18, 2022•44 min
Aida Wilde and her family arrived in the UK from Iran as asylum seekers when she was a child. During her formative years she has become a well-respected print maker, educator, curator and artist in her own right. We discuss the culture shock of arriving from the middle east to Sunderland, onto her move to London and eventually her home of Hackney Wick. Aida’s work documents the fast-changing landscape of the Wick as well as calling out social injustice in all its forms, in particular ridiculing ...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Mohammed Ali is a British Bangladeshi artist from Birmingham. He has recently been spending time back in the East End's Banglatown where he has family connections (as well as Bangladesh itself), listening to stories from the local community to create a mural to celebrate 50 years of Bangladeshi independence. Coming from a graffiti background, Mohammed moved into mural painting and filmmaking. He runs the arts organisation, Soul City Arts and is a trustee of the Birmingham Museum & Art Galler...
Oct 18, 2022•48 min
In this first episode of the Alternative London Podcast we chat to co-founder of the East End Trades Guild, Krissie Nicolson. The Trades Guild was founded to give independent businesses, the self employed, charities and social enterprises a voice and a platform to organise in the face of rising rents, large-scale development and rapid gentrification in the East End of London. The value of this union was really amplified for us during the pandemic, so we wanted to publicly thank Krissie for helpi...
Oct 18, 2022•31 min
Adelaide artist Jimmy Cochran, better known as Jimmy C, has created large scale murals in his unique drip style and exhibited his work in galleries around the world. We first met Jimmy in 2010, not long after he moved to London and have enjoyed a close personal and occasional working relationship ever since. His artworks have been an ever present fixture of London since his arrival here; his trademark drip heart is now the official meeting point at London Bridge Station, and his depiction of Dav...
Oct 18, 2022•58 min
Jo Peel is an artist, film maker and animator from Sheffield, UK. After studying in Falmouth, she spent her formative years in the East End before moving back to Sheffield. Jo's artworks alongside their technical brilliance and visual beauty provide an important archive of the ever-changing urban landscape. Her animation and more recently film work is both unique in style and visually captivating, focussing on themes of development, community and gentrification. We've been fortunate enough to wo...
Oct 18, 2022•33 min
In this episode we take a trip to BSMT Space Gallery in Dalston to meet up with its founders, Greg Key and Lara Fiorentino. We met several years back when we were both running urban art galleries in East London. I warmed to them both instantly and could see that they ran their space with passion, fun and a sense of community. Knowing first-hand how difficult life in the gallery world can be, I wanted to find out how they have managed to thrive in a changing landscape and establish one of the lea...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 1 min
In this episode we sit down with WRDSMTH not too long after his recent move to East London from California. Although we'd been introduced previously and said hi a few times, this is the first time I'd met someone properly through the podcast. I was really grateful for his willingness to come and record before any had been published and for his openness during our conversation. We talk about acclimatising to the weather and the convenience of London's proximity to Europe, before getting on to his...
Oct 18, 2022•47 min
David Speed is co-founder the Graffiti Life agency with his business partners Iona Thomas and Adam Brazier. As well running a successful agency, David and Adam also hosts the hugely successful Creative Rebels Podcast. Over the years of painting for a living, David's spray can skills have elevated to a different level and this led to the creation of his neon portraiture style which he is now well known for. We have had a friendly working relationship over the years and when I bumped into David pa...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 4 min
