After graduating from the Royal College of Art with a Masters in Textiles in September, I began to apply to hundreds of jobs, only to get rejected from all of them for “not having enough experience”. I watched all my friends go through the same, despite being incredibly skilled in their craft. After trying to get the “experience” these jobs required by hosting my own events and workshops, I discovered how expensive it is to find a space to host these things. It felt so wrong to be spending hundreds, sometimes even thousands of pounds to rent a pub from an older cis white man for a night. Money I had to save up by working a minimum wage job that can barely pay my rent.
Not only that, but it felt like these spaces were only accessible if you knew the right people. As an American expat who has only lived in London for a year and a half, I found many of the spaces that existed to be isolating. The pubs were made for the lads, playing football on the TVs every night for yelling fans. All the spaces I went to that were supposed to allow me to meet people weren’t set up to welcome that; everyone sat at their own separate tables and talked to their friends all night. Many of these spaces that are trying to create community are barely able to make ends meet despite the huge need and hunger for them!
These thoughts were spiraling around in my head while I was biking around Hackney Wick one day and saw a sign that said “creative warehouse space to let.” I looked online and fell in love; Next thing, I booked a viewing and knew I was in a pickle when I first saw the big windows. Despite not having the money for it, having new student loan debt, and a maxed credit card, I knew that I could transform this space into something that would benefit so many people. It was time to take a big risk, and I knew I would figure it out.
This began my journey to build Rhizomatic, a craft cafe, wine bar, and third space centered around textiles, making with your hands, and getting off your phone. A space that challenges the grandma aesthetic that most people think of when they think of textiles. Instead programming aims to showcase the innovations in the field and the way the modern day girl is retaking the craft, and making it her own. A space that looks beyond the basic, beginner workshops. Instead offering weird, esoteric, interdisciplinary and boundary pushing programming centered around women, disabled, working class, young, queer, and POC voices.
A space that gives artists a shot, and bets on their careers by providing opportunities and space to help them get the jobs that require more experience. A space that prioritizes local suppliers and feeding into the young East London community as much as possible. And more importantly, a space where you can connect with other young people trying to do the same thing. A space that invites talking to the table next to you, that you can always go to whenever we are open, with the knowledge that you will meet someone creative and kind. A space that welcomes people at all skill levels to share their knowledge and expertise, that seeks to decolonize learning outside of expensive educational institutions. A space made FOR the community, BY the community.
Sounds easy, right? Well, one thing about me is that I’ve always been ambitious, sometimes to my own detriment. I’m mostly a one woman team, calling in every favor from every friend I’ve got to do what they do best, from graphic design and photography to furniture design and programming. I started cold DM-ing people I had loved on social media for years and asked them to be part of this project. Surprisingly, many of them were thrilled to join and have since become incredible friends. But as the days ticked closer to opening, the anxiety built within me and I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to swing it. I decided to put out a call for help, thinking maybe 10 people would think me playing into lesbian stereotypes was funny. It reached more people than I could’ve ever expected, giving me one week to scramble to find tasks for potentially 300 lesbians (a good problem to have). I figured, worth a shot, why not? And I can say now it was one of the best things I’ve ever done.
1
15/4 12:36pm: A £350 box of painting tools, PPE, and beer secured. Anxiously sweeping the dust into trash bags in a “throwing a party and my house has to be clean” kind of way, despite the space being an active construction site.
2
15/4 at 4:58pm: Nothing says hackney wick like a makeshift A4 assemblage taped to a Wet Floor A frame sign sat next to a giant graffiti Jesus (yes, this building houses both church services and raves)
3
15/4 6:05pm: My project manager hat is on as a slow trickle of people start coming in. The first task is to prime the walls white (so I can figure out what to assign people to).
4
15/4 7:33pm: Grueling tasks like scraping away the black paint in the kitchen, to reveal these gorgeous red tiles (giving millennials who buy old quirky houses and paint everything grey).
5
April 15th 8:03pm: 3 strangers united by queerness, renovation, free beer, and a good playlist (crafted by the attendees, of course).
6
15/4 8:08pm: Checking in on the bathroom crew to find only smiles..
7
15/4 8:47pm: Around 8:30pm the FLINTA folks decided to take the renovation into their own hands. Instead of waiting for me to give a task, they started work that looked like it needed to be done.
8
15/4 8:58pm: After hours of backbreaking, boring, laborious tasks, we finally were able to put the first strokes of color on the wall. The energy in the room transformed!!
9
15/4 9:33pm: The sponsored beer (shoutout Jubel), paint fumes, and exhaustion all hit at once and led to some chaos. The team started scavenging around the assortment of items left by previous tenants, like these ski goggles.
10
15/4 9:38pm: The bathroom crew grew bigger and bigger, making their own party with their own music and dancing, scraping to the beat. To me this event felt like the evolution of the queer joy we would see in nightclubs after protesting during the AIDs crisis. In the modern day, many of the battles are the same, we are still fighting for space to exist, and we are willing to come together as a community to make them (and have fun doing it)
11
16/4 6:00pm: my day 2 crowd was very very on time, breaking the stereotype I was relying on– that gay people are always late. I struggled to find enough tasks for so many people, and definitely should’ve bought more paint.
12
16/5 6:55pm: A new color has entered the villa: this beautiful butter yellow!
13
16/4 6:59pm: Rhizomatic is being built from scrappy beginnings, which means upcycling a lot of cheap Facebook Marketplace furniture. My spray paint team took this personally, ensuring these old pub chairs were sprayed silver,given a new life.
14
16/4 7:01pm: We rebel against the stark white cafe landscape of London, instead bringing maximalism, color, and joy (because we deserve it).
15
16/4 7:20pm: In the name of community, I wanted to hear what the community had to say! Here’s a few thoughts from Day 1 and 2 baddies.
16
16/4 7:40p: Gay people are too polite to put someone’s charging phone on the ground and will instead paint around it (hilarious). This piece of art was further added to by other artists leaving their mark on the space.
17
16/4 7:42pm What I love about lesbians is that they have range. Abby, Jess, and Inka all reached out in advance asking if they should bring their tools, so I made sure to have tasks they would enjoy ready for them.
18
16/4 7:54pm With the addition of hot pink columns, the space really started to feel like progress was being made! After months of me sanding and spackling alone til 4am watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer to keep me company, it was so incredible to see that you don’t have to build things by yourself. The world wants us to be isolated, to feel as if no one would want to help strip paint or build IKEA furniture. This event, that brought strangers together, really showed me how wrong that belief is.
19
16/4: 9:47pm: The last person has left and I can finally breathe. My 48 hour renovation marathon fueled by liquor, sweat, laughter, and exhaustion comes to the end.Time to sleep for 2 days straight before getting back to taking over the world in the name of the crafty lesbians.