A programme of art, culture and new infrastructure to reimagine the future of the UK’s biggest council housing estate
Multidisciplinary collective Blak Outside hosted Creative Resilience Pt 1 through spring and summer 2021, an intergenerational after-school club for Barking and Dagenham-based foster carers and children in care. Creative Resilience Pt 1 met regularly through a series of sessions at The White House’s Beacon Garden to explore cultural, ancestral and communal knowledge.
Together, the group examined the changing use of, and access to, gardens and land through two historic London housing estates, Becontree in Dagenham and Peabody Blackfriars in Southwark. Through a programme of growing, cooking, walks and mapping, the group explored experiences of being outdoors, developing tools to decolonise knowledge, ancestry, plant history, nature and the built environment, and to celebrate being safely and proudly outside.
The White House
884 Green Lane
Dagenham
RM8 1BX
Blak Outside is a multidisciplinary creative collective providing culturally diverse and inclusive events. The collective host the Blak Outside Festival, an annual grass roots, intergenerational event supportive of working-class social housing residents and the QTIBIPOC (queer, trans, intersex, Black, indigenous, people of colour) community.
Commissioned by The White House as part of New Town Culture, a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care and curated by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Funded by the GLA’s Young Londoners Fund, the MOPAC Violence Reduction Unit, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, City Bridge Trust and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.