Cultural Guardians

We aim to manage projects in empty buildings providing temporary, affordable spaces to artists, cultural and creative initiatives. In April 2010, we took over 1-3 Rivington Street, then a near-derelict building, empty for a year and a half, and made it into one of the London’s most exciting cultural hubs. We are a collective of creative individuals and organisations striving to bring together art, music and film via many varied cultural events, forging/cementing local, national and international collaborations/partnerships. We host exhibitions, live art, live music and club events, literary soirees, symposiums and film screenings. We also provide with MATERIAL a bookshop and are able to publish our own books. Under the ‘{ourhistory}’ banner we curate large-scale gallery shows (currently touring internationally) covering subjects as diverse as the history of acid house and the future of art in the East End, with exhibitions such as ‘20 years of Acid House’, ‘East End Promise’ and ‘East Pop’. We are a self-funding creative enterprise, independently run relying neither on private nor public backers. One of our guiding principles is to work with, and seek input from the local artistic and creative communities, to build new business models and strengthen local, national and international ties in order to further our vision of an expansive artistic culture. Now in its 2nd year, The Red Project continues to deliver on our ‘cultural house sitting’ remit, having transformed an empty property into one of the Capital’s landmark creative spaces. Drawing on previous cultural experiments, we see ourselves as part of the great tradition of creative migrants who have moved to metropolitan areas such as London's East End, in an attempt to build long-term sustainable business strategies. To date in the last 18 months we have already joined forces/collaborated with artists such as: Kid Koala, Radio London Salon with Calvin Harris, Gavin Turk, Soundcloud, magazines: i-D and art collectives including: House of Fairy Tales, Soul Clap, Wolf & Lamb, Adam Dant, Noriko Okaku, Le Gun, onedotzero, Bo Ningen; Institutions such as: Camberwell and Kingston Colleges of Art; East End Film Festival and Rough Trade (East), to name few. Recession and beyond we remain committed to regeneration and creativity in the heart of London’s East End and beyond. We are actively searching for other suitable premises, and always seeking out ideas and projects to consolidate our business model. We are now in dialogue with, and seeking suitable business partners who share our vision.